Management-Business – Scott J. Pearson’s Book Review

The Psychology of AI Adoption at Work: From Resistance to Results

By Scott J. Pearson | October 16, 2026October 16, 2026 by Scott J. Pearson

Because AI is such a new field, most good books about it are grounded only in experience. Higher reflection, grounded in academic theory, is left to the AI engineers, and organizations and individual workers are left to flounder in how to use this transformative software. However, in this book, Gleb Tsipursky attempts to ground his experiences consulting with companies about AI into rigorous psychology. He seeks to show how organizations can position themselves so that…

Leadership Management-Business

Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration

By Scott J. Pearson | October 9, 2026October 9, 2026 by Scott J. Pearson

The days of a lone genius pioneering world-changing ideas are behind us (the so-called Great Man theory); most new discoveries today come from working in teams. Therefore, fostering healthy collaborative environments and attracting top-line colleagues have become essential skills for today’s organizational leaders. That topic is worthy of a deep dive. In this book, Authors Warren Bennis and Patricia Ward Biederman combine to look at several use cases to extract key principles of what make…

Management-Business

The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation

By Scott J. Pearson | October 6, 2026October 6, 2026 by Scott J. Pearson

In the 1980s and 1990s, Japan’s and the United States’ work cultures clashed with a competition of values. The Japanese were deemed more innovative while the Americans were deemed more interested in taking advantage of the status quo. Both authors, rooted in Japanese culture yet educated in America, noted that implicit knowledge drove Japanese innovation while explicit knowledge drove American business. In this book, they describe what happens when these two paradigms unite in creative…

Leadership

On Becoming a Leader: The Leadership Classic

By Scott J. Pearson | September 25, 2026September 25, 2026 by Scott J. Pearson

First, the good: This book lives up to the cover’s hype. Its ten chapters take a deep look at the character of everyday leaders. What’s true in 1989 remains true in 2009, at the time of the text’s republishing, and it remains true in 2026, at the time of my writing. The word “classic” is not hyperbole. Warren Bennis provides a script and a set of principles to build everyday leaders. A clinical psychologist by…

Management-Business

The Consulting Bible: How to Launch & Grow a Seven-Figure Consulting Business

By Scott J. Pearson | September 13, 2026September 13, 2026 by Scott J. Pearson

Consulting is a business built around bettering the client’s business. Many work in large consulting firms to market their expertise, but in this book, Alan Weiss instead shows how to run a solo firm or a smaller firm to achieve the main good. The goal is to direct more money into one’s own pockets while maintaining more independence that can lead to better quality of life. This book teaches about running the business of a…

Biography-Memoir Leadership

A Journey of Insights: Lessons in Leadership & Legacy

By Scott J. Pearson | August 9, 2026August 9, 2026 by Scott J. Pearson

Sage advice is hard to come by – you know, the kind of advice that makes you change the way you look at the world and in turn act better in the world. We often look to experienced leaders and educators to point the way. James Ellis, the former Dean of the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California, served students for over two decades as professor and leader. Before that, he…

Leadership Management-Business

The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work & What to Do About It

By Scott J. Pearson | August 2, 2026August 2, 2026 by Scott J. Pearson

An oft-cited fact is that most small businesses don’t succeed. They fall prey to a common set of challenges – namely, that entrepreneurs never transition their work from a job into building a business. In this book, Michael Gerber shines light on this common error and shows ways to overcome it. He uses a parable of Sarah starting her own business as a way to interject life into these principles and illustrate how entrepreneurs can…

Leadership Presentation

The Right to Speak: Working with the Voice

By Scott J. Pearson | July 28, 2026July 28, 2026 by Scott J. Pearson

Months of formal voice training has been something that has attracted me for decades, but I could never justify the time or the expense for it. Obviously, anyone who leads groups and speaks to groups regularly needs to attend to the voice. It’s still difficult to get the feedback necessary to articulate words in an engaging manner. This book will not offer customized feedback, but to the self-disciplined, it offers ways to internalize principles of…

Indie Management-Business Software-Technology

Successful Technology Consulting: How to Become a Top Dollar IT Consultant

By Scott J. Pearson | July 25, 2026July 25, 2026 by Scott J. Pearson

This short work introduces the reader to a career in IT consulting. Written by Eetu Niemi, a ten-year veteran of the field, it describes what IT consulting actually looks like and presents options about which kind of positions entrants should look for based on their personal values and life traits. Importantly, he distinguishes between management consulting and IT consulting. Management consulting can pay more but is much more demanding in terms of hours and expectations.…

Indie Leadership Management-Business

The Executive Mindset: Unlocking the Strategic Power Inside Every Manager

By Scott J. Pearson | June 21, 2026June 21, 2026 by Scott J. Pearson

Learning to think like the “next level up” is a challenge in any professional group. As the saying goes, what got you here isn’t going to get you there. The gap between management and leadership remains large. As you move up an organization’s chart, mentoring is harder to come by and free passes to make mistakes become fewer. Reading books like Bobby Lampkin’s provide opportunities to level up your thinking and behavior to bring further…