I read The E-Myth Revisited before I started my practice. I understood the argument completely. And then I built exactly the practice it warned me not to build.

The Hobbit is not a business book. But the moment Bilbo steps out of his comfortable armchair and into something that makes no rational sense at all contains one of the most useful strategic insights I have encountered.

Chess for Tigers is not a famous book. But its central argument — know which game you are actually playing, and play that one rather than the theoretically impressive one — is one of the most useful ideas I have encountered in forty years of professional life.

Think Like a Grandmaster is a book almost nobody outside chess has heard of. Its central argument has almost nothing to do with chess — and everything to do with how capable people make decisions under pressure.

In 1986, a book arrived in my hands that had nothing to do with strategy, leadership or professional judgment. It was a Fighting Fantasy gamebook. And without knowing it, I was learning something that would take four decades to fully understand.