Book of the Month

Lean Culture for the Construction Industry, Building Responsible and Committed Project Teams: by Gary Santorella

Lean tools alone don’t lead to successful Lean initiatives: the missing piece is culture. Written by a veteran consultant in the construction field, the book draws a connection between how construction professionals act as leaders and how their attitude and behavior affect productivity and waste daily. While value stream mapping is an important tool for righting broken processes and resolving conflicts, future state maps will fail if leaders continue to work in silos, protect their territories, and don’t see that their success is directly tied to the success of their co-leaders.

Ten business books you should read in 2026:

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.

Think Again – The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know by Adam Grant: Intelligence is usually seen as the ability to think and learn, but in a rapidly changing world, there’s another set of cognitive skills that might matter more: the ability to rethink and unlearn.

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.”