If you want to be a great finance leader why not take a leaf out of these three books. Moir Group Director Stephen Moir reviews three of his favourite reads:
- Hit Refresh – Satya Nadella
- Legacy – James Kerr
- Team of Rivals – Doris Kearns Goodwin
Let us know your favourite books in the comments below.
Contact us if you would like advice on how to grow as finance leader.
Transcript:
‘Here at Moir Group we love books, and I thought I’d share with you today three books that I’ve recently read that I took a lot from I thought you might like. So the first one is called Hit Refresh and it’s by Satya Nadella. Satya is the CEO of Microsoft and he joined Microsoft at a time when the company was struggling, and it’s really about how he sort of turned that organization around, and what I took from this book were a couple of things. Firstly, was he went right back to the basics in terms of their culture and was very clear on that, and then secondly he really led with a lot of empathy throughout the organization.
He expected excellence but it was done with a very empathetic lens and the result is that Microsoft is now one of the leading corporations in the world. So that’s my first book. The second book that I really enjoyed reading was this one here, and it’s called Legacy by James Kerr and it’s a story about how the All Blacks as a sporting team have been able to stay so successful for so long coming from such a small country as well when you keep that in mind. And again, he relates it back to business and some of the small things that they do and what I took from this book, which I think is fabulous, is that the All Blacks have this ability to when they think about pulling on the jersey they’re basically thinking about future, leaving the jersey in a better state, leaving the team in a better state, and they took over, and so to me it’s always the future looking and again a lot of humility.
So the leadership group are the ones that basically run everything, so it’s the leadership group within the players it’s not the management, and also the leadership group are incredibly humble in terms of what they do so they’re always the ones cleaning up the sheds at the end of the games and things like that, so it’s a very grounding kind of atmosphere that they’ve developed. So that’s the second book, and then finally probably my favourite book when it comes to leadership and I suppose the values that I hold very dear within leadership, is this book here by Doris Kearns Goodwin called Team of Rivals, and it’s about Abraham Lincoln.
They made a film on him as well and to me this book describes the way that Abraham Lincoln effectively acted as president and what I took from this book, was a number of things. First of all was his incredible humility in really difficult trying situations. Secondly, his ability to look at issues from lots of different angles before jumping in and making a decision and then when he made decisions there were excellent decisions because they’re well thought through. And thirdly his ability to own his mistakes, he was always willing to admit where he’d gone wrong and often took on the blame for things that actually weren’t back to him and that gendered a lot of loyalty from all those around him. So that’s probably my all time favourite book.
Hope you enjoy them.
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