Episode · Lenny's Podcast · 2026-03-22
Lenny Rachitsky & Jessica Fain: books mentioned on Lenny's Podcast
The art of influence: The single most important skill that AI can’t replace | Jessica Fain (Webflow, ex-Slack)
Jessica Fain is a product leader at Webflow and former Chief of Staff to the CPO at Slack, where she worked alongside April Underwood and many past podcast guests including Stewart Butterfield, Annie Pearl, Tamar Yehoshua, and Noah Weiss.
Jessica Fain recommended Switch by Chip Heath and others, Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, A History of Burning by Janika Oza, and The Overstory by Richard Powers.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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Switch
Recommended“one of my favorite well actually one of the only business books I've ever liked is called Switch. Uh it's about change management and they talk a lot about shrinking the change”
Where to get it
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Pachinko
Recommended“I love this book uh Pachenko that tells the history of um a Korean family over several generations. And in one of the generations sort of in the 1600s, 1700s, there are two wives”
Where to get it
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Homegoing
Recommended“Uh, Pachinko does this with a family in Korea over generations and moving to Japan. Uh, there's a book called Homegoing, which is about the west coast of Africa and the impact of the slave trade”
Where to get it
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A History of Burning
Recommended“history of burning is a is a book that tells a story of um Indian indentured servants that were brought to Uganda to build the um British railroad there. Um, and just parts of history that I was so much less familiar with”
Where to get it
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The Overstory
Recommended“I think the book overstory is an example that. Have you heard of that? No, I haven't. I think I might be getting it wrong, but it's called overstory, which is around it's a concept of uh when you have a big tree”
Where to get it
