Books like Finite and Infinite Games — picked by fans

Victor Frankl was an Austrian psychologist who was sent to Auschwitz by the German Nazis because he was Jewish.

While in the camp, Frankl noticed that individual prisoners responded in totally different ways to the same appalling circumstances: some stole food from others, some hoarded their food, and some shared their food with others. He concludes that human freedom is ineradicable. He also learned from his camp experience that people want meaning in life as much as they want food or water. Human beings do not live for pleasure, but for the discovery of meaning.

I loved this very inspiring and compelling book about how some people, like Frankl, can rise above the most horrendous suffering.

Daniel Quinn’s award-winning novel illuminates the historical roots of our consumer culture from the perspective of a gorilla who teaches a human the lessons of sustainability.

Before he died, Daniel would meet with my students to discuss sustainability and the lessons of Ishmael. His wisdom comes through clearly in this well-told tale of how Homo sapiens become a species of unsustainable “takers” and what the consequences are of a global consumer culture.

This book stopped me being scared of death – well almost. It is a wonderful read about how we are embodied creatures of planet Earth. Our very being is relationship. Take breathing for example. As you sit there you breathe in oxygen, nitrogen, and a little carbon dioxide. When you breathe out you release extra carbon dioxide – with that carbon coming from your body itself. You gift a little of your being in exchange for the oxygen - fragments that may end up in that tree outside your window. Once we understand that exchange is the essence of life, it helps us live well on our shared planet. As Weber explains, joy comes when we sense that life is increasing – for us and for others.

Our task then becomes to nurture life – the creative striving of all living things to become themselves and connect with others. Weber… show more.

The Spiral Staircase is the book I’ve read the most number of times as an adult. It is the autobiography of Karen Armstrong who was a Catholic nun for six years in the 1960s in the UK. The book picks up after she leaves her convent and is studying English literature at Oxford University. She is also suffering from mysterious episodes of fainting and memory loss, and so we are taken into her struggles with both academia and the psychiatry of the 1970s. She then spirals through other careers and eventually returns to God – not now as a person of faith but as a writer about religion – its beauty and its tension.

This is perhaps the most honest book I’ve read, as it unflinchingly describes the experience of making terrible mistakes – as we almost all do – without blame or self-flagellation. Karen Armstrong learns, in the end,… show more.

This was the book that introduced me to complex systems. Many people have become familiar with complex systems in recent years as we’ve been exposed to talk of feedback loops and probability through discussions on climate change. Little inputs can make a big difference and big inputs sometimes collapse under the weight of their own inertia. This book has one of those titles that work their way into your imagination – getting to maybe?

It does not suggest you set goals and work, head down, towards your personal mission. It suggests that you take a look around, gather with others, invite ideas based on people’s passions, and get started. It is all about experimenting and learning together. Then, maybe, something will good will happen. The book offers plenty of inspiring examples of significant social change as a result of genuine innovation and listening to many voices.

This book describes what it takes to invite people into a conversation that leads to new ways of being together. Block is full of practical wisdom. For example, he discusses the importance of the physical setting – which is why I sometimes spend hours preparing for what a meeting will look and feel like. Our aim, he writes, is for people “to feel as if [they] came to the right place and are affirmed for that choice”. To do this, we need to gather everyone in – bringing them and their gifts to the centre of the process. Like my other recommendations, Block has huge optimism for what people can do when treated well.

Robert Putnam is a Harvard political scientist who studies social trust, which he calls “social capital,” because once we earn trust, we can spend it for a long time.

Putnam argues that Americans in the mid-twentieth century had much higher levels of social trust than we do today, and this made for a much more stable and decent politics. That greater social trust, he argues, was the product of people joining clubs, fraternities, and other associations in huge numbers. Whereas people used to bowl in bowling leagues, now they generally bowl alone.

In case you are wondering about what has happened to our politics, Putnam offers a compelling diagnosis and a prescription for a better way forward. 

What if all kinds of human thought and speech could be boiled down to just two? According to psychologist Jerome Bruner, those two kinds of human thought are stories and arguments.

Bruner considers evidence from neuroscience and from cognitive science to argue that stories and arguments are processed differently by our minds and are rooted in different parts of our brains.

Stories are structured by their plots, while arguments are structured by logic. Stories have a beginning, middle, and end, while arguments have premises and conclusions. Stories give us anecdotes, while arguments give us evidence. 

I love books that compellingly simplify complex matters with powerful new theories. 

Nicholas Carr shows us why Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram bring out the worst in us. Their algorithms are designed to generate envy, outrage, and fear rather than empathy, understanding, or affection.

Carr takes a deep dive into research in social psychology to make the case that we all become trolls while doomscrolling. We want to believe that learning more about other people makes us like them more, but Carr shows that what we learn about other people online makes us like them less.

We are all prone to oversharing and lying online, which undermines social trust. Moreover, it is now impossible to tell whether messages on social media were generated by human beings or bots, further undermining our trust in other people.

I love how Carr illustrates his arguments with examples from cutting-edge research. 

This book rejected the manipulative tactics that were sadly all too common among some sales teams. It emphasizes the importance of following a considered sales process. During my sales career, I discovered that when you follow a robust sales process, your success is multiplied.

I was inspired by this book as a refreshing alternative to the traditional, somewhat combative approach that typified traditional sales training with its focus on “overcoming customer objections” and “going for the close.” Instead, it championed the idea of selling as a joint venture or partnership that you engage in with your customer.

This focus on creating a win-win outcome has helped me to develop many long-standing customer relationships–some that have lasted decades.