To celebrate World Book Day, we invited a select group of leaders and experts from across the industry to reflect on the transformative power of the written word. We asked them to look beyond data and strategy and share the stories that shaped their thinking and the pages they return to for inspiration. In this special feature, Archana Roche, Global Head Measurement and Analytics, Truecaller, offers a personal glimpse into her literary journey—revealing the books that serve as a compass in both life and leadership. Read on.
Archana’s reflection:
One book that’s had an impact on me: The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. I read it fairly young, and I’ve always held on to that idea of having conviction in your own thinking: that your work and decisions come from a place of clarity, not constant validation, and that you don’t always need consensus to know you’re on the right track.
A quote I connect with: “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” —Gandalf, The Fellowship of the Ring
What reading means to me: It’s one of the few things that doesn’t demand output. There’s no dashboard, no conclusion you need to arrive at. There’s something very grounding about that.
A book that I would recommend is: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
I’d recommend it not just for the humour, but for how there’s a line of thinking in the book that the answer to life can exist and still be meaningless if you don’t know the right question.
In a world that’s constantly chasing answers, whether in data, business, or life, it’s a quiet reminder that we might sometimes be solving very precisely for the wrong things.
