A Holidays season (and beyond) reading list

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🗓️ This Week – Episode 33: a reading list to zoom out

The end of the year is approaching. Some among you will take holidays, some will not. Overall, this is a period which kind of slows down even if you don't take holidays yourself, as colleagues, customers or suppliers may take some time off.

This can be a good time to relax and recharge a little before starting 2026. In this newsletter, I’m sharing a few books I highly recommend, or that I curated for my own reading list.

Why these books? In the spirit of From Geek to Star, they are not about becoming “less technical”. They are about elevating tech leaders and engineers beyond individual contribution, helping us think in terms of systems, flow, people, responsibility and long-term impact.

So here we go.

📘 Systems, Flow & Delivery (thinking beyond your code)

The Phoenix Project - Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford.
A classic for a reason! It shows how technology, operations and business outcomes are deeply intertwined. A must-read to move from local optimisation to end-to-end thinking. Why I love it: it is written like a novel, so it is entertaining at the same time. And if you've been working in a company which had tech legacy challenges with stressful situations (like being woken up at night for production P1 incidents), this book will definitely resonate! The book was written in 2013 so some aspects may seem old or even odd to us now, but it is still excellent to understand the dynamic of bringing together tech, operations and business, the notion of devops was popularised at that time, partly thanks to this book. 

Team Topologies – Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais
Not read yet, on my reading list. I understand it is a very “engineer-friendly” book on organisation design. Cognitive load, Conway’s Law, team interfaces… It helps understand why structure drives behaviour and delivery. The website beyond the book: https://teamtopologies.com/ 

📊 Execution, Impact & Focus

Measure What Matters – John Doerr
Understanding OKRs is essential if you want to engage credibly with leadership. This book helps bridge strategy and execution and makes it clear why focus matters more than activity and why alignement across an organization is paramount. Why I love it: as an engineer, I love efficiency and more than often I’ve seen how much organisations can be inefficient and create entropy, mostly because of lack of alignment. Invented by John Doerr back in the 1980's when he was at Intel, he then brought this approach to Google in the early 2000's. Google's founders later shared that the approach helped them a lot to scale. The method has become quite popular even though its execution and success varies (pretty much like agile) depending on how well organisations implement it, so it is a foundational book for me. The website beyond the book: https://www.whatmatters.com/ 

The Effective Engineer - Edmond Lau
One of the best books on leverage. It’s not about working harder, but about choosing where your effort actually matters. A mindset that scales very well into leadership roles. Why I love it: when I first moved to Singapore from France with my family, I had the chance to have an incredible boss in the job I landed. A tech leader able to have strategic thinking, managing acquisition of companies as well as deep diving into the code and stay up to date with tech, developing himself POCs. This is the book he offered me, explaining how to multiply your impact. The website beyond the book: https://www.effectiveengineer.com/ 

👥 Influence, Leadership & Facilitation (without authority)

People Powered – Jono Bacon
Written by someone who deeply understands open-source communities, this book resonates strongly with engineers. It’s about influence, collaboration and leadership without relying on hierarchy. Why I love it: I started it a few months ago but did not finish. The reason why is just that a few months ago I had a drastic change in my career, so this aspect has been less of a priority to me as I was prioritising my time. But I will definitely finish it as I have always been fascinated by the power of open-source and the values behind, and being able to understand this dynamic to see how to leverage it can be super powerful. The website beyond the book: https://www.peoplepowered.org/ 

Turn the Ship Around! – L. David Marquet
Not read yet, on my reading list. I understand this is a powerful story about intent-based leadership in complex systems. Very relevant for tech leaders building empowered teams rather than control-driven ones, and even more important I think in our current world where things are becoming more and more uncertain and complex to grasp.

🤖 Tech, AI & Responsibility

Competing in the Age of AI – Iansiti & Lakhani
Not read yet, on my reading list. I understand it brings a strategic view on how AI reshapes operating models and economics. This is not a tool book, it’s about understanding why architecture and data become business differentiators.

The Alignment Problem – Brian Christian
Not read yet, on my reading list. It is for those reflecting on the broader role of technology in society. This book invites us to think about ethics, responsibility and unintended consequences. I’ve put that in my list because “From Geek to Star” is also about growing our influence responsibly, pushing for what I call “Tech for Good”.

You don’t need to read all of them. Pick one or two that resonate with where you are today. Sometimes, one good book at the right moment can quietly change how you show up at work.

🙏 I’d Love to Hear From You
Which book would you add to this list? Or which one had the biggest impact on you this year?

Just reply - I read every note.

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From Geek to Star by Khang | The Way Forward