Any summer reading plans yet? Typically this season is ideal for lighter fare, such as new fiction, twists on classics or even the masterpieces themselves.

Another option is dipping your toes into non-fiction to give you a leg up on work projects, professional development, and self-improvement. If you choose this route, please avoid reading “classic” business books. They’re a time suck, a more detrimental experience than device doomscrolling.  

Why? Consider two big changes over the past 30 years.  

The first edition of John Kotter’s classic book Leading Change with its sequential 8-step model was published in 1996. The structural, systems-level approach to change became the go-to framework for organizations as they generally undertook one big change initiative at a time.

Today, organizations no longer have the luxury of driving down one change highway. Instead, to keep their organizations responsive, they have to navigate multiple roads of change that go in different directions simultaneously. To manage, we all need to use more agile approaches with moment-to-moment adaptations.

Second, back in the 1990s, Kotter developed his model independent of how we humans react to change, threat, and uncertainty. His 8-step model doesn’t account for:

• How the prospect of change generally triggers a neurological threat response in the human brain and nervous system. Basically, the body’s alarm system perceives ambiguity, loss of control, and uncertainty as danger. Your system immediately releases adrenaline and cortisol, which adversely affect your brain’s ability to think clearly for complex decision-making, logic, and planning. Simultaneously, your nervous system diverts resources to help you survive rather than adapt. This results in “brain fog,” anxiety, avoidance behaviors, and potentially fixation on worst-case scenarios.

• The importance of psychological safety in changing behavior (Amy Edmondson researched psychological safety in teams and is credited with pioneering the concept in her 1999 paper, “Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams,” published in Administrative Science Quarterly).

• How cognitive load – the amount of mental effort and working memory used at a given time – affects your capacity to deal with change.

• How social we humans are and how much we’re influenced by one another.

From a practical perspective, it’s also become more apparent over the years that individuals change, which influences organizational change. In other words, people change and they change organizations.

Thanks to advancements in neuroscience over the past 30 years, we know that change is hard for us humans to do. Our brain and nervous system automatically protect us physiologically when we encounter change. That’s very different than intentionally deciding to resist our employer’s new way of doing things. That’s another reason why the marathon change initiatives have been so ineffective over the years.

So what resources are available to help you better lead humans to change in 2026? Unfortunately, there is no one book, given today’s complexity. However, there are a number of scientifically-valid current books. These five – with another one on the way in November – are currently my favorites for leading change.

1. Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard– by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. The two brothers use the elephant and rider metaphor for making change manageable. Successful changes follow a pattern, a pattern you can use to make the changes that matter.

2. What We Value: The Neuroscience of Choice and Change– by Emily Falk. The author who’s an awesome researcher as well as writer, explains how values and social influence shape behavior change. By becoming more aware of our daily decisions and being more intentional, we can make more fulfilling, impactful choices in our work, relationships, and lives.

3. Shift: ManagingYour Emotions So They Don’t Manage You – by Ethan Kross. Rather than suppress your emotions, which is harmful, the author describes how to harness them to improve your wellbeing and relationships. The research-based tools he’s designed over the years are relatively simple to use and very powerful.

4. Reset: How to Change What’s Not Working– by Dan Heath. The author explores a framework for getting unstuck and making the changes that matter. He advises finding “leverage points,” that is, places where you can exert a little bit of effort to yield a disproportionate amount return.

5. AQ: A New Kind of Intelligence for a World That’s Always Changing – by Liz Tan. “AQ” stands for “agility quotient,” which the author defines as an intelligence you can develop to handle change, uncertainty, and the unknown, which supports the concept of neuroplasticity. The book’s psychological and behavioral orientation to change also acknowledges what we’re living. Our reality is navigating continuous, overlapping change rather than discrete sequential projects.

This November, David Rock’s latest book will be out: Good with Humans: The Neuroscience of What Makes Us Tick and What Ticks Us Off. The bestselling author of Your Brain at Work who’s also the co-founder of the NeuroLeadership Institute, has written a guide exploring his evidence-based SCARF model. It encompasses Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Fairness. These five domains of social motivation underpin and drive human behavior. For many of us, SCARF bridges individual and organizational change. For example, SCARF provides leaders with a framework for understanding why people resist change and how to design change processes that work with rather than against the brain.

These books tell a coherent story about how to practice sophisticated change leadership today. And if a book you’re considering reading isn’t on this list, but was published in 2010 (the date of Switch, the oldest book here) or later, it should be fine. And if you have questions, send me a message. Friends don’t want friends reading and using outdated info.