Book Review: Intertwingled by Peter Morville

Intertwingled presents a fast, easy to read, and personal overview of systems thinking.

Personal, because the author intertwines his own personal stories to provide many of the illustrative examples of interconnection and systems thinking.

It fits very much in the 'management' overview category so will probably sell well.

If you don't know much about systems thinking then over the course of the 5 chapters you will be introduced to different modes of thought, different approaches to modelling, different approaches to observation and analysis.

( amazon.co.uk | amazon.com )

Book Review: Leadership and Self-deception

I normally hate business books written in a fictional fable storytelling style. But for some reason I managed to read and enjoy this one - with one or two minor annoyances which we can cover later.

The book suggests that sometimes we cause our own problems, or at least make problem situations worse through our own attitudes and behaviours. We do this when we fail to view other people as people - instead viewing them as object, and view their needs and desires as less important than our own.

( amazon.co.uk | amazon.com )

Book Review: Zapp! The Lightning of Empowerment by William C. Byham & Jeff Cox

Joe has a problem: everyone wants more, and no-one wants to do more than the bare minimum. Joe can't figure out what to do. He says "do a better job!" and they don't, he says "if you don't do a better job you'll get sacked", they don't do a better job, they get demoralised, and worse - they don't get sacked. Oh woe, poor joe, oh no, he doesn't know what to do, whatever can joe do? Of course... Zapp!
[amazon.com][amazon.co.uk]

Book Review : Driving Down Cost by Andrew Wileman

A highly relevant book to read in these cost cutting times. Andrew Wileman evidently having seen it and done it - and now presenting useful advice on the art of cost cutting.

Before started reading I noted down what I expected to see advice about:

• becoming more effective,


• getting rid of underperforming staff now and quickly,


• driving out a bonus on sales culture,


• etc.

I did have the concern that I would see too much advice on short term unitary costs and ignoring end to end transaction costs - and after reading I think I still have the concern that Wileman didn't deal with that topic effectively.

All other topics get excellent coverage and worth a read. Andrew provides a lot of other useful advice that I did not initially think of.

( amazon.co.uk | amazon.com )

Book Review: The New Economics by W. Edwards Deming

This great little book acts as an introduction and summary to Deming's ideas:

• his 'system of profound knowledge'


• the purpose of management


• removal of numeric targets and incentives


• the Shewhart Cycle for learning and improvement


• Variation


• the Red Bead Game


• control charts

A highly recommended read because ....

( amazon.co.uk | amazon.com )

Book Review: Life's a Pitch by Stephen Bayley & Roger Mavity

Subtitled "How to Sell yourself and your brilliant ideas" this dual-authored book has two parts. One for each author. And yes this has made it schizophrenic.

The first half by Roger Mavity tells the hard won lessons from a marketeer. The second half by Stephen Bayley reads like a standard book researched management text.

I only found value in part one so this review has its basis in that text.

The first half of the book roars along, peppered with anecdotes and words of wisdom.

amazon.co.uk | amazon.com

Book Review: Everything I need to know about being a manager I learnedfrom my kids by Ian Durston

So, from the title, do you expect a kind of folksy tale of happy families and happy teams? Good, because that describes the book well. The books starts very un-managerially with the birth details of the children and then ties 'becoming a parent' in to 'becoming a manager'. I actually think I would enjoy working with more people who read this book since, I cannot imagine that some of the managers I work with treat their children like they treat their staff - at least I hope for the child's sake that they don't.

So... what do we learn?

amazon.co.uk | amazon.com

Book Review: Detox Your Desk by Theo Theobald and Gary Cooper

Yet another time management book. This one starts well and by page xi in the introduction I have warmed to the notion of a "zero tolerance workspace". But then we hit an "analysis" phase and we learn...nothing for a while. I suppose this section tries to build up the belief set that we need to change our habits and why, and point out your bad habits.

But really we already bought the book to change our habits - so give me the details. Tell me the system...

amazon.co.uk | amazon.com

Book Review: The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins

Most management books offer some platitudes, have 2 or 3 useful sentences and then lots of padding. "The First 90 Days" offers a real exception

I will not pretend to summarise all the useful information in this book for this book review. But I hope to whet your appetite so that you go out, buy this book and feast ravenously upon it.

I guess I relate to it so much because I have moved from site to site and job to job so often - mainly as a consultant, or contractor, but latterly as a full time employee. I have experienced a lot of transitions, and I know how hard those first 90 days can seem. Lessons I learned on my own:

• track your successes - otherwise you'll look back and wonder what happened (it all moves so fast)


• set expectations early with your boss (particularly on how you can evaluate success together)


• evaluate your team quickly and don't shirk the hard early decisions

Michael Watkins covers all this and more. And I wish I had read this before.

[amazon.co.uk] [amazon.com]

Book Summaries - how to gain more knowledge, faster, and easier

I have a problem with many business and management books. so many of them seem to have one idea, or 10 ideas strung out for 250 pages with lots of boring stories and examples, or worse - written in parable form. I really just want to get to the meat and substance of the book.

I spent a long time improving my reading speed, and yet I still want to find ways of cramming more valuable information into my skull more quickly and more easily. So I started to look for ways to outsource my reading - at least partially. I found various book summary sites. My initial thoughts were this would be a way of whittling out the dross of business books more easily and identifying the books that I really want to read.

I wasn't sure if I was going to find them useful or if I was going to end up signing away some money for a pile of badly written essays.

But I decided to sign up as an experiment anyway.

Book Review: Dragon's Den by BBC

So a cash-in on the ever popular "Dragon's Den" BBC programme - at least popular in my house.

Is it too much to hope for some good well spun and hard earned business lessons from reading the book? well....

amazon.co.uk

amazon.com

Book Review : The Rules of Victory by James Gimian and Barry Boyce

Subtitled "How to Transform Chaos and Conflict", and further subtitled "Strategies from The Art of War". Which one of these attracts you to the book most? We could derive some sort of psychoanalytical analysis from that choice, or we could just class it as clever marketing - targeting the management book crowd, the self-help crowd and the Sun Tzu crowd.

[amazon.com]   [amazon.co.uk]

Book Review: Behind Closed Doors by Johanna Rothman and Esther Derby

Subtitled "Secrets of Great Management" this book has a condensed set of wisdom to spout to us. I dislike the fictional "Sam the Manager" approach - but so much good advice lies in here that I found it a useful read.

[amazon.co.uk]
[amazon.com]

Book Review: Managing Multiple Projects by Irene & Michael Tobis

Aimed at the "manager of a small workgroup faced with a wide range of responsibilities." Hey, that describes my job! So does the book have useful words of advice? Indeed it does...

[amazon.co.uk]
[amazon.com]

Book Review: Connect! A Guide to a New way of Working by Anne TruittZeleneka

Much of this book dishes out information that I already knew and I found myself rushing through it to find things I didn't. And eventually the book did dish out some things I didn't know. I also found that someone else had already implemented some product ideas I had planned to follow up on, so I saved myself some development and research time.

So will you find the book worth spending any time on?

[amazon.com][amazon.co.uk]

Hardcore Management Meets Joseph Campbell

Every so often there will appear a strange symmetry to the books and articles that I read. One such parallel which I found when reading Jo Owen and Joseph Campbell on the same day appears below.

I have encountered many other quotes which cover a very similar ground - but since both of these appeared at the same time and at a relevant moment I thought I'd include them here.

Business should stop playing to each other people's rules. following competition means we will never catch them. Adopting fads and seeking excellence provide the solution to someone else's problem. The challenge for management is to compete by playing a game where they make the rules. To do this is not about seeking instant answers: it is about knowing the right questions to ask about the customers, competition and the industry. Only the right questions lead to the right answers.

Hardcore Management by Jo Owen

[amazon.com][amazon.co.uk]

 

You enter the forest at the darkest point, where there is no path.

Where there is a way or path, it is someone else's path.

You are not on your own path.

If you follow someone else's way, you are not going to realize your potential.

Joseph Campbell quoted in "A Joseph Campbell Companion"

[amazon.com][amazon.co.uk]

Book Review: The One Thing You Need To Know by Marcus Buckingham

285 pages to tell me the 'one' thing I need to know? Obviously Marcus plans to tell me a little more than one thing. But the basic message behind this book seems to be "there are a few things good managers/leaders do, which prevent them from failing. But there is One thing that the best do, to succeed." So how well do these principles get explained?

[amazon.com][amazon.co.uk]

Book Review: TQM - The Quality Makers by Robert Heller

This can hardly form a particularly useful book review since "TQM - The Quality Makers" now resides in the 'out of print' category, but dedicated hunters of quality books can find 2nd hand copies. So the question becomes - should you bother?

[amazon.com][amazon.co.uk]