This book is a great reference and overview of the nuts and bolts of general project management. It’s content structure is pretty dry and repetitive as it’s focus is on a systematic structure of PM, PM organizations, Processes, and tools. This book will not provide detailed templates (references abound though) as well as provides cursory overviews of key areas like scheduling modeling, Risk Management, and other areas that could use less DESCRIPTIVE content and more PRESCRIPTIVE content. I bought the Kindle Version with the accompanying Agile Practice Guide (same price on Amazon, WAY better deal than PMBOK alone), which both avoid the bad reviews about the paper version and its legibility and poor paper materials. I’d definitely recommend this as a clear reference for Industrial Engineers, Project Managers, and Continuous Improvement professionals but I’d seek elsewhere for details and templates if thats what you’re looking for.
The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less
Have you ever been overwhelmed by the number of options and choices you have for one single decision? What about a seemingly endless stream of choices and options? What about always feeling regret and anxiety after finally making a choice and taking action? In Paradox of Choice author Barry Schwartz explores the psychology of choice from an economic, professional, and personal perspective. Backed up by research, this book uses a model of “types of choice makers” - Satisficers and Optimizers, each having it’s positive attributes but also, when in the extreme, can result in significant psychological impairments. I’ve experienced plenty of the symptoms this book describes but I’ve also seen it play out as I raise my children. They’re overwhelmed by choice ALL THE TIME that we as parents and society impose upon them. This book was an eye opener from a personal level but also as a professional in continuous improvement, management, and engineering. Being deliberate and well thought out when presenting alternatives and choices for decision makers will much more beneficial for everyone in the long run if they are trimmed down, paced, and crafted in appropriate ways. This book will help you identify your own choice making attributes, those in others, as well as how to step back from feeling overwhelmed or overwhelming others with choice. I recommend this book extensively to parents, managers, marketers, consultants, engineers, and UW Philosophy Department professors and graduate students.
Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance
Competitive Advantage is another classic from the great Michael Porter. This book is more internal and organizational focused than Competitive Strategy and provides the reader a rigorous and well thought out method for understanding the core of your advantage as an organization. He gets down to the simple truths of competitive advantage in this work. In the age of endless business school, executive, and consulting jargon on whatever dressed up version of technology, methods or tools are claimed to be competitive advantage, Porter will dispel all the myths for you and provide you a clear and cogent understand of the structure of your organization and how it delivers value in a sustainable and effective way. I recommend this book for leaders, strategy analysts, organizational effectiveness consultants, and also continuous improvement professionals. It is actually a great accompaniment to the “Value Stream Mapping” approach that will expand on that method and tool set to an organization wide and financial model point of view.
Value Proposition Design: How to Create Products and Services Customers Want
This book is an essential component of a three part collection of the Startup Owners Manual and Business Model Generation. I’m reviewing this book first because it is the most widely applicable to varying roles and endeavors in the world of business and organizational development. Value Proposition Design provides a systematic and proven method to design, prototype, develop, and improve your value proposition from a product or service perspective. I’ve used this method and it’s toolkit extensively in my consultations, collaborations, as well as my pro-bono consulting work helping to improve local non-profit value propositions. This book helps you deconstruct and reconstruct your customers “Pains, Gains, and Job’s to be Done” by accompanying and addressing them with “Pain Alleviators, Gain Generators, and Products/Services”. I’ve used this method when designing new processes, services, and products in higher education, outdoor product development, business process design and improvement, and community health services organizations. I believe it helps do really get deep into the details of effectively and successfully serving your customers needs. It’s as close to an engineered approach I’ve seen but with a central component of relationship development and psychology as well. I recommend this book for change agents, continuous improvement experts, product developers, entrepreneurs, and leaders wanting to have deep insight into their customers, from the CUSTOMERS perspective (central to Lean thinking).
The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter
The First 90 Days is a classic to me at this point. It’s rigorous, deep, and planned approach to transitions and getting up to speed is applicable in any new role or assignment you may get. It’s not just for Leadership, as is often thought, but rather for anyone that takes on new projects or roles regularly. It’s for those who want a systematic and proven approach to analyzing an organization, identifying key relationships to develop, what position the organization is in and how to identify early wins as well as long term strategic focus areas to both deliver quick, position results to an organization but also secure your position as essential to success. The central notion is that the “value extracting” period of a new position should be 90 days or less, with the following 90 days of “value adding” to be large in scale to achieve “break even” for the organization within 180 days. That’s 1/4 the average time for “ramping up” in an organization of 2 years. Talk about a serious way to achieve professional and organizational success if all personnel (leadership, managers, individual contributors) planned for and executed rapid transition and integration plans like Watkins showcases here. If it isn’t clear enough yet, The First 90 Days is for any reader excited, interested, and committed to quick development and transitions for adding immense value to their organization and themselves as well.
90 Days to Success in Consulting
This book, along with Consultants Bible, is one of my go to sources of detailed information about starting and running a consulting practice. Additionally, it contains many lessons learned and industry statistics to bring some realism and focus into your planning and operations. This book is a great “Nuts and Bolts” book for aspiring and current consultants, entrepreneurs, and change agents as well as many of the lessons are directly applicable to that more “internal consultant” type of work.
The Consulting Bible: Everything You Need to Know to Create and Expand a Seven-Figure Consulting Practice
Alan Weiss is an extensively published author and consultant and has made it to the “Celebrity” status level of the consulting world. This book is choc full for detail, models, and processes on how to approach starting and improving your consulting practice. This book isn’t the End All - Be All book but I think it should be on any Change Agent, Continuous Improvement, and Project Managers reading list to get a broad view of what it means to be a Thought Leader and sought after for your skills, insights, and relationship development abilities.