The Best Leadership & Strategy Books of 2024

60 Minutes was on television one night while I was visiting my in-laws over the holidays. The episode featured stories about two leaders: One well-known, Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States who had died age 100 that week; and another, perhaps less well-known to the audience, Jensen Huang, cofounder and CEO of the technology firm, Nvidia. I watched as Huang came on stage in front of 11,000 people who had gathered to hear about the company’s new semiconductor chip and the future of AI, wearing an all-black outfit and casual footwear similar to what Steve Jobs wore when he took the stage and announced the first iPhone in 2007. And while I had little detailed knowledge of Huang’s leadership skills, I thought to myself: why has this image—a man in black standing on a stage presenting to thousands a new technology become an icon of what we think of when we think about what a leader is? 

At the end of the hour, 60 Minutes also ran a short tribute to Jimmy Carter, who, since he lost his run for reelection in 1980 had, the show explained, “lived a life of service and example,” including winning the Noble Peace Prize in 2002. The image many of us have in our minds when we think of Carter isn’t of him sitting in the oval office, in suit and tie, but of him wearing a red kerchief around his neck and holding a hammer in his hand as he built houses with Habitat for Humanity. And over the years, despite the critique of his past administration, many have said Carter exemplifies what ‘real’ leadership is. 

Both Carter and Huang were and are, respectively, leaders who have had to perform under immense pressure, scrutiny, and profile. There is a lot on the line when you are leading the United States, and when you are leading a 3.61 trillion-dollar company. They both have been required to make decisions that would change history whether about Middle East Peace or about Artificial Intelligence. It is often Presidents and CEOs that we think of when we think about leadership. On stage in hip black dress casuals addressing investors or pen in hand in the Oval Office signing legislature or even lending a hand, and the weight of your former office, to the efforts of a non-profit to help people who need both. 

For weeks, I had been chewing over the approach that I wanted to take in writing up this list of the top leadership and strategy books of 2024, and after watching this episode of 60 Minutes, I had my answer: while Carter and Huang are models of leadership, models of the kind we are most familiar with, they are exceptions, not representative of what, or who, leaders most commonly are. In every company, large and small, every school, every nonprofit, every restaurant, every start up, every church, at every age and every level and every gender, there are leaders who may not be in the news or on a stage but are no less important to the one or five or twenty-five people they lead every day. 

I realized that each of the top five leadership and strategy books for 2024 spoke to and respected a different type of leader: leaders who are following their passion and creating a business from the ground up, young people who are looking to develop good leadership habits and strengthen their leadership muscles, managers whose mission it is to lead people and yet have found themselves exhausted by the ever-growing demands of doing just that, C-suite leaders who must understand that their company isn’t an isolated entity but part of the greater sphere of society and community, and leaders who know they need to change the status quo but aren’t sure how to make change happen.  

Burnt Out to Lit Up: How to Reignite the Joy of Leading People by Daisy Auger-Domínguez, Wiley 

Auger-Dominquez has been an executive with Disney, Google, and Vice Media, so she knows that leading people requires energy and enthusiasm. And yet, keeping up that level of engagement over years can lead to burnout. “Management is more than a role, it's a calling. It's a practice that invites us to embrace compassion, expansive thinking, and courage even when faced with limitations and resistance.” Burnout not only is a very serious threat to the mental health of the person experiencing it, but it is also a serious threat to the future health of the team or the company she leads. For leaders whose mission it is to lead people, the solution to burnout isn’t about pulling back or isolating yourself, it’s about relocating what made them passionate about leading in the first place. “Identifying those elements of leadership that light us up is the practice that calls us over and over again. [Auger-Dominquez's] approach shifts our focus from merely recovering from burnout to reigniting the joy of leading people.” Burnt Out to Lit Up offers strategies to help you declutter your work life by changing how you work with your team and with your boss, but also by helping you rethink the habits that have contributed to your success but also contributed to your exhaustion.  

Higher Ground: How Business Can Do the Right Thing in a Turbulent World by Alison Taylor, Harvard Business Review Press  

Higher Ground reminds us (to liberally and perhaps poorly adapt John Donne’s famous lines) that ‘no company is an island, entire of itself, every company is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.’ And because of this, leaders must understand that the decisions made for the good of the company must also be made for the good of the people and of broader society. And doing so is ever more complicated as the “once-reliable demarcations between internal and external issues have blurred.” Alison Taylor, a clinical professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business and executive director at Ethical Systems that focuses on building more ethical organizational cultures, shows us that “a company can neither separate from society nor solve every societal challenge it encounters.” Is it easier to believe that your leadership decisions can be and are contained within the walls of your office building or within your operating system? Certainly, but we have Taylor to help us navigate the challenges that come as you “exercise practical curiosity over your impacts on the world, muster your energy, respect your inherent limitations, and then help the vital systems you rely on to function better” in order to build a better, more ethical business. 

The Mac and Cheese Millionaire: Building a Better Business by Thinking Outside the Box by Erin Wade, Wiley  

The Mac and Cheese Millionaire is a jaunty read perfect for entrepreneurs who are starting a business powered by a hefty dose of passion and faith, but who will also need learn some tough lessons about leadership as they grow that business. Just as Wade did. Her years working in kitchens taught her what kind of leader she didn’t want to be, but running a restaurant taught her the kind of leader she needed to be. The Mac and Cheese Millionaire includes elements of memoir as Wade opens each chapter with a vignette from her life outside of her work to better provide us with an understanding of who she is as a person, not just as a restauranteur. This is significant because who she is is integral to who she became as a leader, and that’s true for all of us. But the tricky bit, Wade reveals, is that we also must be the kind of leader the people we lead need us to be. “I couldn't have articulated it at the time, but I have come to understand that part of the secret sauce of building a great organization is a dedication to connection on all levels. Plenty of companies are famous for their connection to the customer, but far fewer take similar care with building deep connections with their employees or community or even creating workplaces where people can really connect with themselves....” Wade opened her restaurant armed only with a homespun recipe for mac-and-cheese that she believed was better than any other, particularly the one we associate with a blue box, and the desire to do something she loved rather than do something she was obligated to do. She wanted to create a non-traditional way to live and to lead. But along the way, she learned to embrace her role and identity as business owner and CEO—and yes, millionaire—but never lost touch with her goal to "love my work, and ... create a place where other people did, too."Reading this book will help you align who you are with the leader you wish to be while also being an effective leader your people and your company needs. “In focusing only on the connections we can readily monetize, we miss all the other connections that matter in creating something more fulfilling and, I believe, ultimately more sustainably compelling.” 

Modern Achievement: A New Approach to Timeless Lessons for Aspiring Leaders by Asheesh Advani & Marshall Goldsmith, Amplify Publishing  

I've been reading business books for 25 years. I also helped write three editions of The 100 Best Business Books of All Time. So, what initially drew me to Modern Achievement was the authors’ conceit of taking classic business lessons that we often read in classic business books and making them relevant to a new generation of young leaders. “The classic achievement writers of the past wrote for a world that was more centralized, static and hierarchical, and less global, dynamic and diverse by every measure. Thus, defining personal achievement and success based purely on long term goal attainment felt outdated....” Perhaps most intriguingly, co-author Marshall Goldsmith is well-known for writing some of those classic business books, such as What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, and he has been coaching leaders for decades. So, I wondered how he, in partnering with Ashish Advani, the CEO or JA (Junior Achievement) Worldwide would redefine leadership for a modern era. Together they present a framework they call Fixed, Flexible and Freestyle which allows for “nonlinear approaches to success and rewards, and celebrates the tasks and processes associated with goals, not just the goals themselves.” This book is an essential primer that I would enthusiastically recommend to any young leader or really any person of any age who understands that they must cultivate the ability to adapt. Advani and Marshall understand that the business world is going to keep changing, and the people who aspire to lead can be better prepared to roll with those changes by reading and then keeping Modern Achievement at the ready for when the next wave of changes rolls in. 

This is Strategy: Make Better Plans by Seth Godin, Authors Equity 

If there is anything Seth Godin is known for (and he is indeed well-known), it’s getting sh*t done. Or in his more elegant words, shipping things. He is a prolific maker of things and he has spent much of his career encouraging us to make things, including a ruckus. And to not only make things, but get them out into the world, sometimes even before you are ready. Because “[t]he world is shifting, faster than ever, creating opportunities and problems every day." In each of his 21 bestsellers and in every post on his daily blog, which is followed by millions of readers, Godin doesn’t provide us with a methodology, with metrics, with a handy acronym, worksheet or even a road map, instead he encourages us to think, and in this new book, he wants us to think about strategy, in the macro sense, to think about Time, Games, Empathy and Systems, so that we better understand the essential components of strategy. “A strategy isn't a map, it's a compass. Strategy is a better plan. It's the hard work of choosing what to do today to make tomorrow better. This is the point. This is at the heart of our work and the challenge of our days toward better.” This book will prepare the new leader for the challenge to come, help the in-the-trenches leader find a way out, and the burnt-out leader find inspiration to take up the helm with vigor once again. Because, as Godin says, “Strategy is a philosophy of becoming. ... You've always had what you needed to make a difference, but now you can see the systems, understand the games, and ask the questions to turn your project into work with impact.” Once again, Seth Godin is doing what he is also well-known for, helping us get important sh*t done.

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Porchlight will announce the eight winners of the 2024 Porchlight Business Book Awards–one from each category–at the end of January. Be one of the first to know by subscribing to our weekly newsletter.