Winner
From Founder to Future: A Business Roadmap to Impact, Longevity, and Employee Ownership
John Abrams
From Founder to Future is helping small business owners to make succession plans that include less well-known options: the various forms of employee ownership. There are approximately three million American small businesses with employees whose founder(s) are over 55. In each of these, a transition will occur as owners age out during the coming years. Those who advise small business owners – accountants, attorneys, financial planners, business brokers, and succession consultants – are mostly unaware of the different employee ownership options. From Founder to Future brings these into focus. As well as nuts-and-bolts information, the book provides stories of exemplary companies to help owners visualize and internalize the benefits of conversion to employee ownership.
Winner
People Do Change: How to Turn Reluctance into Confidence Using Human-Centric Change Management
Elisabeth White
People Do Change by Elisabeth White is the first comprehensive field guide to human-centric change management for modern leaders. White makes a case against the traditional models of change management and why they no longer work in today's complex corporate landscape. She teaches about the core principles of human-centric change management with practical applications to successfully implement lasting change.
Finalist
Radical Doubt: Turning Uncertainty into Surefire Success
Bidhan L Parmar
Radical Doubt helps readers transform uncertainty from something paralyzing into something powerful. Rather than offering quick fixes or rigid frameworks, the book provides a practical, research-backed approach to navigating the moments in life and leadership when no option feels clearly right. Through relatable stories, cutting-edge social science, and tools rooted in real-world decision-making, Dr. Bidhan Parmar teaches readers how to slow down, reflect, and move forward with clarity—even when stakes are high and answers are elusive. It’s not about eliminating doubt, but learning how to work with it—so you can make better, wiser choices in your personal life, career, and relationships. Whether you're deciding how to handle a toxic high performer at work, whether to leave a job for something uncertain, how to speak up when your values are at odds with your team’s, or how to manage competing commitments in your personal life—Radical Doubt helps you choose with integrity. It equips you
Finalist
The CX Imperative: Five Strategic Practices for Renewal of the Customer-Centered Enterprise
Jeff Rosenberg
Mark Fithian
The CX Imperative offers business leaders a clear, actionable framework for embedding customer experience (CX) into the strategic core of their organization. Rather than treating CX as a siloed initiative or surface-level tactic, authors Mark Fithian and Jeff Rosenberg—seasoned CX consultants—position it as the key to sustainable growth, cross-functional alignment, and long-term value creation. Drawing from decades of experience with Fortune 500 clients, they identify a pervasive issue in modern enterprises: the “Great Distancing” from customers. This book challenges that drift and provides five strategic practices that help organizations reconnect with the people they serve. Its innovation lies in bridging high-level strategy with operational practicality, showing leaders how to scale customer-centricity across teams, systems, and culture. In a crowded field of CX literature, The CX Imperative stands out as both a wake-up call and a roadmap for organizations ready to make customer exp