At Oxygen Conservation, we approach reading with the same intensity and intentionality that we bring to rewilding landscapes and reshaping natural capital markets. Our mission to Scale Conservation extends beyond ecological restoration—it requires a recalibration of human capital.
Developing leaders for the emerging natural capital economy means immersing ourselves in the literature that challenges, educates, and refines us. Books aren’t just sources of knowledge; they are sparring partners, provocateurs, and compasses for our thinking.
One of the biggest compliments I’ve ever received came from our wonderful Director of Planning and Property, Fi Milden when she told me I’d made it cool to always be carrying a book. Reading wasn’t something that came to me early, or easily – in fact, I didn’t really read in a purposeful way until my thirties – now I study intensely because I have an arena to apply everything I learn.
The below is not a generic reading list. It’s a compilation of texts chosen for their relevance to systems thinking, organisational development, behavioural economics, regenerative business models, and elite performance. Structured across four themes – Performance & Productivity, Purpose & People, Provocation & Playbooks, and Power & Perspective – each entry offers a lens through which to rethink conservation, leadership, and business at scale.
Category 1: Performance & Productivity
Focused on operational excellence, cognitive performance, and the mechanics of high-output work.
- Never Split the Difference (Christopher Voss) – Tactical negotiation insights from an ex-FBI negotiator, applicable to stakeholder engagement, team dynamics, and high-stakes decision-making. Essential for understanding how power and empathy coexist in effective communication. Key insight: The most effective negotiators listen deeply, calibrate empathy, and use tactical techniques to create transformative outcomes.
- Buy Back Your Time (Dan Martell) – Frameworks for time arbitrage and operational delegation that enable founders and executives to scale without burnout. Critical reading for rethinking what only you can do. Key insight: Outsourcing low-value tasks lets you focus your time on high-impact work that only you can do.
- Work Rules! (Laszlo Bock) – An exploration of how to systematically build culture, performance, and innovation in complex organisations. A foundational text for designing institutions that thrive. Key insight: A culture of transparency, freedom, and data-driven experimentation can drive exceptional organisational performance.
- Oversubscribed (Daniel Priestley) – Demand-generation theory, critical for reframing conservation products as desirable, not burdensome. This text challenges you to redefine scarcity and value. Key insight: Success lies in designing products and messages that create more demand than supply.
- The Innovation Stack (Jim McKelvey) – A counterintuitive playbook for disruptive thinking and complex problem-solving under constraints. It emphasises layering simple innovations to build defensible, scalable systems. Key insight: Disruption doesn’t come from copying others, but from stacking innovations unique to your context.
Category 2: Purpose & People
Delving into organisational behaviour, leadership ethics, and regenerative principles.
- The Future of the Responsible Business / Let My People Go Surfing (David Grayson CBE / Yvon Chouinard) – Paired perspectives on mission-driven business, sustainable leadership, and the evolution of enterprise in service to planet and people. A juxtaposition of theory and lived experience. Key insight: Businesses built on responsibility and love for nature can be more resilient, inspiring, and ultimately more profitable.
- Green Swans (John Elkington) – Framework for recognising systemic market shifts and the emergence of breakthrough sustainability solutions. Required reading for visionaries. Key insight: True transformation emerges when we embrace complexity and work towards regenerative futures.
- Unreasonable Hospitality (Will Guidara) – Case study in emotional intelligence, experience design, and culture-as-strategy. Makes the case that love, detail, and surprise are scalable business strategies. Key insight: Deep care and unexpected generosity in service can be your ultimate competitive advantage.
- Legacy (James Kerr) – Lessons on leadership, identity, and values from the All Blacks—applicable to teams navigating high performance in high-integrity contexts. What you leave behind matters more than what you take. Key insight: Humility and purpose-driven leadership create enduring impact and high-performing teams.
- Making Decisions (Ed Smith) – A deeper look into the psychology and economics of choice architecture, judgment, and uncertainty. Decision-making is not a skill; it is the architecture of leadership. Key insight: Smart leaders design environments that help others make better, faster, and more ethical decisions.
Category 3: Provocation & Playbooks
Books that interrogate norms, celebrate complexity, and provide applied strategic insight.
- How to Win the Premier League (Mike Carson) – A sports strategy lens on performance analytics, marginal gains, and institutional culture. Combines tactical thinking with behavioural insight. Key insight: Small improvements across many dimensions can compound into sustained success.
- Chaos Monkeys (Antonio García Martínez) – A brutally honest view into the tech ecosystem, growth hacking, and the interplay between ambition and ethics. Unapologetically raw and revealing. Key insight: The chaos of innovation demands grit, clarity of mission, and brutal self-awareness.
- Whatever It Takes (Stephen A. Schwarzman) – Strategic autobiography detailing deal-making, capital formation, and organisational scale. A textbook in ambition and clarity under pressure. Key insight: Relentless ambition, clarity of vision, and trust in people drive the most transformational outcomes.
- The Messy Middle (Scott Belsky) – Guidance for navigating volatility, ambiguity, and momentum decay in long-term project execution. Honest, applicable, and oddly reassuring. Key insight: The middle of any venture is where resilience, iteration, and team dynamics are tested most.
- Crickonomics (Stefan Szymanski & Tim Wigmore) – Systems thinking via cricket: data analysis, pressure testing, and probabilistic decision-making. Shows how sport can be a serious guide to institutional insight. Key insight: Understanding risk, context, and human behaviour can turn uncertainty into a strategic advantage.
Category 4: Power & Perspective
Meta-level thinking on markets, psychology, value systems, and exponential change.
- Alchemy (Rory Sutherland) – Behavioural economics applied to marketing, policy, and innovation. Encourages non-linear thinking and breaks the tyranny of logic. Key insight: The most powerful ideas often seem irrational at first glance.
- The Power Law (Sebastian Mallaby) – A study of how power and influence are distributed in networks, capital, and innovation ecosystems. Essential for understanding why scale breaks models. Key insight: Outliers shape history far more than averages ever could.
- Money Trap (Alok Sama) – Critical analysis of financial orthodoxy and the systemic limitations of market-based conservation. Explores the mismatch between ecological timelines and economic incentives. Key insight: Rethinking economic structures is crucial to aligning finance with ecological realities.
- The Hard Thing About Hard Things (Benjamin Horowitz) – Candid discourse on leadership under pressure, crisis management, and moral clarity in venture environments. An unvarnished guide to navigating complexity. Key insight: There is no formula for the hardest decisions—only courage, judgment, and values.
- Originals (Adam Grant) – Research-backed encouragement for challenging convention and driving transformational change. A reminder that dissent is often a service. Key insight: Innovation comes from those brave enough to question what others take for granted.
- Always Compete (Steve Bisheff) – Lessons from elite athletics on grit, discipline, and maintaining an edge in competitive environments. More than motivation—a philosophy of sustained effort. Key insight: Competing at your best, every day, is the most consistent route to excellence.
Final Word
This reading list is a living syllabus.
It grows with us as our landscape of work evolves. Each text here is a reference point in the broader dialogue of how we scale conservation—practically, philosophically, and economically. These aren’t just books. They’re the building blocks of our thinking infrastructure.
Whether you’re leading a team, analysing a new carbon product, designing a stakeholder strategy, or simply rethinking your calendar, this library has something to say.
It reminds us that reading is not a retreat. It is preparation. If there’s a book that’s changed how you think, we want to know. Let’s keep reading, keep interrogating, and keep leading from the front.