Books Recommended by Tudor Mihailescu

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl is another masterpiece. Built around a very testing personal story, it leaves you empowered to be the master of your own destiny. Finding your logos (purpose), what really really drives you is probably the most important mission we have in life and, once that is somewhat conquered, everything else – no matter how difficult – will be just noise. Frankl’s journey, an interesting mix of personal and professional, is a great example.

In every industry, there would be many relevant books but nothing would replace being in touch with the customers and people in own organisation. It’s a vast of space to recommend books, but I would suggest that learning how proven entrepreneurs or managers have done this as a good start (read about Jake Welch – Straight from the Gut, Steve Jobs, Shoe Dog – Phil Knight or Elon Musk) – admittedly, some of them may set a very high bar.

Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman is more than a book, it’s really a compendium of wisdom. As a result, you can only sip it slowly, it’s a very condensed writing. Kahneman proves, after many years of studies and an amazing partnership with a Amos Tversky, what huge gap lies between how we think we act/make decisions and how we really do. This has had an impact both on my professional life as well as personal one, in the broader area of decision making. With this “bible” under the belt, one can further study this space of decision making with other great works like Nudge (Thaler) or Decisive (Heath/Heath).

Mindset by Carol Dweck has been a book I have constantly referred to. The whole book is build on the duality of Fixed vs Growth mindset and the choice we have in picking which way we go. While it has obvious professional links, it has also been very relevant in my role as father – a role for which one is probably least prepared. In dialogues with my young boys, who are inherently very competitive, I have played back a lot of the insights – digesting with them what brought a certain success (work vs native, for example), and equally reconciling failure.

First thing first, finance people need to be decent communicators, ideally awesome communicators. There is an art in building a case or in delivering a presentation and we need to treat this step as seriously as we have treated the other steps. I do believe this is a top priority for an aspiring or practicing CFO - There are plenty of books on this topic, I would recommend the works of Chip and Dan Health like Switch and Made to Stick.

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis (Vance) is probably least known in my selection, yet I enjoyed a lot. It is less of the actual story it tells, rather by providing a glaring example of ‘there is more than meets the eye’. It shows the power of context to how a certain person is brought up, ends up doing in life. And, at a bigger scale, may explain political or social trends that otherwise appear as a total surprise. Personally, I was reading this book while on the professional side I was working to improve my leading through questions techniques, which also pushes you to have patience to drill to a root cause before jumping off to conclusions.

In every industry, there would be many relevant books but nothing would replace being in touch with the customers and people in own organisation. It’s a vast of space to recommend books, but I would suggest that learning how proven entrepreneurs or managers have done this as a good start (read about Jake Welch – Straight from the Gut, Steve Jobs, Shoe Dog – Phil Knight or Elon Musk) – admittedly, some of them may set a very high bar.

First thing first, finance people need to be decent communicators, ideally awesome communicators. There is an art in building a case or in delivering a presentation and we need to treat this step as seriously as we have treated the other steps. I do believe this is a top priority for an aspiring or practicing CFO - There are plenty of books on this topic, I would recommend the works of Chip and Dan Health like Switch and Made to Stick