THIS MONTH'S PAGE-TURNERS ON BUSINESS AND BEYOND

If you’re leaning toward playing it safe, think again. In this edition of Readers & Leaders, hear Ginni Rometty recount how she grew through uncertainty on the road to the IBM C-suite, heed Financial Times chief commentator Martin Wolf’s warning for the state of democratic capitalism, and more. Catch up on new conversations from Author Talks, plus this month’s top bestselling business books, prepared exclusively for McKinsey by Circana. Itching for more? Preorder Power to the Middle: Why Managers Hold the Keys to the Future of Work by McKinsey partners Emily Field and Bryan Hancock and senior partner Bill Schaninger.

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IT BEARS REPEATING

“My growth and comfort [could] never coexist. I think if you shut your eyes and think about when you learned the most in life, it’ll be at times when you were in risky or uncertain situations. That crystallization made it much easier for me to take on risky changes in different jobs that were really difficult. I realized that when I put myself in those circumstances, even though it didn’t feel right on the inside, I learned a lot … It’s okay to be uncomfortable on the inside.”

— Former IBM chairman and CEO Ginni Rometty in a recent edition of Author Talks.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Leadership coach Sally Helgesen shares specific techniques for building an inclusive culture: “This is very important. A way of demonstrating inclusion is, when an unfamiliar name crops up, ask the person, and ask them once, ‘How do you pronounce your name?’ Write it down, rehearse it if necessary, and then don’t get it wrong. It’s very important communication behavior that can be really helpful.” Watch the full interview.

Business psychologist Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is asking you to break routine: “If we think of humanity as the model that algorithms and artificial intelligence try to imitate, we’ve diluted ourselves to create a model of humanity that is too simple. Artificial intelligence has already managed to do most of the things we do…. That is the ask at the end of the book: to reclaim our humanity and find ways to be more than what AI thinks we are and more than what the algorithms can predict in our everyday life.” Watch the full interview.

The Financial Times’s Martin Wolf details a plan for rescuing democratic capitalism from crisis: “If you think about what we need to do to make democratic capitalism work better…. The aims are to restore growth as best as we can, and for that growth to be reasonably broad in terms of its impact. It needs to generate opportunities for most people. It needs to protect people through the most extreme vicissitudes of life.” Watch the full interview.

LOOKING AHEAD

BUSINESS BESTSELLERS TOP

Step into spring with a good book in hand. Find your next entertaining and enlightening read on this month’s list of business bestsellers in eight categories, prepared exclusively for McKinsey by Circana. Explore the full selection on McKinsey on Books.

BUSINESS OVERALL

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way To Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear (Penguin Group USA)

BUSINESS HARDCOVER

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way To Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear (Penguin Group USA)

DECISION MAKING

How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors That Determine the Fate of Every Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration and Everything in Between by Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner (Random House)

ECONOMICS

The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism by Martin Wolf (Penguin Group USA)

ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way To Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear (Penguin Group USA)

WORKPLACE CULTURE

Deliberate Calm: How to Learn and Lead in a Volatile World by Jacqueline Brassey, Aaron De Smet & Michiel Kruyt (HarperCollins Publishers)

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson (Random House)

SUSTAINABILITY

Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take by Paul Polman and Andrew Winston (Two Rivers Distribution)

If you’d like to propose a book or author for #McKAuthorTalks, please email us at Author_Talks@McKinsey.com. Due to the high volume of requests, we will respond only to those being considered.

—Curated by Molly Liebergall, editor, New York

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