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.
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 Startup Owner's Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company
I’m a huge fan, believer, and engineer focused on systems design and analysis approaches. The Startup Owner’s Manual has been a go to resource for a systems thinking view of building an organization but I also believe improving one as well. The central tool of this method is the “Business Model Canvas” but it can just as easily be translated to “Organization Model Canvas” or even “Teaming Model Canvas” with a few tweaks in verbiage and format. I’ve coupled this tool with strategic analysis tools like SWOT and Market Analysis frameworks. It’s an incredibly rigorous, practical, and proven approach to design, prototype, implement, and improve your business model as you startup, scale, and mature your organization. I believe the canvas can be a central tool for organizational effectiveness consultants, consultants in general, General Managers, and Innovation focused leaders. The processes are clear but also the tools are visual, easily understand by wide audiences, and create a systems (broad and interconnected) view of how your organization meets it’s purpose and value proposition for it’s customers. This is a Top book of mine that I recommend probably the most often.
What Got You Here Won't Get You There
Marshall Goldsmith has done a great job in discussing the nature of success, professional development, and organizational dynamics of leadership development. In this classic, he describes 20 personality characteristics that become increasingly critical to overcome as one “climbs the ladder” of success in an organization beyond clear results and demonstrated skill sets in a particular subject matter or technical expertise. We all have heard about the “Peter Principle” where a common organizational dynamic is to promote people to the level of their incompetence and thus, negative impact on the organization and ultimately professional decline. This book will help you reflect on your own traits that may be in your way to better relationships and improved professional success but also help you view other professionals you work with through a systematic, researched, and easily understand model. I recommend this book for any professional but in particular any position requiring management and development of others, where relationships and interactions are keys to success, and for those interested in continuous self-improvement for a better personal and professional life.
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.
Running Lean: Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works
Ash Maurya does a splendid job in integrate Lean principles of continuous flow, waste elimination, and quality from the customers perspective (among other principles and methods) into the process of Product Development and Project Management. This book is often used as a more systematic and process oriented approach than other popular “Lean” books like “Lean Startup”. I used the process and method in product development and project management of my own and found it VERY useful to break down stages, prototype, and iterate, and work towards a novel and useful product from the customers perspective. I’d recommend this book for Entrepreneurs just starting out but also Project Managers, Change Agents, and Continuous Improvement folks as well.