Stephen King says that if you want to be a writer, there are two things you must do: read a lot and write a lot. This is about the “read a lot” part. I include reading lists and book reviews that will help you do business more effectively and write better for business.
In this post, I point you to reviews of 5 Leadership Lessons I Learned by Walking the Camino de Santiago, Working Deeply: Transforming Lives through Transformational Coaching, The Captain Class, and The Power of Little Ideas: A Low-Risk, High-Reward Approach to Innovation.
From Mike McKinney: 5 Leadership Lessons I Learned by Walking the Camino de Santiago
“THE Camino de Santiago is a network of ancient hiking paths that all lead to a shrine to St. James in northwest Spain. I first walked that trail – 435 miles over 29 days – in 2013 and have returned twice since. My passion for discovering new hiking trails was what drew me to the Camino, but the lessons from the Camino are what keep me going back. Here are five of those lessons that have helped me become a better leader.”
From Jaime Goff: Working Deeply: A Q&A with Robert Barner
“In Working Deeply: Transforming Lives through Transformational Coaching (Emerald Group Publishing, 2017), Robert Barner and Ken Ideus apply their decades of experience in leadership development and executive coaching to show how coaching can move people well beyond behavioral change to achieve deep transformational learning. Barner is an associate professor at Southern Methodist University’s Simmons School of Education and Human Development. He was employed for 30 years as a corporate talent development executive and executive coach. Ideus’s work in human development spans over 40 years. His experience includes behavioral health, corporate leadership, organizational change and voice communications. Following a successful corporate career, he established a private executive coaching business in London.”
From Kevin Eikenberry: The Captain Class: The Hidden Force That Creates the World’s Greatest Teams
“I’m not going to ‘give away’ the single common thread across the 16 teams in his ‘tier 1’ group, but I will tell you that the commonality of these greatest teams isn’t a star player or even a great coach. I will tell you the lessons are valuable, perhaps a bit surprising, and should be inspirational for all of us trying to create more effective teams.”
From Theodore Kinni: A Goldilocks Approach to Innovation
“In 2008, when Nike executive Sarah Robb O’Hagan was tapped to lead Gatorade, the sports drink’s sales were in decline and it was losing market share to its principal rival, Powerade. She couldn’t turn to incremental innovation: Pursuing the tried-and-tested strategy of adding flavors and low-calorie options to the Gatorade portfolio had already run its course, and was not yielding returns. The idea of blowing up one of PepsiCo’s billion-dollar brands and the organization behind it in a bid for radical reinvention was too risky.”
From MIT Sloan Executive Education: A third way of innovating: The Power of Little Ideas
“There is no shortage of innovation advice—you have surely heard the persistent drumbeat, ‘disrupt or be disrupted,’ for example. Conventional wisdom says that there are two types of innovation: incremental or radical. But this is a false dichotomy.”
Reading recommendations are a regular feature of this blog. Want more recommendations about what to read? Check out my Three Star Leadership blog and Michael McKinney’s LeadingBlog.