BOOKMARK: From When Genius Failed to Lean In, 5 books that shaped Edelweiss AMC boss Radhika Gupta's beliefs

Over the years, I have learned to love checklists, especially in my CEO role. It is not about knowledge or ego, but just putting things down in a process, and following it to a T without missing steps. Any problem, no matter how complicated or complex, can be simplified with a checklist, and this book talks about how to build good checklists. Checklists inculcate discipline which is so important in work, and in your personal life, and they add value in any domain. I love the pilot example, the most famous checklist in the world, and this book is told with beautiful stories and examples!

The book every AMC head and investor must-read, and one that has inspired me to do a lot of sessions on how to become a better investor. I like that it talks about the fact that while we have biases as humans and take decisions in irrational ways, there are smart nudges that we can adopt that help us make good choices. There are countless examples to learn from—like the default option, making perpetual SIP the default in a SIP option, so that you don’t cancel SIPs because everyone chooses the default option. Framing is another powerful one, as is social influence—talking about how many people benefit from an idea. Nudges work well in any field from eating healthy to investing right to helping the environment!

This book is by young Wall Street analysts, that chronicles the failure of the hedge fund Long Term Capital Management. While the story is a page-turner, there are lots of lessons as a professional—especially about being humble and not letting success get to your head, respecting the market and being risk-oriented. There are also tremendous lessons for investors—about not being obsessed with a superstar culture or being wowed by big names, focusing on transparency and process when they invest, and not falling for stories. The book has tons of in-depth interviews, conversations, internal memos, and has the quality of fiction. It’s a great reminder that the market has something to teach you every day.

I don’t love self-help books, but this one spoke to me, in a way that very few books have. A must-read for all women trying to build a corporate career, and all for men, to understand those women better. There are some great personal lessons here—it is OK to be weak as a leader, you don’t have to have everything all the time, and most importantly, it’s important to have a great partner. I love that it is told with deeply personal stories and that it is one of the first books that goes out and says, that it is good for a woman to be ambitious, regardless of what the world says. It’s a brave book, about a topic rarely spoken about.