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Essential Reading - Our Top Picks for May

Each month, our Moore Stephens L&D team brings you its top picks for essential reading. This month, we look at two great books about doing things – one about how to approach decision- making and one about unconventional CEOs and their approaches to leadership.

“Thinking, Fast and Slow” (Daniel Kahneman)

“Thinking, Fast and Slow” will transform the way you think about thinking. Nobel Prize-winning Kahneman offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives, and and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble.  This book is highly recommended if you are interested in why human beings behave the way they do and it will definitely give you many ‘aha’ moments!

“The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success” (William N. Thorndike)

This refreshing, counterintuitive book details the extraordinary success of eight individualistic and successful CEOs, who took radically different approaches to corporate management. This led to their firms’ average returns outperforming the S&P 500 by a factor of twenty. 

Humble, unassuming and often frugal, these ‘outsiders’ shunned Wall Street and the press, and shied away from the hottest new management trends. Instead, they shared specific traits that put them (and the companies they led) on winning trajectories: a laser-sharp focus on per share value (as opposed to earnings or sales growth), an exceptional talent for allocating capital and human resources, and the belief that cash flow (not reported earnings) determines a company’s long-term value.  It is a great read for any business leader, but especially for those willing to chart their own course.

Happy reading!