Must-Read Books for Strategists

The Top Ten

One of my most avid readers and interlocuters on the Playing to Win/Practitioner Insights (PTW/PI) series is Dan Pryor, and he asked me a question related to my recent post in the series, Strategy, Anomalies & Scientific Revolutions. As is not uncommon with his questions, it got me thinking and in response, I decided to write this PTW/PI piece on Must-Read Books for Strategists: The Top Ten. As always, you can find all the previous PTW/PI here.

Dan’s Question

In Strategy, Anomalies & Scientific Revolutions, I mentioned almost in passing that to be a great strategist, there were two books you had to read, Karl Popper’s The Logic of Scientific Discovery and Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Dan’s logical question was: What is your total list, not just those two? Good question. I have never answered that specific question. I have been asked for my three favorite books or books that inspired me and I am sure various others in podcasts or interviews.

But I have not sat down and made a list that I see as required reading for anyone who wants to become a master strategist.

Thoughts About the List

I decided to make it a top ten list to force me to be choiceful. I preach choice, so I should subject myself to it. The list is based on the premise that a master strategist is one who understands and is competent both in the content of strategy and how to make action happen on strategy.

Only three of the books are business books – the rest are from a variety of non-business fields. The most recent book was published in 1990 and only two were published in the past half-century.

Dan’s question specified that I should exclude my own books, which I think is a very good rule. I was recently named the second most influential management thinker – second only to the guy that made up the list. I didn’t pay it any attention because of that audacious conflict of interest.

I have presented the list chronologically and given my rationale why each is on the list of required reading for becoming a master strategist.

The List

Sun Tzu The Art of War (5^th Century BC)

The Art of War is a must-read because it establishes that strategy requires the strategist to step back and see patterns and connections that others do not – and use those insights to make choices that their adversaries, who don’t see those patterns and connections, wouldn’t.

For example, “When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard.” The more intuitive, straightforward logic is probably: Hey, we’ve got them on the run, let’s wipe them out. Or “Treat your men as you would your own beloved sons. And they will follow you into the deepest valley.” The Secretary of Defense for the bulk of the Vietnam War, Robert McNamara, was supposed to be one of the smartest men of his entire generation. But his strategy involved treating soldiers as disposable products, which resulted in the deaths of 58 thousand American soldiers (plus wounding another 153 thousand) for zero benefit to American foreign policy.

The book is on the list because it provides example after example of how choices have consequences. Making strong strategy choices requires thinking past the simple and obvious and military strategy can provide helpful insights.

Aristotle Rhetoric (The original is circa 350 BC, but a popular English translation is George Kennedy’s On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse, 1991)

Aristotle is the father of science and wrote the most important book in the history of science – Analytica Posteriora – but that not on the list. His most obscure work – Rhetoric – is on instead. In it, he provides critical advice on how to operate in ‘the part of the world where things can be other than they are,’ which characterizes the world of business. He argues that use of his scientific method should be restricted to ‘the part of the world where things cannot be other than they are,’ – the traditional world of the physical sciences, not business.

Both the modern world generally and strategy specifically completely ignore his advice and use science where it shouldn’t be, both undermining innovation and creating false confidence in using analysis of the past to extrapolate into the future – a practice Aristotle warned against.

Business education has no interest in Aristotle’s guidelines and wants science to dominate the practice of management. So, the only way a strategist will get this critical insight is to read Rhetoric.

Charles Sanders Peirce The Essential Peirce, Volume 2 (1893-1913)

Peirce is the father of pragmatist philosophy. He mainly wrote papers and gave lectures as opposed to publishing books. So, the best thing for a strategist to read is an edited compilation of his papers and lectures and the most accessible of those is the above The Essential Peirce, Volume 2. Within this compilation and of particular interest to and relevance for strategists are his seven 1903 Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism.

A strategist needs to understand Peirce’s concept of abduction – which like Aristotle’s distinction is simply not at all taught in formal business education. Modern education, including business education, teaches that there are only two legitimate forms of logic – deduction and induction. But Peirce famously argues there is a third – abduction – which is “the process of forming explanatory hypotheses. It is the only logical operation which introduces any new idea.”

Without abduction, a strategist is incapable of creating innovative possibilities. Hence Peirce is essential reading.

John Dewey Art as Experience (1934)

Dewey was a student Peirce and a key player in the pragmatist movement. This book, the most difficult and sometimes painful read of the ten, argues that how one experiences one’s experiences is critically important to building personal artistry. In combination, having experiences and reflecting on those experiences is what enables one to make ever finer distinctions in the field in question – which is what is required to become a true connoisseur in a field.

To become a connoisseur of strategy, the budding strategist can learn how to become a committed and effective experientialist, which I learned from Dewey.

Peter Drucker The Practice of Management (1954)

This is a book by my hero, and it could have been one of several of his 39 books — such as The Effective Executive. But I picked this one because it is the first consequential book about business management as a subject. Yes, you could say Machiavelli’s The Prince was, but only metaphorically so. Drucker was a practitioner theoretician. He hung out with CEOs, advised them, and wrote about his experiences.

A strategist needs to have a deep understanding the workings of management in order to build strategy constructively within that context – and this book is the one to build that foundation.

Karl Popper The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1959)

In The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Popper argues that science doesn’t prove eternal truths but rather systematically eliminates false beliefs. A strategist needs to understand this to reject the notion that analysis of anything provides ‘the truth’ on any business subject. The modern scourge of strategy is smart analysts who crunch the numbers to declare ‘what the facts say’ and therefore ‘what we must do.’ Popper gives a principled rebuttal to this flawed notion. This, in turn, frees up strategists to imagine possibilities – that can’t be evaluated decisively in advance – and choose the one for which the most compelling argument can be made.

Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962)

Kuhn describes the underlying pattern by which science advances. It vacillates between long periods in which scientists focus on honing and refining existing scientific paradigm, work Kuhn termed ‘normal science,’ and abbreviated periods during which the existing paradigm is replaced with a new one – a scientific revolution.

The spur for such revolution is the appearance of anomalies that don’t fit the dominant paradigm. Normal scientists dismiss them as exceptions that prove the rule, while brave scientists, who normal scientists suppress viciously as long as they can, develop a new theory that shows how those former anomalies are expected within the new theory.

Strategists need to understand the power of anomalies in providing clues to new better models and how to push back on normal scientists who will always fight against anything that threatens their dominant paradigm.

Herb Simon The Sciences of the Artificial (1969)

This book is famous for the concept of bounded rationality, which is truly a Nobel quality insight but not the most important insight for strategists. The more important point for strategists is his discussion of the class of things in the world he terms artificial, which are things designed by humans. And those things include strategy.

Implicitly he saw strategy as a design process, not an analytical one. And unlike many in the world of design, he provides an extremely thorough and rigorous way of thinking about designing something artificial, which is essential reading for any strategist – because that is what strategists do.

Michael Porter. Competitive Strategy (1980)

This is the most important book ever written on business strategy, so it makes the list. It was an historically critically intervention at a time that a planning view of strategy was in the ascendency – if not a near-monopoly. I know because in 1980, I took Business Policy at Harvard Business School – which was the signature required ‘strategy’ course at the greatest business school on the planet at the time. And it was 100% planning/0% strategy.

Competitive Strategy came along and argued that strategy is choice – a choice among multiple possibilities – with some choices being a lot better than others. Strategy is a choice and even if you don’t explicitly make a choice, you have indeed made one.

Perhaps most laudably, the first great book on business strategy has stood the test of almost a half-century of time.

Chris Argyris. Overcoming Organizational Defenses (1990)

A strategist must make something happen that would not have otherwise happened to be valuable. That is harder to pull off than one might imagine – and certainly harder than I first imagined. It took me a long while to figure out that bringing about change is as harder or harder than figuring out a good strategic answer.

But to bring about change, a strategist needs a structured way of thinking about the question of how you bring a group together to a point that they will go forward confidently and Argyris provides the best such way.

A Few Closing Thoughts on the List

First, for what it’s worth, there is the only one book on the list over which I agonized. If the list was eleven books, On Warby Carl von Clausewitz would make the list. It is another brilliant military strategy book published posthumously in 1832. It has great lessons for strategists, but for me, not quite as powerful as those in The Art of War.

Second, The Design of Business (at #2) made a list of the five most cited works in design thinking along with The Sciences of the Artificial (#4). It was as if I had died and gone to heaven to be on a short list with Herb Simon.

Third, without Argyris’ influence, the Strategic Choice Structuring Process wouldn’t exist.

Practitioner Insights

This is my list, but it isn’t meant to be everyone’s list. Strategists, you should create your own – and some of my list may be on it, some not. That is OK.

I have routinely argued that it is impossible to become a great strategist by working in one industry practice. Excellence comes from seeing and understanding a broad range of industries and contexts.

The same applies to reading. You won’t become a great strategist by reading only strategy books. Recognize that seven of the ten most valuable books on my list are not even business books and only one of the ten is on the topic of business strategy. The message is to look outside books on business strategy to help you on your journey to become a great strategist. There are many non-business, non-strategy books that are more powerful sources of learning and development for you than business strategy books.

So, read broadly just as you should practice broadly. If you do both, you will have the best chance of becoming a great strategist.