Reading List

The Leadership Reading List

We don't write everything worth reading. This is where we collect the best leadership and business writing from other publications and blogs, so you don't have to go looking for it.

Lenny's Newsletter · 1 Aug 2026

🧠 Community Wisdom: Getting started with open source models, making a U.S. business trip worth it, preparing for a possible layoff, when marketing can’t keep up with product, and more

A curated collection of practical advice on multiple professional topics, including guidance on getting started with open source machine learning models, strategies for maximizing the value of U.S. business travel, steps to prepare for potential job loss, and insights on the challenges that arise when product development outpaces marketing capabilities.

Leadership Now · 1 Aug 2026

First Look: Leadership Books for August 2026

HERE'S A LOOK at some of the best leadership books to be released in August 2026 curated just for you. Be sure to check out the other great titles being offered this month. Practice Makes Culture: How Welcoming Elephants, Creating Ownership, and Facilitating Daily Practice Transform Organizations by Christine Hudson and Ronica Roth After decades of organizational transformation efforts, the failur

Seth Godin · 1 Aug 2026

“Welcome back”

What if they meant it? What if your return felt special to the people behind the counter? What if they knew, without looking it up, or being told–what if they knew that you were here, again, a vote of trust and confidence. Returning home is one of the oldest human desires. It’s a feeling that […]

Knowledge at Wharton · 31 Jul 2026

Oil, AI, and the Fed: What’s Next for Markets?

Jeremy Siegel, Wharton emeritus professor of finance, examines interest rates, energy markets, AI spending, tariffs, and the economic forces shaping investor outlook. … Read More

Leadership Now · 31 Jul 2026

LeadershipNow 140: July 2026 Compilation

Here is a selection of Posts from July 2026 that you will want to check out: Organizational Complacency Statistics: USA 2026 by @Mark_Sanborn It turns out, resistance to your change initiative is (mostly) a good sign by @artpetty Has AI Already Killed How-To Nonfiction? Sales Trends, My Personal Data, and What It Might Mean for the Future by @tferriss The market for transformation—for sitting with

Seth Godin · 31 Jul 2026

“That doesn’t work”

We transferred an idea from engineering to culture, but it’s incomplete. If you build a watch that doesn’t tell time, it’s fair to say it doesn’t work. But when a critic says, “that joke didn’t work,” after seeing a comic perform to a raucous audience, what they probably mean is, “that didn’t work for me.” […]

Knowledge at Wharton · 30 Jul 2026

Marketing Baby Tech to Modern Parents

Krista Weaver, vice president and head of marketing at Owlet Baby Care, discusses how data, design, and parent feedback can make baby monitoring more reassuring and useful. … Read More

Leadership Now · 30 Jul 2026

Leading Thoughts for July 30, 2026

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with: I. Chris Hodges on growth: “Growth is rarely impressive in the moment. Most days it looks ordinary. Quiet. Unnoticed. It’s choosing to learn when it would be easier to coast. Choosing to reflect when reacting feels faster. Choosing to stretch when settling fe

MIT Sloan Management Review · 30 Jul 2026

How a Healthy Work Culture Help s Trauma Survivors

Donna Grethen/Ikon Images Over the past few decades, there has been burgeoning interest in how leaders and organizations can support employees in the aftermath of traumatic events.1 But there is another pervasive and often hidden source of trauma that originates well before individuals enter the workforce. Childhood adversity, referred to as adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), […]

Farnam Street · 30 Jul 2026

The Mindset Behind Building a Great Little Business | Brad Jacobs

This summer, I’m revisiting one of my favorite episodes. If you haven’t heard it, now is the time. If you have, it’s a classic and worth listening to again. Brad Jacobs has built eight billion-dollar companies, completed more than 500 acquisitions, and created extraordinary returns for shareholders over four decades. Few people understand how great … The post The Mindset Behind Building a Great Li

Seth Godin · 30 Jul 2026

Organizations that need you

“How few people can we get away with?” That’s a question many bosses think hard about. Automate. Streamline. Improve productivity and take humans out of as many tasks as possible. It’s a time-tested way to create profits and to increase a certain kind of reliability. Claude Code is popular with many organizations for precisely this […]

Knowledge at Wharton · 29 Jul 2026

Can the Sixers’ New Superteam Work?

Dean Oliver analyzes Philadelphia’s star-heavy roster, player fit, chemistry, defense, and championship potential. … Read More

Knowledge at Wharton · 29 Jul 2026

Why Prediction Markets Are More Than a Passing Trend

Wharton professor Abraham Wyner explains how prediction markets work, why they are growing, and how they differ from traditional sports betting. … Read More

MIT Sloan Management Review · 29 Jul 2026

The Link Between Explicit AI-Generated Images and Offline Crime

Dung Hoang/theispot.com The online revolution enabled frictionless access to virtually every type of content — including adult content. Generative AI has added a whole new, and potentially more dangerous, dimension to the boom in explicit content. In the absence of strong safeguards, AI users can transition from consumers to creators of their own explicit media […]

Seth Godin · 29 Jul 2026

Eager to give up agency

We work so hard to have freedom and leverage and choice. And then, as soon as a social network, boss or cultural force instructs us to do something, we fold our tents and go along. Responsibility is scary. Sometimes it’s easier to find someone (or something) to blame. Just because AI tells you to put […]

Lenny's Newsletter · 28 Jul 2026

11 products I love, free for a year—the biggest Product Pass expansion in 2 years

Runway, Higgsfield, Waking Up, Brain.fm, Customer.io, Resend, Pangram, Mercury Personal, Supercut, Readwise, and Jam are joining Product Pass today, all included with Annual and Insider memberships

Knowledge at Wharton · 28 Jul 2026

Transforming Health Care Logistics With Low-Cost AI

By forecasting demand and correcting for missing data, researchers from Wharton and Penn Engineering developed a low-cost AI tool that helps get life-saving medicines to the communities in Sierra Leone that need them most. … Read More

Knowledge at Wharton · 28 Jul 2026

Can an Acquisition Buy a Company a Second Chance?

New Wharton research suggests acquisitions can help companies repair damaged stakeholder relationships and defuse long-running conflicts. … Read More

Seth Godin · 28 Jul 2026

The smush

When new creation technologies arrive, they make the best a little worse and the bad a lot better. Desktop publishing made every local garage sale sign a lot more legible, but can’t quite replace the hand-kerned and tweaked typography of the era before. A smartphone in your pocket takes far better video of the family […]

Leadership Now · 28 Jul 2026

You Can Just Do Things

PERSONAL agency is the ability to see choices and the belief in your ability to act on them. Agentic people take ownership of their own lives. You Can Just Do Things author Cate Hall believes that personal agency is learnable. And while agency may not matter on an average day, “agency really matters when you’re faced with an opportunity that could change your life completely. A little moment when