Browser History: Business Leadership Books on Money, Mind & Spirit
21st Century Monetary Policy: The Federal Reserve from the Great Inflation to COVID-19
by Ben S. Bernanke. W.W. Norton & Company, May 17, 2022.
Ben Bernanke speaks from experience—experience only 15 other people have had. As chair of the Federal Reserve from 2006 to 2014, he held what’s considered one of the most powerful positions in the world.
Some of his moves were daring ones. But 21st Century Monetary Policy: The Federal Reserve from the Great Inflation to COVID-19 is not a memoir—that would be his 2015 bestseller, The Courage to Act—it’s a history of the Fed. And history helps you make decisions, right? “Well, sometimes it doesn’t,” Bernanke says, citing the pandemic as a unique event that has scrambled financial signals. On the other hand, when the 2007 crisis struck, he already knew the mistakes of the Great Depression to be avoided. (He acknowledges that he made a few of his own.) Now leaders and readers can turn to his history book, written in plain English, for insight into the Fed’s techniques and limits, and why it does what it does.
“An appreciation of the goals of the Federal Reserve, and of the tools and strategies it uses to meet those goals, is essential for understanding the contemporary global economy.” —Ben Bernanke, 14th chair of the Federal Reserve from 2006 to 2014
The Leader’s Brain: Enhance Your Leadership, Build Stronger Teams,
Make Better Decisions, and Inspire Greater Innovation With Neuroscience
by Michael L. Platt. Wharton School Press, Oct 6, 2020.
Leadership skills include reading other people—their body language, their ability to focus—but what if you could actually read the brains of those you’re leading? Not that you’d actually be observing their brain waves: Neuroscientist Michael Platt has done it for you. His book The Leader’s Brain: Enhance Your Leadership, Build Stronger Teams, Make Better Decisions, and Inspire Greater Innovation With Neuroscience tells how that science “lets us peek under the hood,” he says, and learn more about the networks in our brains. And you can read on to find out how to maximize the effects of those networks and the value of shifting from one to another—not to mention how all this applies to your favorite sports, and how you can exercise your social brain the way you exercise your body.
Tomorrow’s Capitalist: My Search for the Soul of Business by Alan Murray. PublicAffairs, May 10, 2022.
You may be thinking the same thing many people have asked him: “Did you find it?” Consider Tomorrow’s Capitalist: My Search for the Soul of Business his answer.
A self-described lifelong journalist, Alan Murray currently serves as president and CEO of Fortune Media and co-host of the podcast Leadership Next. He has a way with words, refreshing optimism and a thousand conversations with CEOs to draw on. According to Murray, in the past few decades many Fortune 500 companies’ values have shifted from physical assets like equipment and inventory to intangibles like intellectual property—or connections with stakeholders who may want purpose beyond profits. Corporations are becoming more human, Murray says, “and if you have a human set of values, in some sense you have a soul.” Our way of doing business is changing, and leaders would do well to believe it.
This article appeared in the Summer 2022 issue of Insigniam Quarterly with the headline “Browser History: Money, Mind & Spirit.” To begin receiving IQ, go here.
