Media Query Source: Part 57 - CIO (US digital magazine); Book recommendations from CIOs and other tech leaders

• CIO (US digital magazine)
• Book recommendations from CIOs and other tech leaders
• "The Ideal Executive", by Ichak Adizes
• Every executive has a unique, but not "ideal", management style

The query responses I provided to CIO on August 19, 2025:

CIO: I am updating my popular list of books recommended by CIOs and tech leaders for CIO.com. If you have read a book that helped you see your way through a problem, be a better leader, or inspired you in your role, please share.

What is the book? Why did you love it? What do you think other tech leaders would get out of reading it?

Gfesser: I highly recommend a three-book series by Ichak Adizes that includes the following:

• "The Ideal Executive: Why You Cannot Be One and What To Do About It"
• "Management / Mismanagement Styles: How To Identify A Style And What To Do About It"
• "Leading the Leaders: How To Enrich Your Style Of Management And Handle People Whose Style Is Different From Yours"

However, since you're looking for a single book recommendation, I'd like to highlight the first: "The Ideal Executive". You can find my book review here:

The reason I like this book so much is because it explores a topic not typically discussed: the fact that *nobody* can be an "ideal" executive. In order to achieve a well-managed organization, four roles need to be performed (producing, administering, entrepreneuring, and integrating), and a single individual can never excel at all four of these roles.

As explained by Adizes, every manager has their own unique management style that consists of some combination of these four roles, and mismanagement is the result when a given manager doesn't meet the minimum competence level of one or more of these.

This book not only helped me identify my management style, most closely represented by the "Entrepreneur" (someone who excels at producing and entrepreneuring, and meets the minimum competence level of administering and integrating), but helped me identify the management styles of those around me in the workplace and walked me through (with many entertaining examples) what is likely to help or hurt my interactions with them.

As a leader in the consulting world, I've benefited from being exposed to many different organizational cultures. While organizational culture is a subject often written about, this book explores important topics at the individual level often not discussed, and as such I would love to see it introduced as required reading in every organization.