In the ever-evolving landscape of accounting, staying ahead requires more than just mastering numbers. Elevate your career in 2024 with our selection of essential reads designed to empower beyond the balance sheet. In this selection, our team has chosen books from a wide range of subjects, covering everything from leadership skills to career advice to innovation. Read along to uncover the best 5 books to help boost your career.
1) Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Amazon Synopsis: Kahneman’s singularly influential work has transformed cognitive psychology and launched the new fields of behavioral economics and happiness studies. In this path-breaking book, Kahneman shows how the mind works, and offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and personal lives–and how we can guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble.
2) The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen and Marc Benioff
Amazon Synopsis: Christensen explains why most companies miss out on new waves of innovation. No matter the industry, he says, a successful company with established products will get pushed aside unless managers know how and when to abandon traditional business practices. Offering both successes and failures from leading companies as a guide, The Innovator’s Dilemmagives you a set of rules for capitalizing on the phenomenon of disruptive innovation.
3) Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People by Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald
Amazon Synopsis: “Blindspot” is the authors’ metaphor for the portion of the mind that houses hidden biases. Writing with simplicity and verve, Banaji and Greenwald question the extent to which our perceptions of social groups—without our awareness or conscious control—shape our likes and dislikes and our judgments about people’s character, abilities, and potential. The authors reveal hidden biases based on their experience with the Implicit Association Test, a method that has revolutionized the way scientists learn about the human mind and that gives us a glimpse into what lies within the metaphoric blindspot. Brilliant, authoritative, and utterly accessible, Blindspot is a book that will challenge and change readers for years to come.
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Amazon Synopsis: What would happen if a leadership expert were willing to distill everything he’s learned in his 30+ years of experience into a handful of life-changing principles just for you? It would change your life. The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership features insights learned from Maxwell’s 30-plus years of leadership successes and mistakes with observations from the worlds of business, politics, sports, religion, and military conflict. The result is a revealing study of leadership delivered as only a communicator like Maxwell can. Follow these laws of leadership and people will follow you.
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Amazon Synopsis: From a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity’s creation and evolution—a #1 international bestseller—that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be “human.” One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one—homo sapiens. What happened to the others? And what may happen to us? Dr. Harari also compels us to look ahead, because over the last few decades humans have begun to bend laws of natural selection that have governed life for the past four billion years. We are acquiring the ability to design not only the world around us, but also ourselves. Where is this leading us, and what do we want to become?