Books like Purpose and Profit — picked by fans

This book has been a go-to for years, as I really appreciate Simon’s guidance to ALWAYS clarify the mission and purpose of any organization before digging deeper into the strategies and action plans to advance the mission.

All too often, my bias for action had driven me to jump into the work of creation and delivery. If every single player on the field with me wasn’t 100% bought into the game we were playing, why we were there, and where we wanted to be in the future, we wasted precious time and resources.

Simon Sinek taught me to pause and bring great intention to the enrollment in the mission of any venture. I also appreciate his insights into the stretch zone where people are most effective driving change. We don’t want to be cozy or panicked at work, but stretched in pursuit of meaningful change, and always better together.

I wrote extensively about Paul Polman in my own book—particularly about his courage. What I admire most is that he didn’t just talk about purpose; he lived it and delivered it.

Reading this book reminded me why I found his leadership at Unilever so compelling. Like purpose itself, Unilever isn’t perfect—but what Polman stood for and what he managed to achieve showed what’s truly possible when courage, conviction, and commitment meet strategy.

I loved how the book balances idealism with practical insight. It pushed my thinking further, reaffirming that profit and purpose can and must coexist if business is to remain relevant in today’s world.

I strongly believe business leaders and brands must engage with all stakeholders (including society and the planet) to thrive – and this is the essence of John Browne’s message in Connect.

Browne, a former CEO of BP, contrasts positive engagement with traditional corporate social responsibility, which he contends is often more about complying with laws and regulations and looking good rather than doing good. 

The first half of the book provides real world examples of how corporate success is dependent on greater engagement with society.

And the second examines Browne’s four tenets of connected leadership – map your world, define your contribution, apply world class management, engage radically – and how companies can exemplify them going forward and profitably place society at the heart of business.

First published in 2001, Emotional Branding emphasized a new perspective for marketers and business leaders: the importance of human connections between corporations and people.

I believe an understanding of these connections has always been central to excellent brand strategy and now is critical for business to have positive social impact.

As Marc Gobé aptly states, emotional branding “is a culture and a way of living: a fundamental belief that people are the real force in commerce….” 

Filled with examples of the range of brand expression – from logos to packaging to experiences – Gobé, who I had the pleasure of knowing, inspires readers while also illustrating how many decisions about branding are actually about integrated business strategy and cultivating meaningful connections.

I loved this book because it gave language to instincts I didn’t yet trust.

I read it long ago, and its stories stayed with me—not intellectually, but somatically. This book doesn’t explain women; it remembers us. Through myth and archetype, Clarissa Pinkola Estés reclaims the wild, intuitive self that so many women are trained to domesticate.

It taught me that messiness isn’t a flaw—it can be the sign of something alive trying to return.

Of seminal importance to an understanding of the world is the conception of a collective unconscious grounded in inheritable archetypes. These evolve: how could it be otherwise—everything in nature evolves. And that means that our consciousness, too, evolves. Its evolution is, in a sense, teleological: from the less conscious to the more consciousness. This is to say that the evolution of the archetypes permits the increasing distillation of consciousness from the vastness of the collective unconscious. I believe that language, which is indivisible from consciousness, did not begin to materialize until about 10,000 BC. I may have been virtually alone in this view, but computerized models of evolutionary linguists today suggest that the key to language capability may have been enfolded in our make-up from our earliest beginnings.

This book is an incredible reference book. I used it as an actor in one of my favorite acting classes. During rehearsal, we used archetypes to help flesh out and explore our characters. This technique felt groundbreaking.

Since archetypes are essential to character development, and we each possess every archetype within us, this book was a staple for me in my creative development. I will go so far as to say that this book was a portal for me to access the teacher in me and expanded me out of my actor self and into my author self.

I write character-driven fiction and it is always the people and their relationships that most engage me in any story. I found the characters here complex, real, engaging, and, in some instances, foul specimens demonstrating that existence for survival alone is an inadequate way of life for any person. These are fully developed people, though they are mostly unusual individuals; archetypes rather than stereotypes. The people hooked me from the start. I cared what happened to these adventurers. I also cared that those who deserved retribution would receive it.

This young woman is profoundly wise beyond her years. In a style reminiscent of the poetry of the mystics Rumi and Hafiz from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Harkin gives voice to the deep feminine as she is emerging into modern consciousness. This is poetry to touch your heart and quicken your inner feminine. Full disclosure: I was honored to write the forward to this beautifully written book.

When I read this book, I felt much the way I did as a teenager when I discovered astrology and began to appreciate there were patterns of behavior found in humans that were reflected in the vastness of the cosmos -- and vice versa. Who would have thought that what I considered idiosyncratic tendencies within myself and others actually were a part of a much bigger pattern that had existed for millennia in the form of ancient goddesses? I was astounded to see the personalities of my sisters, friends, mother, aunties, as well as celebrities, accurately depicted by Greek goddesses. 

In this book, Shinoda-Bolen brings to life many dimensions of the archetypal feminine that get played out in our modern lives, our individual psyches, and in our relationships.