Book of the Month

The Performance Paradox: by Eduardo Briceno

To succeed in a fast-changing world, individuals and companies know they must create a culture of growth, where experimentation and feedback are encouraged, and learning is integrated into the everyday. Yet we often get stuck in a well-worn pattern of habits that don’t move us forward. Why?

Because many of us get trapped in the Performance Paradox: the counterintuitive phenomenon that if we focus only on performing, our performance suffers.

How can we give ourselves the space to experiment and grow while also delivering high-level results?

Ten business books you should read in 2025:

Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It…and Why the Rest Don’t by Verne Harnish: Scaling Up has become the standard for scaling any for-purpose or for-profit organization, and focuses on the four major decisions every company must get right: People, Strategy, Execution and Cash.

Scaling up Compensation: 5 Design Principles for Turning Your Largest Expense into a Strategic Advantage by Verne Harnish: How you compensate people is one of the most important strategic decisions your company will make – but few “get it right and out of sight.” Nail it and you can add hundreds of percentage points to the bottom line while driving up the energy in the organization.

Strategy-in-Action – Marrying Planning, People and Performance by Thomas D. Zweifel and Edward J. Borey: In times of crisis, alignment on a shared strategy is even more crucial, and more elusive. Frustrated by organizational silos, fragmentation or resistance to change? The award-winning Strategy-In-Action shows how companies ended the long-standing divorce between planners and implementers.

The Ideal Team Player – How to Recognize and Cultivate The Three Essential Virtues by Patrick Lencioni: Lencioni presents a practical framework and actionable tools for identifying, hiring, and developing ideal team players.

Mindset – The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck: People with a fixed mindset—those who believe that abilities are fixed—are less likely to flourish than those with a growth mindset—those who believe that abilities can be developed.

Your Next Five Moves – Master the Art of Business Strategy by Patrick Bet-David: Both successful entrepreneurs and chess grandmasters have the vision to look at the pieces in front of them and anticipate their next five moves.

The One Thing – The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller: How singular focus accelerates results.

Multipliers – How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter by Liz Wiseman: On the other side of the spectrum are leaders who use their intelligence to amplify the smarts and capabilities of the people around them. When these leaders walk into a room, light bulbs go off over people’s heads; ideas flow and problems get solved.

The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership by Jeffrey Liker and Gary Convis: Learn how executives and senior managers get employees to refocus their efforts from simply performing their daily responsibilities to continuously improving in collaboration across the entire organization.

Principles – Life and Work by Ray Dalio: Principles offers a clear, straightforward approach to decision-making that Dalio believes anyone can apply, no matter what they’re seeking to achieve. The book describes hundreds of practical lessons, which are built around his cornerstones of “radical truth” and “radical transparency.”