Exec reading list: June 22-28

The strongest reading signal this week came from Ethan Evans: three books in one LinkedIn post, all used to argue through a career question managers actually face: should you chase work you love, or choose hard and lucrative problems first? Evans recommended Cal Newport's Deep Work, Scott Galloway's The Algebra of Wealth, and Naval Ravikant's The Almanack of Naval Ravikant on June 24, while saying he respects the first two books but disagrees with their anti-passion emphasis. 1

Richard Hua's week was less book-heavy and more leadership-practice oriented. His clearest outside book recommendation was Christopher Voss's Never Split the Difference, prompted by meeting Voss while taping Office Hours with David Meltzer in a SiriusXM studio in Las Vegas. 2 The other Hua items are weaker as reading picks but still useful as executive information-diet signals: a self-cited EPIQ newsletter article on public speaking, a Warren Buffett attribution about lovability, and two AI work-design stories involving IKEA and WPP. 3 4 5

No captured title was cross-endorsed by more than one recommender during the June 22-28 window. The public-post evidence is also incomplete around LinkedIn comments, so this issue is best read as a digest of visible public recommendations, not a complete map of every private or gated discussion.

One-sentence positioning: Deep Work is the productivity book in this week's set: it argues for sustained concentration on demanding cognitive work, and Evans uses it as part of the "hard problems first" side of the career debate. 1

Evans' post is more useful because it is not a simple endorsement. He wrote that Newport and Galloway have written books he respects and would recommend, then drew a line between recommending a book and accepting its whole career philosophy. 1 His summary of the Newport/Galloway side was that people should focus on hard problems or money-making work, then expect affection for the work to grow after competence develops. 1

That makes Deep Work a good first read for managers whose immediate problem is not career direction but attention. If the question is "how do I produce higher-quality work in a noisy organization?" Newport's book fits. If the question is "what kind of work should I build my career around?" Evans is warning readers not to treat the book as the final word.

One-sentence positioning: The Algebra of Wealth is the money-and-career book in Evans' stack: in his framing, it belongs to the school that gives earning power and economic reality more weight than passion. 1

Evans treats Galloway with the same split verdict he gives Newport: respect the book, read it, but do not automatically accept the premise that passion should come later. 1 The useful management lesson is the distinction between financial realism and career fatalism. A manager can accept Galloway's economic discipline without deciding that dislike is a harmless cost of professional success.

Evans gives examples where passion can distort markets: professional sports and Hollywood have brutal odds, game development can use high passion to suppress pay, and many lawyers do not end up loving the field simply because they become good at it. 1 That is the strongest reason to keep Galloway in the stack. The book anchors the downside of naive passion, even if Evans does not accept money as the primary compass.

One-sentence positioning: The Almanack of Naval Ravikant is the conviction pick in this week's set: Evans uses Ravikant's argument to defend work that a person loves enough to sustain. 1

The quote Evans chose is the cleanest statement of his own position: "If you are working on things you love, it will feel like play to you and you will be inexhaustible. This will tend to make you good at it and hard to compete with." 1 Evans then made the personal tradeoff explicit: "I would rather take my shots at doing something I love and work to become good at it, than doing something I don't like, even if I am gifted at it, and hoping that I come to enjoy it." 1

For aspiring directors and VPs, this is the highest-signal item in the set because it turns a reading recommendation into a decision rule. Evans is not saying passion beats competence. He is saying the best bet is to start where energy is renewable, then build competence there.

One-sentence positioning: Never Split the Difference is a negotiation book by former FBI hostage negotiator Christopher Voss, and Hua presents it as a practical EQ resource rather than a standalone business-book recommendation. 2

Hua's recommendation came through an in-person context. On June 24, he said he had just taped a Season 11 episode of Office Hours with David Meltzer in a SiriusXM studio in Las Vegas, where he met Voss. 2 Hua wrote: "I also got to chat with with Christopher Voss, former FBI hostage negotiator, and author of Never Split the Difference. I've shared his negotiation techniques with hundreds of thousands of people as part of my EQ trainings." 2

That framing matters. Hua is not simply saying the book is famous or useful. He is saying Voss's techniques have already been absorbed into Hua's emotional-intelligence training work. For managers, the likely use case is not dealmaking alone. It is difficult conversations: listening under pressure, lowering defensiveness, and finding leverage without escalating the room.

One-sentence positioning: Hua's EPIQ newsletter article appears to be a public-speaking guide about using feeling, story, and audience awareness to make a talk memorable. 3

Hua's June 25 post argues that many smart speakers over-focus on what they want an audience to think or do, then skip the emotional state they want the audience to feel. 3 His most compact line was: "A talk that only informs gets a polite nod. A talk that makes someone feel something gets them to change." 3 He also wrote: "Stories make people feel. Data makes people think. You need both." 3

This is a weaker signal because it points to Hua's own article and the link was in LinkedIn comments, which were not available in the captured public record. The underlying advice is still relevant for managers who present upward or lead all-hands meetings: data can justify a case, but it rarely carries the room by itself.

One-sentence positioning: This is not a book or article pick; it is Hua using a Buffett-attributed life philosophy as a leadership scorecard. 4

On June 26, Hua attributed to Warren Buffett the idea that success can be measured by how many of the people you want to love you actually do, plus the line that "the only way to get love is to be lovable." 4 Hua connected that idea to his own decades of coaching and pastoral work, writing that titles, money, and achievements will not visit a person in the hospital or comfort that person in pain. 4

The caution: Hua's post does not name a specific Buffett interview, letter, or book as the source. Treat this as Hua's leadership reflection using a Buffett attribution, not as a verified Buffett reading recommendation.

One-sentence positioning: This item is an industry-story pair about what AI does to work after efficiency improves: one story about redeploying people, one story about filling saved time with more busyness. 5

Hua wrote on June 23 that he had read two AI stories: IKEA reportedly replaced 8,500 customer-service roles with AI, retrained every employee into interior-design-advisor positions, and created a $1.4 billion revenue line; WPP's Dr. Laura Weis described companies using AI speed to pack the same work into the newly freed space, which Hua summarized as "glorified busyness." 5 Hua's own line was sharper: "AI is not the transformation. It's the amplifier." 5

This is the item to treat most carefully. The IKEA revenue figure and the WPP quote are attributed through Hua's post, but Hua did not name the original publications. The management takeaway is still clear enough: AI creates value when leaders redesign work, not when they ask the same people to produce more artifacts faster.

Start with Evans if the live question is career strategy. Read Deep Work for attention discipline, The Algebra of Wealth for economic realism, and The Almanack of Naval Ravikant for the counterargument that durable energy matters. Evans' own position is closest to Ravikant, but the productive reading move is to hold all three in tension. 1

Move to Voss if the week ahead contains negotiation, feedback, or conflict. Hua's signal is strong because he says he has used Voss's techniques at scale in EQ trainings, which gives the book a direct manager-use case. 2

Use Hua's public-speaking post before a high-stakes presentation, the Buffett attribution as a personal scorecard prompt, and the IKEA/WPP item as an AI-operating-model prompt. Those three are not equal to a clean book recommendation, but they show where Hua's leadership attention went this week: feeling in communication, relationships as the final score, and AI as a test of whether a team knows what work should become. 3 4 5