Nella Barkley’s Top 5 Influential Authors and Media Moguls

Our most recent “Smashing the Plateau” episode featured Nella Barkley, who helped us understand some of the challenges facing leaders and offered ways to combat them. (If you missed Nella, go back and listen here.)

Nella hasn’t weathered the storm alone. Here are three people who she says have been instrumental as sources of inspiration.

1. John Mackey

The CEO of Whole Foods has made some wonderfully refreshing points about so-called conscious capitalism. He asks people to consider the real point of their businesses. Our workplaces are just a collection of individuals, who we hope believe in the goals of the organization. Those goals need to be genuinely forward-facing for the work to run correctly.

2. Peter Drucker

I think we’re all indebted to Peter Drucker, whose writings and teachings are very much fundamental to good management – both for organizations and individuals. Peter Drucker knew that businesses needed to be about more than the money. As people, we also need to be about more than earning the money to pay the mortgage. We need to know what business we are in as people.

3. John Crystal

I didn’t find much success until I ran across John. He really evolved out of his own life system, which is what I wanted to do. It was proven right out of the shot. He was willing to let me build a business around what he knew, and to reduce to a crisper system some of the wonderful principles he put to work. That was the beginning to the Crystal-Barkley Corporation.