Here's the book every CEO is reading this summer
In at least one way, CEOs are just like the rest of us. They need a good book or two to help them while away those lazy summer weekends. As it turns out, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan (JPM) is delving into the new biography of Ronald Reagan: “Ronald Reagan” by Jacob Weisberg (Times Books). Meanwhile, Walter Robb, CEO of Whole Foods (WFM), is pouring through Arianna Huffington’s book on sleep, “The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night at a Time” (Harmony).
But there’s one book that seems to be most popular among CEOs this summer. A book that promises it will not only “change the way you see the world. It will also give you the power to change it.” Wow! What CEO in their right mind wouldn’t want to read that?
The book in question is by Joshua Cooper Ramo, co-CEO of Kissinger Associates, (the consulting firm founded by the former secretary of state) and it’s titled: “The Seventh Sense: Power, Fortune, and Survival in the Age of Networks” (Little, Brown & Company.) Just how popular is the “Seventh Sense”? Sure, it’s the No. 1 bestseller in Amazon’s Business Infrastructure category. And it made the Washington Post’s and New York Times’ bestseller lists, as well.
But even more than that, check out a piece on the McKinsey & Company’s website listing the summer reading lists of 14 top executives: “The Seventh Sense” is cited by by four different top executives — including by McKinsey CEO Dominic Barton and Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn. Overall, “The Seventh Sense” is picked four times out of 45 books named. No other book is tabbed more than once.
“The Seventh Sense” starts off by telling the story of a Chinese Zen master — Ramo works in China and is fluent in Chinese — and then transitions to explaining our modern business world: “The secret to power now is understanding our new age of networks — not merely the internet but also networks of trade and DNA and finance.” Sounds like a must read.
Ramo — who’s also on the boards of Starbucks (SBUX) and Federal Express (FDX) — is naturally delighted the big dogs are reading him: “I’m glad they like the book — or plan to like the book ;),” he wrote me in an email. But there might be another explanation as to why so many CEOs are reading “The Seventh Sense” — or so says one executive who’s also reading Ramo’s work: “Maybe the book was in a hotel room at some conference they all attended.”
As any author would tell you, whatever works!
Andy Serwer is editor-in-chief of Yahoo Finance.
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