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.
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.
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.