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Best Business Books of 2024
There’s nothing quite like a well-crafted business book to help inspire and inform. However, there are so many to choose from these days, where do you begin? Here we’ve pulled together a roundup of the top 10 must-read business books for 2024. Explore books on a range of topics, from leadership and strategy to compelling autobiographies of inspirational business leaders, business growth, and creating an LGBTQ+ inclusive space – here’s our top picks.
- Right Kind of Wrong: Why Learning to Fail Can Teach Us to Thrive by Amy Edmondson
Good for…transforming the concept of failure
Our no.1 book on the list was winner of the Financial Times Business Book of the Year 2023 Award. It’s a masterclass in navigating inevitable failures that get in the way of success. This book reveals how we get failure wrong, and how to right that wrong! Failure is often considered as a problem and avoided – however, we miss the opportunity to fail well. Amy Edmondson – the world’s most influential organisational psychologist – draws on a lifetime’s research into the science of ‘psychological safety’. She shows us the most successful cultures are those in which you can fail openly and introduces the three archetypes of failure – simple, complex and intelligent – and how to harness these.
Buy here.
- Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know by Adam Grant
Good for… mindset and changing perspective
Often in life, and in business, we can sometimes be held back or become stuck in a situation due to outdated beliefs and value systems. To gain that edge, it can be useful to develop flexibility and reimagine our beliefs. In this book, you’ll find a range of fascinating anecdotes interwoven by cutting-edge research and insights from Adam Grant’s conversations with Elon Musk, top CEOs, leading scientists and Hilary Clinton’s campaign team. It’s the ultimate guide to turning your perspective into a fresh and forward-thinking way of being. It will help you to question your ideas and update your values and opinions.
- The Coming Wave: The instant Sunday Times bestseller from the ultimate AI insider by Mustafa Suleyman and Michael Bhaskar
Good for…understanding the future of AI
This book is said, by none other than Bill Gates himself, to be a great guide for navigating unprecedented times. Afterall, soon we will live surrounded by AI. They may begin to organise our life, run our place of work, even operate government services – now there’s a sobering thought. In the future we may live in a world of robot assistants – how prepared are we for this? This innovative book from an ‘AI insider’ explores the idea of maintaining control over powerful technologies – as the essential challenge of our age.
- The Pivot Year by Brianna Wiest
Good for…if you’re in a pivot period.
This book claims that “this is the year you change your life” – after reading this book, presumably. If you’re about to ‘pivot’ but are navigating that in-between space of where you stand and where you want to be, this book is for you. However, the book highlights how important it is to note that your ‘becoming’ is already a part of you – it’s growing, you just might not see it yet. By reading this book, you’ll learn how to persuade your mind to act consistently on what your heart already knows, and deep down, wants inside. Featuring 365 daily meditations, you’ll find the courage needed to grow in confidence and become who you’ve always wanted to be and where you want to be.
- Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater by Adam Grant
Good for…inspiration on how to raise your vibrations
Another inspirational book from Adam Grant – this is his latest, released at the end of 2023. This no.1 New York Times bestseller claims to shatter your assumptions about what it takes to improve and succeed. An inspirational book highlights how we can elevate ourselves and others to unexpected heights. Our culture is obsessed by ‘talent,’ but this book offers a new framework for raising aspirations and going above and beyond expectations. Adam shows us that progress is less about how hard we work – rather, it’s about how well you learn.
- Strategic: The Skill to Set Direction, Create Advantage, and Achieve Executive Excellence by Rich Horwath
Good for…learning a new toolkit on strategy
In this book, you’ll master the four disciplines of strategic fitness needed for executive performance. Perfect for leaders at all levels, it provides invaluable support in thinking, planning, and acting strategically with any business challenge. The core principle is around a concept called Strategic Fitness System, which includes dozens of tools, techniques and checklists designed to help you confidently address different areas of the business. From designing market-winning strategies to shaping the organisation’s culture, it’s a great resource for strategy and planning and will help you to sustain a competitive advantage.
- The Squiggly Career: The No.1 Sunday Times Business Bestseller – Ditch the Ladder, Discover Opportunity, Design Your Career by Hellen Tupper and Sarah Ellis
Good for…if you’re considering a new career
Squiggly careers have movement and flow between roles, locations and industries. If you know how to make the most of a ‘squiggly career’ they can be full of freedom and purpose. Career ladders and ‘jobs for life’ are a thing of the past according to this no.1 Sunday Times business best-seller, which was released in 2020, but it earns a place on this list because of its pertinence. The Squiggly Career is about navigating work in a way that suits you. Full of practical insights, it gives you the tools to thrive in your career – practical, logical, and based on tried and tested approaches. The book also offers wide ranging perspectives on the evolving nature of work, with inspiration from highly successful business leaders.
- No Bullsh*t Strategy: A Founder’s Guide to Gaining Competitive Advantage with a Strategy That Actually Works by Alex M H Smith
Good for…jargon-free, practical advice on implementing strategy
If you think that most strategy isn’t worth its salt, then this may be the strategy book for you. The premise with this book is that business strategy is confusing and destructive. Instead, it makes a case for clean, simple, bold, and useful concepts. It’s pushes away business jargon and academic theorising to offer you pure strategic ideas that can be practically implemented.
- Creating an LGBT+ Inclusive Workplace The Practical Resource Guide for Business Leaders by Kryss Shane
Good for…best-practise on inclusion and diversity in the workplace
This guide outlines the best practices and guidance for creating LGBT+ inclusive workplaces. It’s an approachable and easy to follow guide about how to create safer working environments and update company policies. It will also help your place of work enhance its continuing education and training, and ultimately, better-support LGBT+ individuals in the workplace.
- Career Forward: Strategies from Women Who’ve Made It by Christiana Smith Shi and Grace Puma
Good for…getting the most out of work and life
This book is written by former Nike President of Consumer Direct Christiana Smith Shi and former PepsiCo COO Grace Puma. The pair offer an innovative and empowering guide for women, covering how to prioritise your career path, build professional value and leadership identity and have a full life inside and outside of work. Full of personal anecdotes and wisdom from women who’ve been there and ‘got the t-shirt’.
Why not break up the working day at Adapt by grabbing one of these books and taking a trip to the onsite library? It’s the perfect space for those looking to truly unwind away from their screens.