It’s hard to believe this is my fourth annual reading list in corporate responsibility and sustainability. My life has changed so much since I started this list in 2018. I wrote it then as a department leader in corporate responsibility. In 2019, I wrote it during a time of exploration in my own career. And in 2020, I wrote the list during my first year as a consultant working with companies of all shapes and sizes in this field. My experience as a consultant these last couple of years has shaped this year’s list immeasurably. The books I’m drawn to today aren’t about big companies or traditional sustainability and CSR. This year’s list is about strategy and foresight and the plight we all embrace to make the world of business better, more ethical, and more responsible.

So here we go. These are my most highly recommended books – your corporate responsibility and sustainability list for 2021.

  1. Stacey Abrams has been in the news recently perhaps even more than she was while running for Georgia governor in 2018. Stacey has become one of the most well-respected political organizers in modern history. She’s written multiple books (including 8 romance novels under the pen name Selena Montgomery which just makes her even more badass in my opinion), but the one I’m recommending you read today is Lead from the Outside: How to Build Your Future and Make Real Change. This book is a veritable “how to” for anyone who is trying to change a system that seems too big or too difficult to go up against. Anyone who has ever worked with a big corporation knows how hard that can be. Stacey calls her book “the outsider’s version of the Art of War.” My favorite chapter is “Hacking and Owning Opportunity” where Stacey talks about how to “hack” a system we can’t influence in traditional ways. She says “figure out its flaws, identify backdoors and overwhelm the system.” I can’t wait to read her next book due out in May 2021.
  2. Anyone in CSR/sustainability knows we can’t do our jobs unless the leaders outside our departments also embrace the concepts of ESG and social impact. Because we don’t succeed unless everyone “gets it.” Gone are the days of the CSR department being the moral compass of the company. We need every leader to take on their role in this work. The two women behind this next book agree. Christen Brandt and Tammy Tibbetts published Impact: A Step-by-Step Plan to Create the World You Want to Live In in November 2020 and it’s truly a workbook for anyone who wants to reevaluate the impact they make in the world personally. But leaders in CSR/ESG should also consider how we often work so hard on our companies’ priorities, we forget to take the step back to remember what kind of impact we want to have personally. January is the perfect time of year to go through the steps in Christen and Tammy’s book and set your intentions and goals for 2021. (Oh, and PS – Tammy is our first 2021 guest on Table Stakes Podcast that also published today, so listen in to that recording on the Table Stakes website or anywhere you listen to podcasts.)
  3. Over the years Chip and Dan Heath have been staples on this list and Dan’s 2020 book is no different in its ability to inspire and make you think. Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen is exactly as the title says – a call to leaders in business and society to think about how to solve the root of key issues before they come back to bite us. There’s an old saying in CSR/ESG, “Nobody gets rewarded for what didn’t happen.” The people whose jobs prevent disaster are unsung heroes. But we need more people to think with this mindset. We need more preparation, more systems thinking, more harm avoidance. Upstream teaches us how to operationalize these concepts, deliberately realigning our cultures to predict and manage rather than react and put out fires.
  4. I’m going to admit up front that the next book was a tough read, but so worth it. Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds quite literally hurt my brain. The concepts in it are revolutionary and necessary and we should be ready for this kind of change in the realm of how we think about business strategy. Adrienne Maree Brown is a revolutionary thinker, spurred by revolutionary thinkers. This quote goes to the heart of the book: “Humans are unique because we compete when it isn’t necessary. We could reason our way to more sustainable processes, but we use our intelligence to outsmart each other.” Our leaders know what’s right and wrong, they can reason their way to strong sustainability strategies. Yet they constantly stop themselves and ask, “What are our competitors doing? What are our customers asking us for? What is expected?” Emergent Strategy means dropping hierarchy and expectation and replacing them with interdependence and complexity. Yow. Read it. And I will read it again and again.
  5. I almost can’t believe I haven’t recommended this book before! I guess it was waiting for a global pandemic…oops. I read Warnings: Finding Cassandras to Stop Catastrophes back in 2017, and rereading it in 2020 was almost comical. The author, Richard Clarke, spent his entire career in national security working to stop tragedies before they happen. And here we are, standing in the middle of the biggest crisis in modern history thinking “why didn’t we see this coming?” Well, the truth is, a whole lot of people did. They are who Clarke calls “Cassandras,” and I’m sure we’ll hear about a lot of them post-pandemic. And perhaps a crisis like this one will help us all to be more preparedness focused in the future.
  6. Finally, let me throw a log on the fire for a book that is “coming soon.” Adam Grant, author of some of my favorite books of all time including Give and Take is publishing his next book in February 2021 called Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know and of course, my copy is on pre-order. From the book jacket: “We listen to opinions that make us feel good, instead of ideas that make us think hard. We see disagreement as a threat to our egos, rather than an opportunity to learn. We surround ourselves with people who agree with our conclusions, when we should be gravitating toward those who challenge our thought process. The result is that our beliefs get brittle long before our bones.” Perhaps if there’s appetite, we could do a sustainability book club of some sort for this one. I’m that excited about reading it!

There are so many great opportunities to read and sharpen our skills, I hope you’ll continue to dive in with me this year and work to expand our knowledge in this space. If you have books you loved last year or authors you love, mention them in the comments. I’d love to add to my reading list based on your recommendations!