leadership – Scott J. Pearson’s Book Review

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…

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…

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 Program Management Software-Technology

More Effective Agile: A Roadmap for Software Leaders

By Scott J. Pearson | May 30, 2026May 30, 2026 by Scott J. Pearson

Steve McConnell is one of the best writers about software practices in our generation. Over decades, each of his books pushes the field forward, and each new book updates his thought with oodles of new data. This book, an evidence-based look at Agile, is no exception. Agile has become a catch-all term for a lot of software practices, but McConnell recenters his study about Agile on what’s most important in a business – getting results.…

Artificial Intelligence Leadership

The AI-Driven Leader: Harnessing AI to Make Faster, Smarter Decisions

By Scott J. Pearson | April 29, 2026April 29, 2026 by Scott J. Pearson

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has immense, obvious power inside, but to many business leaders, the disruptive potentialities scare them. Will they lose their jobs? Will their company lose its place? Is this just another technical fad that will sunset sometime soon? Author Geoff Woods wants readers to say a resounding “no” to all three questions and instead to learn how to harness AI’s power to add strategic value to their leadership. He views AI as a…

Leadership

A CEO for All Seasons: Mastering the Cycles of Leadership

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

Leadership as a CEO is among the most demanding roles in a business environment. Everyone hangs on your every word, for better or for worse, and people are reticent to criticize the leading leader, even when the leader needs desperately to hear critical feedback. The promises of making an impact are great, but so are the opportunities to make a mistake. The authors, senior partners at the McKinsey & Company business research firm, seek to…

Artificial Intelligence Leadership

Leaderwired: The AI-Era Leadership Playbook for Transforming How You Think, Decide & Lead

By Scott J. Pearson | March 22, 2026March 22, 2026 by Scott J. Pearson

Change is the key challenge to any leader because there’s no great way to predict its course. New things arise, and no clear direction exists. All we can do is to prepare ourselves and our mindsets to embrace new challenges with a realistic yet positive attitude. Artificial intelligence (AI) is a key case in point. As a paradigm-shifting technology, it is changing the way workplaces operate, and those who don’t adapt well – or don’t…

Leadership Management-Business

Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power & Greatness

By Scott J. Pearson | November 15, 2025November 15, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

When observing the world, many see that true leadership does not reflect positions of power; rather, it reflects a quality of personal character. Robert Greenleaf looked at 1970s America and the 1970s world and observed a lack of leadership. We had educated talent out the wazoo, but lacked people able to usher in lasting, good change. He wrote this book to cultivate such leadership qualities in its readers. Leadership, to him, was of a servant’s…

Leadership Management-Business

Simply Managing: What Managers Do- and Can Do Better

By Scott J. Pearson | November 12, 2025November 12, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

Most contemporary management books from scholars tend to center on a central “secret of management” upon which an entire philosophy is built. Henry Mintzberg instead flips the idea on its head and observed dozens of managers from various industries in the field. Then he tried to describe what they were doing empirically. Then he made that into a framework. In this bottom-up approach, he observed managers doing all sorts of things throughout a day, without…