It’s never been more important to “invest in your own skills,” which, as Warren Buffett suggests, is the best way to deal with chaos. With that in mind, here are my annual picks for the Top Eight Business Books of 2025. They’re organized around the 4 Decisions every company must get right to scale—People, Strategy, Execution and Cash—with bonus categories of Personal Health and Leadership. Among these, I consider Reset the number one business book of 2025. It’s so insightful I’ve also added it to my list of the Top 12 business books of all time.
People
The Power of Mattering by Zach Mercurio, Ph.D.
If you want to drive sustainable performance and greater productivity, you need to address what researcher Zach Mercurio calls the “mattering deficit” that plagues many companies. Employees feel more unseen and unheard than ever before—and future growth belongs to organizations that make them feel like important and valued members of the team, he says. In The Power of Mattering, Mercurio offers a clear blueprint for achieving that goal, no matter what other concerns you need to tackle.
(May 2025)
Strategy
Unlocking Innovation: A Leader’s Guide for Turning Bold Ideas into Tangible Results by Robyn Bolton
Looking to build a more valuable business? The key is mastering the innovation that makes you essential to your customers and drives pricing power. In Unlocking Innovation, Robyn Bolton, the founder and “chief navigator” of innovation consultancy Mile Zero, will show you how to put the right systems in place to support purposeful creativity, build an “innovation playground,” shed “zombie ideas” that are slowing you down and ultimately profit from smart risk-taking and experimentation.
(January 2025)
Execution
Reset: How to Change What’s Not Working by Dan Heath
It’s one thing to suggest that leaders focus on key constraints to growth in their systems and processes. Heath goes a step beyond that, offering concrete ways to identify what’s wrong and fix it, often in five days or less. That means gathering firsthand, on-the-ground data. Without it, he argues, you’ll waste time on “guess-a-thons,” meetings where leaders sit around basically making stuff up. Ultimately, by clearing a path for your team to make daily progress toward something meaningful—like pro athletes preparing for the biggest games of their lives—you’ll ensure they are happy, productive and engaged in fueling your company’s growth.
Cash
Like Clockwork: Run Your Business with Swiss Army Precision by Sam Goodner
The Holy Grail for many leaders is a business where performance and growth are predictable. That goal is usually elusive, but it doesn’t have to be, according to Sam Goodner, the serial entrepreneur behind the Inc. 500 company Catapult Systems, and a former member of the elite Swiss Mountain Grenadiers. In Like Clockwork, Goodner offers immediately actionable strategies for building a systems-driven organization that functions like, well, a Swiss watch, bringing much-needed certainty in a rapidly changing economy.
(September 2025)
Personal Health
Inner Sense: How the New Science of Interoception Can Transform Your Health by Caroline Williams
One of the biggest occupational hazards of leadership is self-neglect. As you focus on inspiring your team, it’s easy to ignore important signals like fatigue that can point to health problems or deliver powerful emotional insights. In Inner Sense, science journalist Caroline Williams explores interoception, the “sixth sense,” through which we tune into signals from our body, drawing on interviews with doctors, scientists and researchers. You’ll learn how to tap into “interoceptive awareness,” and transform both your physical and mental health.
(September 2025)
The Compass Within: A Little Story about the Values that Guide Us by Robert Glazer
Whether we are aware of it or not, we all have personal core values that act as an internal compass, shaping our behavior and guiding our judgment. In this Pat Lencioni-style parable, Glazer will help you understand how to use those values to guide you on the “big three” most important decisions of your life—your life partner or spouse, your vocation and your community—and, if you’ve fallen out of alignment, reconnect with what authentically matters to you. Read the introduction and then jump straight to Chapter 7 on “Life in Alignment” if you’re short of time.
(October 2025)
Leadership
Shatterproof: How to Thrive in a World of Constant Chaos (And Why Resilience Alone Isn’t Enough) by Tasha Eurich
Every day, we are surrounded by chaos. How can business leaders thrive despite this? Organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich offers insights from five years of research on how high achievers thrive in tough times. The answer isn’t just gratitude and self-care. It’s avoiding emotional burnout by harnessing the disorder around you to reinvent yourself and your organization. In Shatterproof, you’ll learn the precise process needed to develop the shatterproof mindset you need to function at your best.
(April 2025)
Distancing: How Great Leaders Reframe to Make Better Decisions by Retired Captain David L. Marquet
Making the right decisions requires perspective, but that can be hard to find. In Distancing, Retired Captain David L. Marquet shows how to apply techniques like turning to your imagined future self, envisioning yourself as someone else, and putting the situation into the second or third person. Marquet showed how to get your team to operate smarter in his bestseller Turn the Ship Around! His latest thinking will help you do the same as a leader.
(August 2025)
