THIS MONTH'S PAGE-TURNERS ON BUSINESS AND BEYOND

Whether you’re leading a several-thousand-person company, tucking your children into bed at night, or managing both, this edition of Readers & Leaders—McKinsey’s monthly newsletter on the books business leaders are reading—is for you. As the first month of the new year winds down, we look at how a cartoonist brought his children’s bedtime story to life, the best leadership insights gleaned from the world’s top CEOs, and the month’s bestselling business books, prepared exclusively for McKinsey by NPD BookScan. Itching for more good reads? Check out McKinsey on Books for the latest, and to get Readers & Leaders in your inbox monthly, be sure to click here to subscribe.

AUTHOR TALKS

Return to whimsy. In a recent edition of Author Talks, we revisit our inner child with Tom Gauld, a comic artist who contributes to New Scientist, the Guardian, and the New Yorker. The Little Wooden Robot and the Log Princess (Neal Porter Books, August 2021), is based on a bedtime story that Gauld made up for his daughters and marks his first foray into children’s books. The writer and illustrator of your child’s next favorite fairytale reflects on what compelled him to test the waters in a new genre and how he adapted his approach to appeal to an entirely different audience.

“I knew that a children’s story couldn’t be as dry and maybe as subtle in the same ways as my adult cartoons. And the humor would have to be a different type of humor, which could be enjoyed by a small child as well as an adult. I had to find a way to warm up some of the coolness that is in my adult cartooning, without feeling like I’d poured a bucket of icing sugar over the top of it and without it becoming something saccharine and losing some of the charm that I hope is in my adult work.” Watch the full interview.

IT BEARS REPEATING

“I worry [the CEO’s role has] become a superhuman job. There’s so much in that one role to both internal, external, present, future—they’re wearing all these lenses. I think the need to be able to think through a whole system view and galvanize a whole group around you to get this job done is only going to be more important going forward. How can you spin all these plates? It’s going to take a village, and it’s a village that’s led by the CEO.”

—Carolyn Dewar, McKinsey senior partner and co-author of CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best Leaders from the Rest (Scribner, March 2022), in Author Talks: What separates the best CEOs from the rest?

BUSINESS BESTSELLERS TOP

Struggling to keep up with your new year’s resolutions? Bought a gym membership you haven’t used yet? No judgement here. Bettering ourselves is hard, and so are dumbbells, but you don’t need to break a sweat to strengthen your brain. Escape the end-of-January slump and learn something new with this month’s top business bestsellers in eight categories, prepared exclusively for McKinsey by NPD BookScan, and explore the full lists on McKinsey on Books.

BUSINESS OVERALL

Twelve and a Half: Leveraging the Emotional Ingredients Necessary for Business Success by Gary Vaynerchuk (HarperCollins Publishers)

BUSINESS HARDCOVER

Twelve and a Half: Leveraging the Emotional Ingredients Necessary for Business Success by Gary Vaynerchuk (HarperCollins Publishers)

DECISION MAKING

How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be by Katy Milkman (Penguin Group USA)

ECONOMICS

Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy by Thomas Sowell (Hachette Book Group)

ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR

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

WORKPLACE CULTURE

Who Moved My Cheese?: An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life by Spencer Johnson (Penguin Group USA)

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION

Caste (Oprah's Book Club): 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 (Harvard Business Review Press)

WORD OF THE MONTH

Povism (noun; POVE-ism): The frustration of being stuck inside your own head, unable to see your face or read your body language in context, only ever guessing how you might be coming across, which makes you think of yourself as a detached observer squinting out at a lushly painted landscape. But everyone else you’ve seen is woven right into the canvas. “Povism” is from point of view and ism. —From John Koenig’s The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows (Simon and Schuster, November 2021), as featured in Author Talks: The made-up words that make our world

BOOKMARK THIS

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

—Edited by Molly Liebergall, a digital editor in McKinsey’s New York office

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