Buy-In: Saving Your Good Idea from Getting Shot Down by John P. Kotter (Hardcover - Oct 6, 2010)

The Mirror Test: Is Your Business Really Breathing? by Jeffrey W. Hayzlett and Jim Eber

Rework by Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson

Rework is an invaluable book, I'd love to buy 1,000 copies and distribute them across the Pentagon.  Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book (there are many):

The real world isn’t a place, it’s an excuse.  It’s a justification for not trying.  It has nothing to do with you.

If you write a big plan, you’ll most likely never look at it anyway.  Plans more than a few pages long just wind up as fossils in your file cabinet.

Working without a plan may seem scary.  But blindly following a plan that has no relationship with reality is even scarier. 

The easiest, most straightforward way to create a great product or service is to make something you would want to use.  That lets you design what you know – and you’ll figure out immediately whether or not what you’re making is any good.

What you do is what matters, not what you think or say or plan.

Ideas are cheap and plentiful.  The original pitch idea is such a small part of a business that it’s almost negligible.  The real question is how well you execute. 

Embrace the idea of having less mass.  Right now you’re the smallest, the leanest, and the fastest you’ll ever be.  From here on out, you’ll start accumulating mass. And the more massive an object, the more energy required to changes its direction.  It’s as true in the business world as it is in the physical world.  Mass is increased by:

• Long term contracts
• Excess staff
• Permanent decisions
• Meetings
• Thick process
• Inventory (physical or mental)
• Hardware, software, and technology lock-ins
• Long-term roadmaps
• Office politics

Avoid these things whenever you can.  That way, you’ll be able to change direction easily. The more expensive it is to make a change, the less likely you are to make it. Huge organizations can take years to pivot.  They talk instead of act.  They meet instead of do.  But if you keep your mass low, you can quickly change anything: your entire business model, product feature set, and/or marketing message.  You can make mistakes and fix them quickly. You can change your priorities, product mix, or focus.  And most important, you can change your mind.

“I don’t have enough time/money/people/experience.”  Stop whining.  Less is a good thing.  Constraints are advantages in disguise. Limited resources force you to make do with what you’ve got.  There’s no room for waste.  And that forces you to be creative.  

So sacrifice some of your darlings for the greater good.  Cut your ambition in half.  You’re better off with a kick-ass half than a half-ass whole. 

When we start designing something, we sketch out ideas with a big, thick Sharpie marker instead of a ballpoint pen.  Why?  Pen points are too fine.  They’re too high-resolution.  They encourage you to worry about things that you shouldn’t worry about yet, like perfecting the shading or whether to use a dotted or dashed line.  You end up focusing on things that should still be out of focus.  A Sharpie makes it impossible to drill down that deep.  You can only draw shapes, lines, and boxes.  That’s good.  The big picture is all you should be worrying about in the beginning. 

When things aren’t working, the natural inclination is to throw more at the problem.  More people, time, and money.  All that ends up doing is making the problem bigger.  The right way to go is the opposite direction: Cut back.  So do less.  Your project won’t suffer nearly as much as you fear.  In fact, there’s a good chance it’ll end up even bigger.  You’ll be forced to make tough calls and sort out what truly matters.  If you start pushing back deadlines and increasing your budget, you’ll never stop. 

The core of your business should be built around things that won’t change.  Things that people are going to want today and ten years from now.  Those are the things you should invest in. 

Whenever you can, divide problems into smaller and smaller pieces until you’re able to deal with them completely and quickly. Simply rearranging your tasks this way can have an amazing impact on your productivity and motivation.  For example, break that list of a hundred items into ten lists of ten items.  That means when you finished an item on a list, you’ve completed 10% of that list, instead of 1%. 

Never hire anyone to do a job until you’ve tried to do it yourself first.  That way, you’ll understand the nature of the work.  You’ll know what a job well done looks like.  You’ll know how to write a realistic job description and which questions to ask in an interview. You’ll know whether to hire someone full-time or part-time, outsource it, or keep doing it yourself (the last is preferable, if possible). 

You want a specific candidate who cares specifically about your company, your products, your customers, and your job.  So how do you find these candidates?  First step: Check the cover letter.  In a cover letter, you get actual communication instead of a list of skills, verbs, and years of irrelevance.  There’s no way an applicant can churn out hundreds of personalized letters.  That’s why the cover letter is a much better test than a resume.  You hear someone’s actual voice and are able to recognize if it’s in tune with you and your company. 

Too much time in academia can actually do you harm.  Taking writing for example.  When you get out of school, you have to unlearn so much of the way they teach you to write there.  Some of the misguided lessons you learn in academia:

• The longer a document is, the more it matters
• Stiff formal tone is better than being conversational
• Using big words is impressive
• You need to write a certain number of words or pages to make a point
• The format matters as much (or more) than the content of what you write

It’s no wonder so much business writing winds up dry, wordy, and dripping with nonsense. People are just continuing the bad habits they picked up in school.  It’s not just academic writing either.  There are a lot of skills that are useful in academia that aren’t worth much outside of it. 

Bottom line: The pool of great candidates is far bigger than just the people who completed college with a stellar GPA. 

Own your bad news.  When something goes wrong, someone is going to tell the story.  You’ll be better off if it’s you.  Otherwise, you create an opportunity for rumors, hearsay, and false information to spread. When something bad happens, tell your customers (even if they never noticed in the first place).  Don’t think you can just sweep it under the rug.  You can’t hide anymore.  These days, someone else will call you on it if you don’t do it yourself.  They’ll post about it online and everyone will know.  There are no more secrets.  People will respect you more if you are open, honest, public, and responsive during a crisis.  Don’t hide behind spin or try to keep your bad news on the down low.  You want your customers to be as informed as possible.

What's Your Story? Storytelling to Move Markets, Audiences, People, and Brands by Ryan Mathews and Watts Wacker

The Watchman's Rattle Thinking Our Way Out of Extinction By Rebecca Costa

From 800 CEO Read

Infinite Possibilities: The Art of Living Your Dreams by Mike Dooley

The Talent Masters: Why Smart Leaders Put People Before Numbers by Bill Conaty and Ram Charan (Hardcover - Nov 9, 2010)

How to Be a Fierce Competitor: What Winning Companies and Great Managers Do in Tough Times by Jeffrey J. Fox

Empowered: Unleash Your Employees, Energize Your Customers, and Transform Your Business by Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler

Preparing CEOs for Success by Leslie W. Braksick, James S. Hillgren, Fred Schroyer, and Jim Scattaregia

What Technology Wants By Kevin Kelly

Book Description

Kelly's provocative work introduces a brand-new view of technology and suggests that technology as a whole is not a jumble of wires and metal but a living, evolving organism that has its own unconscious needs and tendencies.

From the Publisher:
A refreshing view of technology as a living force in the world.

This provocative book introduces a brand-new view of technology. It suggests that technology as a whole is not a jumble of wires and metal but a living, evolving organism that has its own unconscious needs and tendencies. Kevin Kelly looks out through the eyes of this global technological system to discover "what it wants." He uses vivid examples from the past to trace technology's long course and then follows a dozen trajectories of technology into the near future to project where technology is headed. This new theory of technology offers three practical lessons: By listening to what technology wants we can better prepare ourselves and our children for the inevitable technologies to come. By adopting the principles of pro-action and engagement, we can steer technologies into their best roles. And by aligning ourselves with the long-term imperatives of this near-living system, we can capture its full gifts. Written in intelligent and accessible language, this is a fascinating, innovative, and optimistic look at how humanity and technology join to produce increasing opportunities in the world and how technology can give our lives greater meaning.

You Already Know How to Be Great A Simple Way to Remove Interference and Unlock Your Greatest Potential By Alan Fine & Rebecca R Merrill

From 800 CEO Read

Book Description

Fine reveals his simple and proven approach to achieving breakthrough performance through an amazing process called G.R.O.W. (Goal, Reality, Options, Way Forward).

From the Publisher:
A bold new approach to performance by one of the top coaches in the country.

In trying to improve-on the playing field, in the office, or even at home-most people seek out new information to get to the next level. They read a book, attend a class, or hire an expert to give them an edge.

But Alan Fine, an accomplished tennis, golf, and executive coach and a renowned authority on peak performance, believes that this "outside-in" method is precisely what's holding you back from doing your best work. He's found the biggest obstacle to improved performance isn't "not knowing" what to do; it's thinking too hard about what you "already know." The tips and tools designed to help you get ahead can actually interfere with your ability to focus.

Fine reveals his simple and proven approach to achieving breakthrough performance. It starts with reducing the interference that blocks your potential through an amazing process called G.R.O.W. (Goal, Reality, Options, Way Forward).

No matter who you are or what you do, "You Already Know How to Be Great" will help you eliminate what is standing in the way of your goals.

Everyone Communicates, Few Connect: What the Most Effective People Do Differently by John C. Maxwell

Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently by Gregory Berns Ph.D.

A recent revolution in neurobiology changed the way scientists thinks

about reward or pleasure, and thus on how we explain decisions and interpret motivation. Theauthor wonders if that doesn't tell us something about the brain of iconoclasts, people who attempt (an succeed) in high risk - but high impact - paradigm-shifting projects. He goes through several historical examples, in detail, to support his thesis that iconoclasts' brains differ in three ways.

Table of Contents

• 1 A different perception
  • 1.1 Chapter 1 : through the eye of an iconoclast
  • 1.2 Chapter 2 : From Perception to Imagination
• 2 An enhanced fear management
• 3 Shrewd social skills

1 A different perception

 

1.1 Chapter 1 : through the eye of an iconoclast

Dale Chihuly became a prominent glass-artist making assymetric sculptures after losing an eye in a accident. While analysing chemicals by nuclear magnetic reasoning, Paul Lauterbur noticed blurs caused by non-uniformities in the magnetic fields he used. Instead of considering them as noise, he thought of creating images by purposefully introducing patterned non-uniformities in his magnetic fields, thus creating pictures, and inventing the MRI. Nolan Bushnell came to develop the historic video game Pongby realising how important simplicity was after seeing players dumbfounded in front of more complex games in a bar.

Our brains interpret visual signals by categorizing them quickly, linking the stimuli to an abstract representation of what it is juged to correspond to. For those iconoclasts, the categorization seems to have changed. A shift in visual perception therefore seems to be at the root of new ideas, and it would seem the key to breakthroughs is in forcing the brain to process signals in a new and original way.

1.2 Chapter 2 : From Perception to Imagination

The visual circuits of the brain are multipurpose, and imagination, the view of what could be, occurs in that same place. Disney started as a professionnal illustrator, but when he became interested in combining those drawings with movie technology, he started by building a studio in his father's garage. It is after seeing the results that his epiphany came.

The role of experience is primal in interpreting visual signals, and the brain can be trained to have certain responses when looking at some images. Among descriptions of scientific experiments, the reader is invited to look at drawings in which he might recognize shapes from the famous video game Pac Man, if he is familiar with it, or geometric abstractions, if he isn't.

2 An enhanced fear management

 

3 Shrewd social skills