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 LeaderSHOP Volume 1: Workplace, Career, and Life Advice From Today’s Top Thought Leaders, The Journey of Not Knowing: How 21st Century Leaders Can Chart a Course Where There Is None, Why do so many Incompetent Men become Leaders (and how to fix it), Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas that Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries, and The Culture Question: How to Create a Workplace Where People Like to Work.
From Michael McKinney: Workplace and Life Advice You Can Use
“THIRTY-NINE LEADERS were interviewed on subjects related to leadership and were assembled by Roger Dean Duncan into LeaderSHOP Volume 1: Workplace, Career, and Life Advice from Today’s Top Thought Leaders (not to be confused with the LeaderShop). Duncan asks great questions, and the responses are interesting and well worth reading. The book is organized around 10 topics. Here is a sample from each.”
From Wharton: How Business Leaders Can Navigate the Unknown – and Thrive
“Julie Benezet joined Amazon in 1998, when the company was just another ambitious startup in the nascent business of internet retail. She was hired to find sites for Amazon’s distribution centers as the operation grew. There were a lot of unknowns at the time, but the risks taken back then clearly paid off. Benezet left Amazon in 2002 after building the company’s first global real estate function. She was an executive committee member of the Samuel Zell and Robert Lurie Real Estate Center at Wharton and also taught the Challenges of Leadership program at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, Executive Education. Today, she’s a consultant who teaches the value of taking risks, which is the focus of her new book, The Journey of Not Knowing: How 21st Century Leaders Can Chart a Course Where There Is None.”
From Jon Ingham: Book Review: Incompetent Men Leaders
“I love Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic’s new book, ‘Why do so many Incompetent Men become Leaders’. Actually, I was already sold before even opening it, as I’ve long thought the skills and attitudes required for today’s leaders are more likely to be held by women than men. In ‘The Social Organization’ I note that I personally expect to see a fairly rapid reversal in the pay gap and that we will soon need to start thinking about how we keep men’s pay at something close to that received by women. (I also suggest that we should expect to see business start to look and feel a lot more like HR, and for similar reasons, that we don’t have to worry about dressing up ‘soft skills’ as something more masculine.)”
From the Harvard Business Review: A Theoretical Physicist (and Entrepreneur) on Why Companies Stop Innovating
“Safi Bahcall, a former biotech CEO, began his career as a theoretical physicist before joining the business world. He compares the moment that innovative companies become complacent ones to a glass of water freezing, becoming ice. The elements are the same, but the structure of the company has changed. Bahcall offers ways for growing companies to avoid these inevitable forces and continue to innovate. He’s the author of the book Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries and the HBR article ‘The Innovation Equation.'”
From Skip Prichard: 6 Key Elements of a Healthy Culture
“The authors of The Culture Question: How to Create a Workplace Where People Like to Work believe that everyone should be able to like where they work. This is a compelling vision, and after reading the book I reached out to two of the four authors, ACHIEVE CEO, Randy Grieser, and ACHIEVE Managing Director, Eric Stutzman, to learn more about their thoughts.”
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 Skip Prichard’s Leadership Insights.