April 2025 TD Authors: What's on Your Bookshelf?

Nikki Vassallo

The CEO’s Guide to Training, eLearning & Work: Empowering Learning for a Competitive Advantage

By Will Thalheimer, PhD MBA

Will provides learning professionals, CEOs, and leaders with a conversational look at what learning does well, where we can improve, and how to harness learning in our organizations. Will challenges conventional thinking, communicates insight, and clearly states for our CEOs why learning is a way to move the organization forward. The chapters are short for quick reference, and the research is accessible to back up the presented insights.

Wired to Grow

By Britt Andreatta

This book alters the way to consider how others learn across all aspects of your life. Understanding the science of how people learn enables learning professionals to develop events that are more meaningful to participants and better position interactivity. Andreatta explains neuroscience in a way that reaches both scientific and nonscientific readers.

Vince De Freitas

Amusing Ourselves to Death

By Neil Postman

This book from 1985 focuses on the evolution of media during that period. The author explores the cheapening of knowledge through humans' insatiable desire to adapt to new methods of media. Although Postman originally wrote the text as a criticism of the death of print and the emergence of television, the commentary persists as an evergreen criticism of knowledge sharing in the digital age.

Visible Learning

By John Hattie

Visible Learning by John Hattie is a groundbreaking synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses on the factors that impact learner achievement. With its evidence-based insights, this book is essential for talent development professionals who are keen to reinforce their craft with approaches that are deeply rooted in evidence and learning sciences. Warning: It’s dense, but valuable stuff.

Matt Beane

Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI

By Ethan Mollick

Even after nearly two years of collective exploration, invention, confusion, and progress on AI, Ethan’s introduction to this wave of AI reigns supreme as the most thoughtful, engaging, and practically useful guide for a general audience. He and I were writing our books at the same time and swapped notes, so I can say there is a mountain of insight on the cutting room floor as well. I highly recommend subscribing to his substack, “One Useful Thing,” for ongoing insight.

The Friction Project

By Robert I. Sutton and Huggy Rao

For decades, the authors have worked systematically with a variety of companies to understand and manage process frictions. As a result, Sutton and Rao have a clear set of operating principles to help create more efficient, human-centric organizations. This is a critical read for process stewards, especially now that we risk filling organizations with artificial-intelligence-enhanced bureaucratic slop.

Victoria Grady

David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

By Malcolm Gladwell

I think one of the most important reasons that organizational change initiatives continue to struggle is related to our inability to recognize the depth of our perceptions and biases. Gladwell gives incredible examples that truly inspire us to question many of our basic assumptions through the lens of the story of David and Goliath.

Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

By Brené Brown

There are very few books that highlight the role of connection in organizations. Connection is a key challenge during organizational change. In this insightful book, Dr. Brown does a great job of highlighting the core competence of connection as an important function of the 21st century organization.

Tammy Rutherford

Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice

By Clayton M. Christensen, Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon, and David S. Duncan

A refreshing take on how to think about innovation, this book has helped shape how we approach product development. By starting with the question, “What is the job to be done,” it has helped us rethink our customer conversations to better understand our customers’ needs and build products to do those jobs.