This book is truly a tome of Strategic Analysis and Strategy in general but it is also an incredible guide and reference for ongoing work. Michael Porter is considered the Grandfather of Strategy and Strategic Analysis in the 21st century. His various works are considered, in some form or another, as required reading in any MBA course on Strategy and leadership. I was first exposed in my Master’s of Science program at Purdue, through their partnership with Thunderbird School of Global Management. His article, included in Harvard Business Reviews “Top 10 Must Reads” On Strategy, titled “What is Strategy?” merely glosses the surface. Porter my brother as an Industrial & Systems Engineer by another Mother as this book is a thorough “systems thinking” analysis and framework of industry’s, markets, business structures, and ultimately understanding their evolution as well as where the profit (and power) currently resides in a market and where it is likely to reside in the future. I recommend this book for anyone seriously interested in the foundations of Strategic Thinking but also Industrial & Systems Engineers, Innovation Leaders and Leaders in General, as well as entrepreneurs looking to have a framework from which to understand the current and long term structure of their industries.
Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction
Tetlock and Gardner have created an endlessly entertaining but deeply practical work in Superforecasting. They each cover the fields of psychology, political science, and journalism and describe in detail the results of their analysis of historical research as well as applied experimentation to uncover what truly are the characteristics of people that can predict aspects of the future to a remarkable degree of accuracy, the timeframes predictions usually stay relevant, what makes for bad predictions, and what are the cognitive characteristics that defy common perspectives and use of so called “experts” in any given field. This book is a great read to understand our current time of endless “Talking Head Analysts” on cable television doling out political, financial, and other various forms of predictions but also as a useful guide in strategy planning, future forecasting, and risk management. I recommend this book for people generally interested in psychology and cognitive biases, but also to leaders, strategic planners, and innovators as well.
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 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.
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).
Who: The A Method for Hiring
Who: The A Method for hiring is a well thought out, practical, validated approach to developing a robust people process focused on hiring top talent in a systematic, focused, and ultimately, long term success focused way. Smart and Street take the lessons learned from the largest research study of it’s kind at the time to help solve one of the never ending challenges of owning, operating, and managing an organization and that is finding, retaining, and developing top talent. I’ve shared this book with entrepreneur peers, managers I know, business owners I’ve consulted for, and many others I interact with that have faced the challenge of finding and retaining top talent. Sadly, I find many small to medium sized business have ad hoc and non-standard ways they approach searching for, interviewing, selecting, hiring, onboarding, and training new talent in their organizations. This costs a huge amount of time, productivity, and ultimately money, but results in dissatisfied managers, new hires, and existing employees. This book is highly readable and is practical in its methods. I recommend this book for leaders, managers, project managers, and HR professionals looking for a thorough and well researched method for hiring great people.
Development As Freedom
Nobel Prize winning Economist Amartrya Sen produced a timeless work on Economic Development with lessons that can be applied to raising children, developing and leading organizations, and tackling some of the most challenging development issues of our time. Sen creates a framework from which to view freedom and development as a focus on developing capabilities for individuals, communities, entire nations, and ultimately the human race. Drawing on ancient wisdom, political history and theory, economics, and practical experience, he paints a broad yet deep picture to both understand the theory but also practice development as freedom. I recommend this book for those interested and practicing economic development in the world but also for those volunteering in their local communities and schools who want to expand their understanding of human rights and fundamental freedoms.
Leadership on the Line, With a New Preface: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Change
Leadership On the Line is one of those books built from an original article in the Harvard Business Review but is also in their “Top 10 Must Reads” on Change Management. Heifetz and Linksy describe in detail various hazards of leadership in change, both with theory and real life examples they use from their extensive research, and then what are proven methods to overcome and live through times of change as a leader. I enjoy any book that blends research, real world examples, and a system developed from both that research and real world example, and then even to then continuously validate it with consultation and improvement, that’s the whole improvement cycle right there applied to leadership! I recommend this book for all leaders and change agents practicing leadership and looking to expand their understand of leadership principles in times of strife and change.
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.
Trives: We Need You To Lead Us
In true Seth Godin style, he captures an angle and an underlying substructure into leadership, marketing, content creation, and followership, and makes it an understanding and tactical philosophy and method. He takes Networked Leadership and helps the reader understand that if one is truly a leader, with an idea, message, or motto, that their is likely a Tribe of other interested people out there waiting for a leader. However, this book is also a rich insight into organizations, team work, leadership, and management as well. It can provide many institutional roles a way to understand how people work and think together in pursuits of interests, passions, and common goals. This is in my Top 10 for marketing and content/product creation for sure.
How Will You Measure Your Life?
Clayton Christensen, more well known for his book Innovators Dilemma, writes clearly and with personal passion, about how he transferred his knowledge of what’s been successful in the business world into how he could be more successful and impactful in his personal and professional endeavors. He translates concepts like vision, mission, strategy, and tactics into how to envision, pursue, and adjust ones pursuits according to what one really wants out of life and work. This book played an important part in my own life, transitioning out of the Boeing Company, as well as pursuing the consulting model of “Life & Business Transitions” at Next Callings. I recommend this book for people of all disciplines and positions as well as mindsets.
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.
Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae
Steven Pressfield does an amazing job displaying the figures and historical significance of this pivotal battle in Western History. I was completely drawn into the book, it’s imagery, and prosaic style. I have many more of Pressfield’s books on my future reading list!
The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility
Stewart Brand is one of the greatest thinkers of our time. Founder of the Whole Earth Catalog and the author of a host of other design and futurist oriented books, the Clock of the Long Now is a book fit for anyone seeking to understand underlying structures in our thinking, technology, and how those play out in the evolution of our societies. This book is great to understand some of the inherent drawbacks of the way we’ve pursued technological development, potential pathways for solutions, but also for a great exploration of Strategic Thinking in general, especially as it relates to design and societal ramifications of our technology. I recommend this book for techies but also for anyone wishing to expand their strategic thinking reading into a clear, outcomes oriented thought experiments.
Talk Like TED: The 9 Top Public Speaking Secrets of the World's Top Minds
Talk Like TED is one of several Story Telling and Presentations oriented books I read a while back. It’s 9 Lessons for public speaking and storytelling are useful in any industry, in any stage of organizational growth or challenges, for ANY employee - manager, leader, or individual contributor. It’s a lesson on psychology, empathy, communication, and clarity of thought. I recommend this book to wide audiences hoping to create communications that will achieve their desired results of getting through to your listeners (customers, employees, etc.) and having them walk away with a clear understanding of your message but also inspired to take action.
The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
Author, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist Ben Horowitz does a great job in recounting and distilling many tough lessons he learned FIRST HAND as a startup entrepreneur, developer, and manager. The book is told from his first person perspective, historically, of the challenges, dilemmas, and outcomes from his long history in the tech startup world. The questions he faced and poses to the reader will help you to understand these seemingly impossible circumstances, how to navigate through them, communicate to key stakeholders, but also come through the experiences having learned a great deal no matter what. I recommend this book for any entrepreneurs, managers, as well as employees that want to understand more deeply the true life experiences at the top of major companies and that it’s definitely not as easy as many people would think it is.
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.
Making Sense of People: Decoding the Mysteries of Personality
Author and researcher Samuel Barondes does an amazing job in this seminal work on personality and psychology. After much research, analysis, and collaboration, he and his colleagues formulated the OCEAN model for personality traits - Openness, Conscientiousness, Empathy, Agreeableness, Neuroticism. This model is widely used in ways you may not even be aware of. I found it a great addition to my readings on psychology, personality, leadership, and self-development. With useful examples of well known people as well as historical events, Barondes helps the reader to grasp not only their own various traits but also explore how this model can help them understand to better interact with others with a different mixture of traits. While I personally believe “All Models Are Wrong, Some Are Useful” (George Box), this model is incredibly useful with a vast research base and empirical evidence to support its formulation. I’d recommend this book for any Manager, Change Agent, Team Member, or anyone else interested in a useful model to understand themselves a little more.