Recommendations you can check.
Strategy writer and Professor Emeritus at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, where he was Dean from 1998 to 2013; co-author with A.G. Lafley of Playing to Win.
11 things
Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, PracticesBook Peter Drucker
Unlike the revision I had started to read, the original is flat-out brilliant, packed full of absolute wisdom across its 800+ pages. On utility, it is an A+!
Playing to Win/Practitioner Insights piece assessing a popular strategy book against Playing to Win
2025-03-10·rogerlmartin.substack.com ↗
Competitive StrategyBook Michael Porter
This course taught the chapters of his Competitive Strategy book that was being released to the public at the same time I was being taught the course. That book broke new ground and fundamentally changed a field.
Playing to Win/Practitioner Insights piece assessing a popular strategy book against Playing to Win
2024-04-22·rogerlmartin.substack.com ↗
The Checklist ManifestoBook Atul Gawande
A consequential impact on my thinking was The Checklist Manifesto, the 2009 best-seller by Atul Gawande.
Playing to Win/Practitioner Insights piece assessing a popular strategy book against Playing to Win
2023-07-03·rogerlmartin.substack.com ↗
Business Model GenerationBook Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur
In rereading BMG for this article, I was impressed with how modern it felt. It is 13 years old, and I would argue that it has held up well.
Playing to Win/Practitioner Insights piece assessing a popular strategy book against Playing to Win
2023-05-29·rogerlmartin.substack.com ↗
How Brands GrowBook Byron Sharp
Do I love it all? No, I never love everything in a book. But I liked most of it.
Playing to Win/Practitioner Insights piece assessing a popular strategy book against Playing to Win
2023-07-31·rogerlmartin.substack.com ↗
The Mystery of CapitalBook Hernando de Soto
I think of it as one of the handful of books written in the 21st century that I find most valuable to my thinking and work (along with The Mystery of Capital, (Growth) Mindset, Thinking Fast and Slow, The Good Jobs Strategy, and Grit
Playing to Win/Practitioner Insights piece assessing a popular strategy book against Playing to Win
2023-07-31·rogerlmartin.substack.com ↗
The Good Jobs StrategyBook Zeynep Ton
I think of it as one of the handful of books written in the 21st century that I find most valuable to my thinking and work (along with The Mystery of Capital, (Growth) Mindset, Thinking Fast and Slow, The Good Jobs Strategy, and Grit
Playing to Win/Practitioner Insights piece assessing a popular strategy book against Playing to Win
2023-07-31·rogerlmartin.substack.com ↗
Thinking, Fast and SlowBook Daniel Kahneman
I think of it as one of the handful of books written in the 21st century that I find most valuable to my thinking and work (along with The Mystery of Capital, (Growth) Mindset, Thinking Fast and Slow, The Good Jobs Strategy, and Grit
Playing to Win/Practitioner Insights piece assessing a popular strategy book against Playing to Win
2023-07-31·rogerlmartin.substack.com ↗
The Crux: How Leaders Become StrategistsBook Richard Rumelt
My response to him was that the book was all right-minded, but contained nothing of consequence that I hadn’t written about before.
Playing to Win/Practitioner Insights piece assessing a popular strategy book against Playing to Win
2024-04-08·rogerlmartin.substack.com ↗
The GoalBook Eliyahu M. Goldratt & Jeff Cox
The bad news is that at the time of the writing of the book — and more so now, 40 years later — there was absolutely nothing new in these two conceptual insights.
Playing to Win/Practitioner Insights piece assessing a popular strategy book against Playing to Win
2024-04-22·rogerlmartin.substack.com ↗
Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things DoneBook Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan
The 2002 best-seller Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan ticks all five boxes and is my least favorite of all time.
Playing to Win/Practitioner Insights piece: his least favorite business book of all time
2022-10-24·rogerlmartin.substack.com ↗
Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.
The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.
A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.
The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.
The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.
What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The shading is gone after about:
Stripes mean the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no shading.