From the library
Reading Paths
A library is a list; a path is an argument. Each route below takes books from the library in an order chosen so that each one prepares the next, with a question to carry through and what to read each book for.
- How to Judge a Decision How can anyone tell a good decision from a lucky one, and become better at making them?
- Strategy Is Choosing What is strategy, as distinct from planning, ambition or hard work, and how do companies find and keep an advantage?
- The Limits of Control Why do plans fail in complex systems, and what can people who run organisations and products do about it?
- What Our Tools Do to Us How do technologies shape the people who use them, and what do the people who build them owe those users?
- Building the Thing That Builds How do you build an organisation that makes good products and good decisions, again and again?
- The Inner Life of the One Who Decides What kind of person decides well under uncertainty, pressure and loss, and how is such a person formed?
- Decisions Under Pressure, from History What do the great decisions and failures of history teach about judgement, power and uncertainty?
- Why People Buy What actually moves a person to choose one product over another, and how much of it do they know?
- The Craft of Corporate Strategy How do large companies decide where to compete, how to organise and where to put their capital, and how can anyone tell whether they chose well?
- The Science of Deciding What has fifty years of research actually established about how to make decisions under uncertainty?
- How Organisations Fail Why do groups of capable, well-meaning people make decisions that none of them would make alone, and how can organisations learn instead of repeating them?
- The Philosophy of Technology Are technologies neutral tools, or do they carry values and reshape the people who use them?
- Negotiation, Power and Persuasion How do people get agreement when interests conflict, and what separates influence from manipulation?
- Markets, Firms and Institutions Why do markets work when they do, why do firms exist at all, and what rules let people cooperate at scale?
- Ethics for People Who Decide What does it mean to decide well, not only effectively but rightly, when your choices affect people who have no say in them?
- Why We Believe What We Believe How much of what we think we know about ourselves is true, and why do intelligent people hold on to beliefs that evidence contradicts?