Book Reviews for Business Leaders: 10/4/16

Oct 4, 2016 | Everything Else

“Leaders are readers.”

Yep, if you want to do that leading thing well, you need to read. One challenge is sorting through all the “leadership” and other business books to find good ones. This post should help. Here are some pointers to reviews of and excepts from recent leadership (in the broadest sense) books.

In this post I point you to reviews of A Truck Full of Money by Tracy Kidder, Huawei: Leadership, culture, and connectivity, and Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O’Neil.

From Jennifer Senior: ‘A Truck Full of Money’ and a Thirst to Put It to Good Use

“Before the sensibility of Tracy Kidder’s new book clearly emerges, and before its subject, Paul English, becomes endearingly familiar, you may be tempted to put it down. The first few chapters of ‘A Truck Full of Money: One Man’s Quest to Recover From Great Success’ have the sound of a glossy business-magazine hagiography — so much so that readers may wonder why the book isn’t blushing.”

From the Judge Business School: A fresh look at telecoms giant Huawei

“The 375-page book entitled, Huawei: Leadership, culture, and connectivity outlines how Huawei developed since its 1987 founding in Shenzhen, China, into a global telecoms giant employing more than 170,000 people in 170 countries and regions. It focuses particularly on the leadership style and values of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, and how Huawei is known as a ‘collective’ that closely involves its workforce rather than a private company. The book also outlines how Huawei focuses on being service-oriented, and the lessons this presents to other businesses around the world.”

From Wharton: ‘Rogue Algorithms’ and the Dark Side of Big Data

“Most of us, unless we’re insurance actuaries or Wall Street quantitative analysts, have only a vague notion of algorithms and how they work. But they actually affect our daily lives by a considerable amount. Algorithms are a set of instructions followed by computers to solve problems. The hidden algorithms of Big Data might connect you with a great music suggestion on Pandora, a job lead on LinkedIn or the love of your life on Match.com.”

Reading recommendations are a regular feature of this blog. Want more recommendations about what to read? Check out my Three Star Leadership blog, Michael McKinney’s LeadingBlog, and Bob Morris’ Blogging on Business.