Rhetoric, strategy, and change—right where you can reach them.
I end up reading a lot over the course of a year (178 titles read on my Kindle so far this year!).
Yes, part of that is because I’m in a doctoral program. But mostly, it’s because I’ve been obsessed with one topic for about 25 years: how people make the kind of meaning that leads to change and how we can shape messages that help them do so.
I’ve written before about the books I consider “required reading” for any Message Design bookshelf. This time, I want to share three new (or new-to-me) books that have really stayed with me over the last year—books I find myself citing, thinking about, and reaching for again and again.
Each one speaks to a different pillar of message design:
- How we use language
- How we think strategically
- How we create real, sustained change
Let’s start with language.
Quick shoutout to Owen Fitzpatrick, who put this one on my radar. If you’re not following his work on the psychology of belief and change, you should.
The full title is The Ancient Art of Thinking for Yourself: The Power of Rhetoric in Polarized Times. On the surface, it sounds like a mash-up of intellectual history and current events—and that’s exactly what it is.
This book weaves together:
- A history of rhetoric: how we’ve used words to influence and persuade
- An exploration of how our sources of “truth” are connected to language and how they’ve changed over time
- A look at how language is being used (and misused) in our current moment, up through the 2016 election
While a book about the history of rhetoric might sound a bit abstract, here’s why it matters for message design—and why it gave me something I didn’t expect: hope.
Reames shows that the misuse of language—to mislead, misinform, and manipulate—tends to follow a predictable cycle. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen truth distorted and weaponized. It’s happened before. Several times.
And each time, something else has followed—a counter-wave of people focused on:
- Making language easier to understand
- Encouraging critical and strategic thinking
- Teaching people how to recognize the tricks and misuses of language around them
If your work (like mine) is about creating the conditions for rapid changes of mind without coercion or manipulation, that’s huge. It reminds us that:
- Clear, honest language is not naive—it’s strategic.
- Teaching people how to think, not just what to think, is part of our responsibility.
- The work of message design is part of a much longer tradition of ethical rhetoric.
This book will make you think differently about the words you choose and the truth-claims your messages rest on. It’s not just “about rhetoric”; it’s about how we, as message designers, participate in shaping how people make meaning of the world around them.
The second book is by one of my professors at Columbia, Dr. Julia Sloan: Learning to Think Strategically (make sure you look for the fifth edition—I’ll tell you why in a second).
I see this book as a beautiful companion not only to The Ancient Art of Thinking for Yourself but also to the work of message design in general.
Here’s the idea that’s stuck with me the most…
Most of us use the word “strategy” as if it’s one thing. Dr. Sloan very clearly separates three distinct functions:
- Strategic thinking – Expanding options, surfacing assumptions, questioning “the way we’ve always done it,” and generating new possibilities.
- Strategic planning – Taking those possibilities and deciding what to do: selecting options, defining priorities, allocating resources.
- Strategic implementation – Putting those plans into action.
In her “Strategic Triangle” model, these three aren’t rigid stages in a straight line. They’re modes you move among:
- From implementation, you might realize you need to go back to thinking or revisit planning.
- From thinking, you might jump straight to action or pause to plan.
- From planning, you can go back up to expand your thinking or move forward into implementation.
Why does this matter for message design?
Because how often has someone told you, “We just need a strategy”—for your message, your campaign, your content, your launch?
Now you have better questions to ask:
- Do you want strategic thinking?
“Are we actually trying to expand our options and see the problem differently?” - Do you want strategic planning?
“Are we choosing among options and designing a plan?” - Do you want strategic implementation?
“Are we executing what’s already been decided?”
Each one requires different conversations, different tools, and yes, different parts of your brain.
One of my favorite definitions of strategy (not Dr. Sloan’s, but very compatible with her work) is this:
Strategy is a framework for decision-making.
You can’t build that framework if you don’t understand your underlying process for making decisions in the first place—your rationale. That’s where strategic thinking comes in… and it overlaps beautifully with our approach at the Message Design Institute, which is also about making those underlying rationales visible and usable.
Oh, and that fifth edition? It includes a whole chapter on AI—specifically, how AI influences all three aspects of Sloan’s strategic triangle model. If you’ve been wondering how to integrate AI into your strategic work without outsourcing your thinking to it, that chapter alone is worth the read.
The third book is The Science of Change: Discovering Sustained Desired Change from Individuals to Organizations and Communities by Dr. Richard Boyatzis.
If you love understanding what the research actually says about change, this is your book. If you prefer breezy storytelling, this may feel more like homework, because it reads very much like what it is: a comprehensive academic work, complete with citations and references.
But the content? It’s gold.
Boyatzis pulls together 50 years of research on transformational change—specifically, sustained, desired change:
- Sustained, meaning it lasts over time
- Desired, meaning the change is something people actually want
That “desired” part is critical. According to the research, desired change isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s a precondition for much sustained change.
Two ideas from this book are already reshaping how I talk about change:
Vision beats gap-closing.
Over and over, the research shows that establishing a positive future vision outperforms “closing the gap” (the distance between where we are and where we want to be).
That is big news for how we talk about change.
Because so often, we start here:
“We’re not where we want to be. Here’s what’s broken. Let’s go fix it.”
Instead, Boyatzis’ research suggests we should start here:
“Here’s the future we’re moving toward. Here’s what we’re building.”
He uses Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech as a classic example of vision that fuels sustained change.
Closer to home, I think of my friend Kate O’Neill, the “tech humanist,” who has set herself the goal of getting into 10,000 boardrooms to positively affect 10 billion people. That kind of vision is what sustains effort over time—for her and for the people who join her.
Positive vs. negative emotional activation.
The second big idea is about how different kinds of change activate different systems in our brains and bodies.
Very simplified, Boyatzis distinguishes between:
- Negative emotional affect – Fear, threat, “fix this or else,” fear of missing out, stress, urgency. This tends to trigger our automatic, defensive systems.
- Positive emotional affect – Hope, aspiration, excitement, connection to something meaningful. This engages very different systems and processes.
Change driven primarily by threat and fear can work—but the research shows it tends to produce unstable change. The change happens, but it doesn’t last. It’s easily overturned.
By contrast, when change is anchored in positive emotional activation, it produces more stable forms of change.
Again, that’s cause for hope.
It suggests that if we want durable change—whether in individuals, organizations, or communities—we need to design our messages (and our environments) to:
- Emphasize a compelling, desired future
- Engage people’s hopes and values
- Reduce reliance on fear, shame, or pure problem-fixing as the primary motivators
For those of us who care deeply about how people change their minds—and keep them changed—this book is a treasure trove.
Why these three belong together
On the surface, these books might seem quite different:
- One is about rhetoric and polarized times
- One is about the nature of strategy
- One is about how change actually works
But on a Message Design bookshelf, they sit right next to each other:
- Rhetoric gives us tools for using language to shape meaning.
- Strategic thinking helps us explore what we’re really doing and why.
- Change science tells us how people actually change—and how we can support change that lasts.
Together, they help us design messages that don’t just sound good or look good, but actually:
- Respect people’s agency
- Clarify our own thinking
- And create the conditions for sustained, desired change
Those are my three best book recommendations for your Message Design bookshelf in 2025.
Now I’d love to know:
What’s on your Message Design bookshelf right now?
Hit reply and tell me:
- A book that’s changed how you think about communication, strategy, or change
- Or a book you wish more people in your field would read
I can’t wait to learn from you.