'Playful: How play shifts our thinking, inspires connection and sparks creativity', by Cas Holman

The idea of playing at work smacks of enforced fun.

Such cringing attitudes are familiar to Cas Holman, a toy designer and professor who works with executives at Nike, Google, Lego and Disney Imagineering. Yet as she points out in her new book, Playful, no culture in the world does not play, and studies in rats show it is innate.

Adults typically only tend to play when helped by sports, video games, booze and sex. While she is not down on any of those activities (in fact, she makes a strong case for being playful and experimental in bed), Holman wants people to also play without the help of competition or structured gaming because "internally motivated, judgment-free exploration . . . sparks creativity, connection, and wellbeing."

Holman runs workshops to encourage participants to "see one another anew and recharge their innovative spirit." She hopes that as a byproduct, "they have a moment where they reconnect with play." Typically at the end of sessions, people lament losing this fun from their lives. "People say: You are wasting time daydreaming. You're making jokes when you should be serious or productive," Holman writes. "Why is being silly a bad thing? Could silly be a tool to cope? Or daydreaming be a break for an overscheduled brain?"

Psychologists such as Teresa Amabile have found that creativity flourishes when it is not rewarded but rather done for intrinsic reasons. While play in business is a recurring topic, Playful's selling point is less on the case for it, but rather the small ways to incorporate it in everyday life. Emma Jacobs

From doctors to office managers and university researchers, seemingly every profession falls victim to unnecessary meetings, trainings, report writing and other schemes that get in the way of "real" productivity. We "do more and more, but get less and less done", write Mats Alvesson and André Spicer in this exploration of "organisational sludge".

Their book offers ways to create more effective organisations by casting aside tasks and functions that get in the way of meaningful work. Often there are "virtuous" goals behind the sludge, from boosting transparency to cost savings. But the outcomes can be less desirable -- overwhelm, slow progress, diverted resources and waste of cognitive bandwidth.

Organisations, they write, can get caught in "cycles of sludge" as attempts to reduce the burden spawn more directives, rules and policies that clog up systems and get in the way of people prioritising the things that really matter. Managers need to act as "corporate plumbers" to spot toxic substances before they create problems, remove blockages once they occur and protect the end user. The focus, they say, should be on "results not rules".

While this may be true, anyone who works in a large organisation knows change is harder to implement. Sludge often protects power as much as it impedes progress. The push to cut things that seem wasteful -- that weekly team meeting, for example -- also risks losing something else, like informal, relaxed time that connects colleagues.

Part management manual, part cultural critique, The Art of Less joins a growing canon urging us to do fewer things better. Whether that message can cut through real-world bureaucracy and the "technosludge" is another matter. Anjli Raval

Alex Schultz, CMO and VP of analytics at Meta, has written what may become a defining handbook of digital marketing. In Click Here, he distils two decades of experience at eBay and Facebook into a clear and comprehensive guide to growth in the internet age.

Part memoir, part manual, the book aims to demystify 21st-century marketing, a craft Schultz describes as "part art, part science". His central message is that growth is not luck but discipline. Through examples ranging from small businesses to Meta's global campaigns, he explains how clarity of goals and relentless experimentation drive meaningful results.

The book moves methodically through the marketing funnel. Early chapters focus on the basics; later sections explore how AI and privacy regulation are reshaping the landscape.

Schultz's tone is pragmatic and underpinned by his conviction that marketing is a force for good. He defends it as a discipline that connects people to what they value and sustains economic growth -- a refreshing stance in an era of scepticism about big tech.

Click Here stand outs out for its mix of technical rigour and moral clarity. It is less about chasing the next trend and more about understanding timeless principles that endure through disruption. Whether you are a start-up founder, CMO or simply curious about what makes the internet tick, this is the new manual about the power of online digital marketing. Leo Cremonezi

This handbook on governing artificial intelligence offers a broad overview of a transformative class of emerging technologies. Ray Eitel-Porter of Accenture, Paul Dongha of NatWest Group, and Miriam Vogel of consultancy EqualAI guide readers through the array of risks awaiting businesses that use chatbots, machine learning systems and other AI tools.

Governing the Machine, which also surveys the patchwork of global AI regulation, advises businesses to get a handle on responsible AI use, noting the advantages for groups that use it well and the perils to those that lag behind. It is a helpful starting point for mastering the dizzying vocabulary of AI governance, from preventing hallucination and confabulation to hiring security experts for model red-teaming, and the difference between human-in-the-loop and human-in-control systems.

The authors hint at some of the knotty questions posed by the technology's rapid spread, ranging from hiring discrimination and intellectual property theft to the vast water and energy demands of data centres. Readers are encouraged that happy outcomes can be achieved, provided "organisational buy-in" and "multi-stakeholder engagement", although the writers warn establishing comprehensive governance programmes could take up to two years at large companies.

Bullet pointed lists note responsible use of the technology will require, for example, "safeguarding against danger to human life, health, property or the environment, including through enhanced risk of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons", and "minimising the negative impact of AI on employment." These handy compliance tips, however, would seem to assume the very points at issue. While the book provides a wealth of case studies, it's not clear that its suggestions are all, as it were, "actionable". Lee Harris

A world run on Wikipedian principles would be a better, less polarised place. At least that is what the online encyclopedia's founder suggests in this short book about the values on which his experiment in mass intellectual collaboration is based.

Wikipedia's success is mind-boggling. As of early 2025, the English version alone carried 7mn articles (Encyclopaedia Britannica's printed version used to contain 75,000) and in a single month attracted 11bn page views. When comparisons were run with other encyclopedias, reports used to say Wikipedia had turned out to be "surprisingly accurate". Wales notes that the site's "quality ceased to be surprising long ago."

For Wales, this all comes down to trust, which he rightly judges to be faltering in today's divided world. His overarching message is that "to build trust, you must not only convince others you will do what you are supposed to do. You must do it". Buttressing this are his seven "rules", from "make it personal" to "be transparent". They are as applicable to business as to politics and society, Wales writes, and, in a slightly rushed final section, he extols a variety of trust-based projects, such as citizens' assemblies, that could help narrow the trust gap.

With its emphasis on purpose, civility, inclusion and diversity, the book reads like a manifesto from 2024, before the Trump administration rode roughshod over such concepts. The US president comes off lightly -- neutrality is core to Wikipedia, after all. Elon Musk is roasted, however, for perverting the principle that editors and contributors should "assume good faith" and for slating the site as a left-leaning "Wokepedia".

"Diversity isn't a word that gets a lot of love in Musk's circles," writes Wales, "but . . . diversity in its full sense -- not just demographic diversity but also intellectual diversity -- is precisely what makes open-source projects like Wikipedia work best." Andrew Hill

Business books: What to read this month