19 Best Books on Strategic Leadership

A strategic leader is essentially the leader of any organization and someone who has to steer the company in times of change, whilst motivating and inspiring their team.

Strategic Leadership from the renowned leadership expert John Adair encourages leaders to focus on tomorrow rather than yesterday. It explores the nature and origin of strategic leadership, transferable skills, and the art of inspiring others. It then describes the role itself and broad functions of that role such as building and maintaining a team, achieving a common task, and motivating and developing the individual. It moves on to assess the skills you need to be effective, and the seven generic functions that make up the role of a strategic leader which include providing direction, strategic thinking and planning, building partnerships, and developing tomorrow’s leaders.

Full of checklists, summaries, and historical examples, Strategic Leadership will encourage you to ask the right questions whilst defining the role and skills of a strategic leader.

In this perennial bestseller, embraced by organizations and industries worldwide, globally preeminent management thinkers W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne challenge everything you thought you knew about the requirements for strategic success. Recognized as one of the most iconic and impactful strategy books ever written, Blue Ocean Strategy, now updated with fresh content from the authors, argues that cutthroat competition results in nothing but a bloody red ocean of rivals fighting over a shrinking profit pool. Based on a study of 150 strategic moves (spanning more than 100 years across 30 industries), the authors argue that lasting success comes not from battling competitors but from creating “blue oceans” – untapped new market spaces ripe for growth.

Blue Ocean Strategy presents a systematic approach to making the competition irrelevant and outlines principles and tools any organization can use to create and capture its own blue oceans. This expanded edition includes a new preface by the authors: “Help! My Ocean Is Turning Red”; updates on all cases and examples in the book; and two new chapters and an expanded third one – “Alignment, Renewal, and Red Ocean Traps” – that address some of the most pressing questions listeners and readers have asked over the years.

Strategic Leadership addresses deep and continuing issues relating to strategy, governance, management, and leadership in higher education during a period of rapid change. Each of these themes is at the heart of current debates about the capacity of universities to respond to new expectations, market realities, reduced state funding, globalization, technology, and a long list of other challenges. Dealing with these issues can immobilize colleges and universities, or it can cause them to become so market-driven that they will sacrifice their own legacy of academic values. This book places strategic planning in a new conceptual framework that is oriented to interactive leadership rooted in human agency and values. It will assist academic professionals, stakeholders such as trustees, and students of higher education to better understand and use strategic planning as an effective process and as a method of collaborative leadership.

To be a strategic life leader means developing a vision and direction for one’s life, identifying personal core values, and fostering an informal team among colleagues and associates. Effective Strategic Leadership explains what makes a person successful as a leader, and is as useful for unstructured careers as it is in large companies or organizations.

This book integrates and assesses the vast and rapidly growing literature on strategic leadership, which is the study of top executives and their effects on organizations. The basic premise is that in order to understand why organizations do the things they do or perform the way they do, we
need to deeply comprehend the people at the top– their experiences, abilities, values, social connections, aspirations, and other human features. The actions–or inactions–of a relatively small number of key people at the apex of an organization can dramatically affect organizational outcomes.

The scope of strategic leadership includes individual executives, especially chief executive officers (CEOs), groups of executives (top management teams, or TMTs); and governing bodies (particularly boards of directors). Accordingly, the book addresses an array of topics regarding CEOs (e.g.,
values, personality, motives, demography, succession, and compensation); TMTs (including composition, processes, and dynamics); and boards of directors (why boards look and behave the way they do, and the consequences of board profiles and behaviors).

Strategic Leadership synthesizes what is known about strategic leadership and indicates new research directions. The book is meant primarily for scholars who strive to assess and understand the phenomena of strategic leadership. It offers a considerable foundation on which professionals involved in
executive search, compensation, appraisal, and staffing, as well as board members who evaluate executive performance and potential, might build their tools and perspectives.

Built to Last, the defining management study of the ’90s, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the very beginning.

But what about companies that are not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness? Are there those that convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? If so, what are the distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great?

Over five years, Jim Collins and his research team have analyzed the histories of 28 companies, discovering why some companies make the leap and others don’t. The findings include:

• Level 5 Leadership: A surprising style, required for greatness
• The Hedgehog Concept: Finding your three circles, to transcend the curse of competence
• A Culture of Discipline: The alchemy of great results
• Technology Accelerators: How good-to-great companies think differently about technology
• The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Why those who do frequent restructuring fail to make the leap

The 13 chapters of The Art of War, each devoted to one aspect of warfare, were compiled by the high-ranking Chinese military general, strategist, and philosopher Sun-Tzu. In spite of its battlefield specificity, The Art of War has found new life in the modern age, with leaders in fields as wide and far-reaching as world politics, human psychology, and corporate strategy finding valuable insight in its timeworn words.

Aidan Gillen – who has learned a thing or two about strategy through his roles as skilled manipulator Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish (Game of Thrones) and ambitious politician Tommy Carcetti (The Wire) – brilliantly performs this ancient classic. His experience in portraying insightful and, at times, cunning characters makes him a natural fit for this ancient collection of battlefield epigrams whose influence has grown tremendously in the modern world.

Leaders and managers face tremendous pressure to keep their organizations moving forward successfully. It can seem like an impossible task amid economic uncertainty and hyper-competition.

The roles of leader and manager tug us in opposite directions: managers seek stability and predictability, and leaders usually opt for turbulence and change. With so many companies asking their best employees to be both leaders and managers, it’s no wonder that so much of the business world is dysfunctional.

This guidebook explains how leader-managers work and how to succeed in both roles. You can learn how to

leverage competing requirements for leading and managing change;

formulate effective operational and developmental strategies;

make decisions that address complex challenges and opportunities; and

help people through the anxiety and trauma of change.

Whether you are a student seeking to understand the workplace, an employee rising up the ranks, or an active leader or manager, Strategic Leadership and Strategic Management provides you with tools and knowledge to help your organization succeed.

Think Like a General…Lead Like an Executive “At their center, great organizations such as America’s armed forces are the product of great leaders. This fantastic book reveals the keys to success within the military culture, as well as relevant and practical application tools for creating strong leaders today.”—Stephen R. Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness What distinguishes strategic leadership? According to top U.S. Army generals, the difference lies in the discipline of thinking. Because the problems strategic leaders face are often multi-faceted and can involve ethical dilemmas, these leaders must move beyond thinking tactically and take a longer-term, broader approach to find solutions. Through the U.S. Army War College and other senior-service colleges, the Army teaches strategic thinking to its officers, developing some of the most esteemed leaders of our time. Strategic Leadership: The General’s Art provides aspiring leaders with an understanding of the behavior and competencies that make a good strategic leader. In line with the curriculum followed by senior officers attending the U.S. Army War College, this book teaches leaders how to think strategically in a volatile, uncertain environment and thereby to provide transformational leadership and shape outcomes. With contributions from senior military leaders as well as experts in the fields of strategic leadership, systems, and critical thinking, and corporate culture, this invaluable reference shows readers how to move from mid-level manager to strategic-thinking senior executive. Strategic Leadership: The General’s Art provides aspiring leaders with an understanding of the behavior and competencies that make a good strategic leader. In line with the curriculum followed by senior officers attending the U.S. Army War College, this book teaches leaders how to think strategically in a volatile, uncertain environment and thereby to provide transformational leadership and shape outcomes. With contributions from senior military leaders as well as experts in the fields of strategic leadership, systems, and critical thinking, and corporate culture, this invaluable reference shows readers how to move from mid-level manager to strategic-thinking senior executive.

This book is about a new strategic leader – one who, inspired by General Systems Theory (GST), envisions an organization in which people and groups work together interdependently across organizational divides to reach a shared, rewarding future.  GST has dramatically influenced physics, biology, economics, healthcare, and environmental science, but has not as yet had any significant influence on the way companies work and are structured. This new, systems way of working promises a break from the influence of Sir Isaac Newton and René Descartes – thinking that has dominated worldviews for almost 400 years – and offers workers the opportunity to find greater purpose and meaning in their work.

This book is also about leadership that recognizes the potential of enhanced organizational performance that results from the movement of the organization as a system to a new desired destination. Engaging and empowering employees, the leader unleashes their unique talents and energy and uses the previously unrecognized power of strategy processes to bridge functional silos.

Offering the latest knowledge on strategic leadership, Strategic Leadership, and Systems Thinking will be of interest to researchers, academics, practitioners, and students in the fields of leadership and organizational studies.

The world’s most trusted guide for leaders in transition.

Transitions are a critical time for leaders. In fact, most agree that moving into a new role is the biggest challenge a manager will face. While transitions offer a chance to start fresh and make needed changes in an organization, they also place leaders in a position of acute vulnerability. Missteps made during the crucial first three months in a new role can jeopardize or even derail your success.

In this updated and expanded version of the international bestseller The First 90 Days, Michael D. Watkins offers proven strategies for conquering the challenges of transitions – no matter where you are in your career. Watkins, a noted expert on leadership transitions and adviser to senior leaders in all types of organizations, also addresses today’s increasingly demanding professional landscape, where managers face not only more frequent transitions but also steeper expectations once they step into their new jobs.

By walking you through every aspect of the transition scenario, Watkins identifies the most common pitfalls new leaders encounter and provides the tools and strategies you need to avoid them. You’ll learn how to secure critical early wins, an important first step in establishing yourself in your new role. Each chapter also includes checklists, practical tools, and self-assessments to help you assimilate key lessons and apply them to your own situation.

Whether you’re starting a new job, being promoted from within, embarking on an overseas assignment, or being tapped as CEO, how you manage your transition will determine whether you succeed or fail. Use this book as your trusted guide.

​Larry Bossidy is one of the world’s most acclaimed CEOs, with a track record for delivering results. Ram Charan is a legendary adviser to senior executives and boards of directors, a man with unparalleled insight into why some companies are successful and others are not. Together they’ve pooled their knowledge and experience into one guide on how to close the gap between results promised and results delivered.

The discipline of execution means understanding how to link together people, strategy, and operations, the three core processes of every business. Leading these processes is the real job of running a business, not formulating a “vision” and leaving the work of carrying it out to others. Bossidy and Charan show the importance of being deeply and passionately engaged in an organization and why robust dialogues about people, strategy, and operations result in a business based on intellectual honesty and realism.

The leader’s most important job – selecting and appraising people – is one that should never be delegated. As a CEO, Larry Bossidy personally makes the calls to check references for key hires. Why? With the right people in the right jobs, there’s a leadership gene pool that conceives and selects strategies that can be executed. People then work together to create a strategy building block by building block, a strategy in sync with the realities of the marketplace, the economy, and the competition. Once the right people and strategy are in place, they are then linked to an operating process that results in the implementation of specific programs and actions and that assigns accountability. This kind of effective operating process goes way beyond the typical budget exercise that looks into a rearview mirror to set its goals. It puts reality behind the numbers and is where the rubber meets the road.

In today’s organizations, it is no longer the CEO who acts as the sole strategic leader. From single individuals to larger teams and networks, leaders at all levels are infiltrating the formal organizational structure and making strategic leadership an increasingly complex endeavor. In Strategic Leadership for Turbulent Times, Kriger and Zhovtobryukh shrewdly describe the true experiences of what employees encounter as internal and external environments evolve, and how to uphold the personal and organizational values which affect both human and social capital. They examine how leadership strategies are used in real situations and highlight the importance of managerial wisdom for sustainable growth. Finally, they offer advice for strategic leaders on leading effectively in highly turbulent economic, social, technological, and multicultural times.

Nonprofit organizations need smart, informed managers. This comprehensive introductory textbook aims to expose students to the range of responsibilities expected from modern nonprofit organizations and their boards, executive management, frontline staff, and community volunteers. Section 1
focuses on the characteristics of a nonprofit organization, with an explanation of the specific attributes of both charitable and member-serving nonprofits. It considers the historical development of the nonprofit sector as a whole and of the human services subsector, in particular, culminating with
a review of the political and economic climate in which nonprofits operate. Section 2 considers theories of leadership. The multiple roles of the nonprofit professional leader are delineated, to recognize that the same person may serve as manager and administrator, motivated by different priorities
when functioning in each capacity. Ethical issues are also considered, along with the theoretical and practical aspects of decision-making, and the relationship between organizational culture and organizational change. Sections 3 and 4 address the specific skills of the nonprofit leader involved in
securing material resources and managing human resources, respectively. The book concludes with a focus on the role of volunteers and the need for organizations to provide them with good experiences if they want volunteers to keep coming back.

Featuring an extended case study, this book is a useful guide for students and professionals new to the workplace on topics such as successfully managing change, strengthening programs, nurturing a dynamic board of directors, diversifying revenues, and building a strong, committed staff and
volunteer corps.