Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace
by Gordon MacKenzie
This book is about maintaining creativity within bureaucratic environments. Gordon MacKenzie worked as an artist at Hallmark Cards for 30 years, culminating in a role titled Corporate Paradox.
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The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization
by Peter M. Senge
Senge writes, “I believe that, the prevailing system of management is, at its core, dedicated to mediocrity. It forces people to work harder and harder to compensate for failing to tap the spirit and collective intelligence that characterizes working together at their best.”
The subtitle is about the learning organization, but the book is also very much about systems thinking.
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The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work
by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer
“Inner work life influences people’s performance on four dimensions: creativity, productivity, work commitment, and collegiality… Inner work life matters for companies because, no matter how brilliant a company’s strategy might be, the strategy’s execution depends on great performance by people inside the organization.”
“To a great extent, inner work life rises and falls with progress and setbacks in the work. This is the progress principle and, although it may be most obvious on the best and worst days at work, it operates every day.”
The Progress Principle is the result of primary research by two psychologists who studied 238 knowledge workers from 26 teams in 7 companies representing 3 industries over the course of a team project—generally about 4 months. Participants submitted daily diary forms to the researchers confidentially. The authors cite some positive and negative scenarios, using pseudonyms to disguise the individuals and their employers.
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Excellence Now: Extreme Humanism
by Tom Peters
Nearly 40 years after the publication of the über-bestseller In Search of Excellence, Tom Peters has written his 19th book. His insights on organizational effectiveness (and dysfunction) are as relevant as ever.
“In In Search of Excellence, we defined Excellence in terms of long-term performance. But that begs a/the question. How do you achieve that long-term super-effectiveness? … Excellence is not an ‘aspiration.’ Excellence is not a ‘hill to climb.’ Excellence is the next five minutes.”
Given that Peters has two engineering degrees, an MBA, and a PhD in business, you might be surprised by his findings. “Enterprise excellence is about just two things: People. Service. Excellence = Service. Service to one’s teammates, service to one’s customers and vendors, service to our communities.”
Continue reading “Excellence Now: Extreme Humanism”An interview with Mark C. Crowley
author of Lead from the Heart:
Transformational Leadership for the 21st Century
December 16, 2020 — 63 minutes — Book Review — Amazon
Transcript
Continue reading “An interview with Mark C. Crowley, author of Lead from the Heart”
Eat, Sleep, Innovate: How to Make Creativity an Everyday Habit Inside Your Organization
by Scott D. Anthony, Paul Cobban, Natalie Painchaud, Andy Parker
My grandfather used to tell me I was full of beans when I was being rambunctious. In contrast, this book is full of BEANS—behavior enablers, artifacts, and nudges—which are ways to encourage a new behavior.
The book is about developing a culture of innovation—not just for engineers and scientists, but throughout the organization. Three of the co-authors are with Innosight, a consulting firm co-founded by Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen (1952-2020), who wrote The Innovator’s Dilemma. Paul Cobban is Chief Data and Transformation Officer at DBS Bank, the largest bank in Singapore. Continue reading “Eat, Sleep, Innovate”
Authentic Leadership: Rediscovering the Secrets to Creating Lasting Value
by Bill George
Former Medtronic chairman and CEO Bill George wrote this book following a series of corporate scandals, including Enron, Sunbeam, Tyco, and Worldcom—just to name a few. These companies imploded because management was fixated on maximizing short-term shareholder value.
To paraphrase my favorite line in the book: you are running a business, not a stock. That said, the compound annual growth rate of Medtronic split-adjusted stock price was 28.5% during George’s 12-year tenure, according to my calculations. Not too shabby!
The first part of the book deals with the character, values, and sense of purpose required to inspire employees. George also shares his wisdom and personal experiences regarding customers, quality, market share, growth, innovation, acquisitions, FDA approval delays, Wall Street analysts, and corporate governance. Continue reading “Authentic Leadership”
Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency
by Tom DeMarco
Slack is an outstanding management book full of wisdom about corporate culture, change, failure, learning, quality, risk management, productivity, and managing people.
“You can’t grow if you can’t change at all.” Slack is “the lubricant of change… Slack represents operational capacity sacrificed in the interests of long-term health… Learning to think of it that way (instead of as waste) is what distinguishes organizations that are ‘in business’ from those that are merely busy.”
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Rethinking Risk Management: Critically Examining Old Ideas and New Concepts
by Rick Nason
Rick Nason challenges the status quo of risk management which mindlessly follows third-party frameworks and does too little independent thinking. He argues that risk management acts as “The Department of No” while ignoring upside risk. He envisions risk management as a strategic player in value creation rather than a cost center. Continue reading “Rethinking Risk Management: Critically Examining Old Ideas and New Concepts”
The Soft Edge: Where Great Companies Create Lasting Success
by Rich Karlgaard
It is noteworthy that a prominent business journalist from Silicon Valley—where technology and IPOs dominate headlines—wrote a book about the human factors of business success. “The yin and yang of effective management has always been about the search for the right spot between data truth and human truth.”
“Hard-edge execution is all about managing exactly to the numbers. The people who live on the hard edge of business are good at making the trains run on time. They focus on profit. Their language is time, money, and numbers. Every company in the world needs these employees.”
“Soft-edge excellence—in trust, smarts, teams, taste, and story—tends to attract loyal customers and committed employees.” Karlgaard says the soft edge is “the heart and soul” of your company. Continue reading “The Soft Edge: Where Great Companies Create Lasting Success”
The Key Point 