Start With Why reframed how I think about operating model design — the mechanics of how work flows matter less than whether people understand why the work exists.
Most of my work involves getting alignment across functions, seniority levels, and geographies — often without formal authority. Her work on how people read cues and form judgments quickly changed how I approach the first few minutes of conversations.
Never Split the Difference changed how I handle resistance in change and delivery work. When stakeholders push back on a process change or a new way of working, the instinct is to persuade. Voss makes the case for calibration and listening first — and it works more reliably than any argument I've made.
Challenges assumptions I didn't know I was carrying. Think Again is the one I return to most — it's essentially a manual for intellectual honesty.
The most rigorous empirical voice on what AI actually does to how people work. Cuts through the noise in a space that has a lot of it.
Much of my work involves leading change without a formal mandate — influencing how teams operate, how decisions get made, how capability gets built. Her work on influence and self-awareness is grounded in the same conditions: you have to earn the room before you can shift it.
Research that makes the empirical case for things most organisations still treat as soft. I've spent enough time inside operating model work to know that the structural pieces rarely fail on their own — it's the conditions underneath them that do. Dare to Lead names those conditions precisely.
A sustained argument for depth over busyness at a time when most productivity advice optimises for the wrong thing. The work I find most valuable — systems thinking, capability building, writing — requires uninterrupted time. His work gave me the framework to protect it without guilt.