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.
Beyond Heroes: A Lean Management System for Healthcare
Told from the perspective of President of Thedacare, Kim Barnas, this book covers the history and tactics of the Thedacare Lean Health Systems Transformation during the early 2000’s. Now considered lore on second only to Toyota’s own cultural transformation as it developed and improved the Toyota Production System, this journey for Thedacare is a great introduction to lean basics, cultural transformation, and some simple tactical tools that are lynchpins in a culture change to a people (patient/customer/provider) centric healthcare model in which problem solving is the centerpiece of the business and continuous improvement mindsets and results are pervasive across the organization (horizontally and vertically). Having come from aerospace and manufacturing, I found this easy read a refreshing reminder of lean tactics and principles but also a very useful exploration of continuous improvement, culture transformation, and lean in a VERY different industrial sector. I recommend this book for any healthcare professional but also for anyone in continuous improvement, no matter the industry.
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
This is the book that I say to myself “I SHOULD HAVE WRITTEN THAT!!!”. McKeown does a great job in distilling timeless principles like Pareto’s 80/20 Rule as well as newer fundamentals like Theory of Constraints, into a digestible and practicable set of principles that anyone can use in their daily and work life. This book has been out for a while and I continue to see it and the author referenced alongside other books like Checklist Manifesto, 4 Hour Work Week, and other easy reads for entrepreneurs and productivity focused people. I recommend this book for any professional seeking a set of principles by which to focus their work and lives on what’s truly essential (vs. focusing on efficiency - doing the wrong thing super well is a waste!).
Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right
Atul Gawande’s book The Checklist Manifesto is fast becoming a classic and for good reason. He lays out his own journey to using checklists in the medical world to save lives and prevent errors. This book has been used widely since it’s publication and for one, in Boeing for developing training and flight manuals for pilots. I see it as the very foundation of Standard Work and design, implementing, and improving checklists in a variety of processes, not just critical to safety ones, can make or break a process and an organization. I recommend this book for all leaders, managers, continuous improvement professionals, entrepreneurs, and especially for people in the healthcare professions as one of the simplest intro’s to Lean and standard work without being overtly about those subjects.
The 4-Hour Chef: The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life
This is one of Tim Ferriss’s classic “4-Hour” series. On it’s surface (cover) it appears its a book all about how to get to be a pretty dang good chef and a wicked short amount of time. From his own words, the “chef” part is merely the lens through which Tim is describing, distilling, and disseminating rapid learning techniques and tools. This book is long but choc full of simple tools, tactics, and strategies to learn a new subject with speed, depth, and a significant level of understanding. I recommend this book to anyone interested in continuous learning but who also has a desire to do so productively and with just the right amount of depth to be effective.
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.
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
Dr. Cialdini does a great job in describing the fundamental components of our psychology and neurology that result in characteristics that influence how we’re persuaded to take action and change our behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs. His 6 Principles of Persuasion are: Reciprocity, Scarcity, Authority, Consistency, Liking, and Consensus. In each chapter on these principles, he relates research, real world examples, and his own personal experiences with being knowingly and unknowingly persuaded by these or a mixture of these tactics. I found this book VERY helpful in understanding my own psychology and susceptibility to persuasion but also what I can do to divert or at least be much more aware of when these principles are being used directly or through advertising on me. These are just fundamental human characteristics and not “bad” in and of themselves, it’s on bad when unethical or devious intents and outcomes are sought. I recommend this book for all leaders, managements, change agents, continuous improvement professionals and for those interested in psychology, cognitive biases, and marketing.
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.
Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers
Business Model Generation is the third book in a collection of interrelated works (not all the same authors) of Startup Owners Manual and Value Proposition Design, all focused on innovation, business model design and development, the Business (or Organization) Model Canvas, and Value Proposition Design. This book is a deeper dive into examples of a wide variety of business models and a wide ranging exploration of the various ways these companies innovated their products, services, and business models to continuously pursue excellence but also better serve their customers in the end. I recommend this book for essential reading of entrepreneurs and product developers, but also participants in the startup world, organizational effectiveness consultants and leaders, and Innovation focused professionals.
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.
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.
Getting Past No: Negotiating in Difficult Situations
Getting Past No is a book fit for any negotiator, manager, business owner, or change agent. It’s 1 in a 3 part series by William Ury focusing on the various dynamics of negotiation and common to mutually beneficial agreements. I found Ury’s method approachable, systematic, and complete for overcoming the “No” in a negotiation but not necessarily Getting to Yes which is the title of one of the other book in the series! The “no” dynamic as well as the various constraints, roadblocks, and mindsets have a fundamentally different dynamic than one already working towards an agreement. I felt this book was packed with good examples, thorough in its explanations of psychology, but with a methodology that, with practice, could be a useful tool in your toolbox.
Training Within Industry: The Foundation of Lean
This book is in the Top 10 Books of Continuous Improvement but most Lean, Six Sigma, Theory of Constraints, Agile, or whatever other flavor you want to pick, even among Industrial & Systems Engineers, wouldn’t know it! This book is rich in the history of continuous improvement, job methods and training, and program development, but also delivers practical, clear, concise, and proven methods. Training Within Industry is a little known organization that grew after World War I but was essential to the Allie’s winning World War II. It’s fundamental purpose was to design training and continuous improvement methods to ramp up the US production capacity and throughput to deliver much needs armament and supplies to the war fighters. What they did was nothing short of amazing, on the order of the Manhattan Project in my opinion, as it set the trajectory of the US to become the sole powerhouse of manufacturing in the world for decades to come. They trained millions of workers, across every conceivable industry, to design better work processes, train people in them, and improve them but also build sustainable programs in their organizations to continue on. I recommend this book for every Industrial and Systems Engineer, Continuous Improvement Expert, Manufacturing and Operations Managers, and Trainers of all kinds. You won’t be disappointed.
On Change Management from Harvard Business Review's "10 Must Reads"
As with Harvard Business Reviews “On Strategy”, “On Change Management” is a rich resource and primer in the area of organizational change management. The variety of authors bring a broad yet deep background in the field to provide the reader with articles that have prescriptive as well as descriptive components. This book provides a pragmatic understanding of the subject matter but also provides the readers with systematic, tests and proven methods for successful change management. As with “On Strategy” many of these authors have since published books built from the core principles laid out in these articles. A must read for human resources professionals, continuous improvement experts, change agents, leaders, and anyone seeking to understand human and organizational psychology and how to get from current state to a brighter future.