Business
Dan Ariely is one of my new favorite authors. Probably because he delves into the field of behavioral economics which is my new favorite field... but still, I will give Ariely credit for writing absolutely fascinating books. The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home is an attempt to further the thoughts presented in Predictably Irrational. There is some overlap with the previous book but just enough to make this book able to stand on its own with
Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet is the product of three psychologists from different fields. Howard Gardner is a cognitive psychologist best known for his theory of multiple intelligences. Csikszentmihalyi is a social psychologist best known for his concept of "flow", a state in which an individuals skills and challenges mesh and completely absorb the mind. (See his book Flow) William Damon is the author with which I am least familiar but he is a developmental psychologist who foc
Daniel Pink's Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us is a timely, practical and fairly well researched work that delves into the practical application of intrinsic motivation. Sprinkled with pop-culture references (TPS reports and Facebook) alongside the results of personal interviews with some well-known names (Deci and Csikszentmihalyi) the book is a quick and interesting read that pulls together a number of disparate ideas. I took a lot of notes in my read and this is just a sp
Game Theory fascinates me even though I am not nearly a good enough mathematician to claim to be any good at the subject. Even so when I saw this book, Decision Making Using Game Theory, by Anthony Kelly, I decided to dive in and enjoy! While it is a bit technical at times, for the most part Dr. Kelly keeps the topic on a very practical level with all of his examples pulled from the business world. Even though the examples are simplified, they are not contrived. This is a great book for anyo
Ram Charan is an interesting character that intrigues me with his view of strategic management. I will confess that much of what I read in this realm is way above my head in terms of usefulness. I simply read his work as sort of a guilty pleasure because strategic management is fascinating to me. In Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty, Ram talks specifically about what companies need to do in light of the recent turmoil in the world's capital markets. The book dates itself but is
Leonard Mlodinow takes us on a delightful journey through the fascinating history of probability and statistics. On the way he manages to sneak in a very practical explanation of the basics of the field. Mingling stories of Pascal, Fermat, Bayes and others with the Law of Large Numbers, Bayesian Probability and confidence levels, Mlodinow makes The Drunkard's Walk a coherant and entertaining read. He tops the book off with a very practical application of what chance and probability can mean t
The underlying principles of Luke Hohmann's Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play are rock solid. Either Hohmann has a solid grasp of marketing principles, project management and cognitive psychology, or he is pretty good at buzz-word bingo. This is an intensely practical book without much meat so if you are looking for a "how-to" manual on getting good ideas from your customers, this book is for you. If you are looking for insight into why these kinds of
With my tongue in my cheek, I want the express my appreciation to the authors of Appreciative Inquiry for making this book so short! It is intended as an introduction to the "hottest new change management approach" but it reads more like a laundry list of management buzz words.
"A Whack on the Side of the Head" is a great little book to get you thinking creatively. Von Oech takes the reader through a list of 10 mental locks that keep many people from using creative thinking to solve problems. It is a very quick read but full of many little gems of ideas. Von Oech doesn't waste any words in introducting each mental lock and some very practical and yet insightful ideas on how to unlock your brain.
This book is a quick read but Dan Roam has packed an incredible amount of information into a small package in The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures. This book presents an excellent overview of data visualization and communication. Roam presents it as a new way to "think" about problems which is an interesting concept, but I found his ideas on communication more relevant for me. The book has a little bit of "business fad" feel to it and I suspect the author w
Stephen Baker is a senior writer for Business Week magazine and a while back I read an article he wrote entitled "Managing by the Numbers". Turns out much of the material in that article was research for this excellent book, The Numerati. The book explores the world of mathematicians who are charged with parsing the growing databases of information that contain information about everything from what kind of cars we like to drive to which co-workers we are most likely to share the latest gossip
This Alarming book details the Massively intense work needed to free the world's Countless Poorest of the Poor from their wretched cycle of Horrendous Poverty!!!! Well.. OK... maybe that's a little over the top, but that's about what Jeffrey Sach's writing sounds like in this book. Hyperbole in Ayn Rand's fiction can be written off as so much literary license (I still think it detracts from whatever message it is she is trying to convey.) In a book that pretends to be academic and non-partisa
Chris Anderson is currently editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine and in "The Long Tail" he delivers a great deal of insight into the transformation of markets as a result of technology. The internet is the primary driver of these market shifts and Anderson actually started this book out as a blog on the internet about the topic. The term "long tail" is a statistical term that describes the type of distribution that is seen in product sales. Previously the tail was "cut off" as a result of limits
In Execution, Bossidy and Charan expose the Dilbertesque feeling of most companies where "lots of decisions get made, but nothing ever gets done." Why is this so pervasive and what can be done about it? The bottom line is that every organization needs to create a culture of execution, getting things done. The greatest strategies in the world don't do you any good unless you actually do them. In this book you will find more than just ways of motivating people and how to write an action plan.
Real Number: Management Accounting in a Lean Organization would be considered by some to be a "dry read". Personally, I found it a fascinating read as my interest in Lean principles has been piqued over the past year and a half or so. Jean Cunningham serves as CFO at Lantech, Inc. and Orest Fiume retired as VP of Finance and Administration of Wiremold. Fans of Jones & Womack, authors of Lean Thinking and The Machine That Changed The World, will recognize these two companies as having been cas
In The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization, Peter Senge takes us through a fairly practical application of systems thinking to the business organization. This is an important shift in thinking that more business leaders should understand but few seem to. Working in an Agile Software development shop as I do, I daily see the value of using systems thinking to analyze both product requirements and the processes by which we fulfill them. Peter Senge does a decent j
In Nothing to Fear: Lessons in Leadership from FDR, Alan Axelrod presents us with the intersection of modern day business leadership and the historical evidence of this great leader. I am certainly not in line with many of the political stances of President Roosevelt, nor do I agree with some of my more liberal friends who believe he was the greatest President in history. I do however believe that he may qualify as one of, if not the greatest leader to hold the position. Axelrod's book is in
"Emergent Design: The Evolutionary Nature of Professional Software Development" is a must read for anyone in the software development field. Whether you are a manager, a developer or a consultant, this book will help you view the profession differently. Scott does an incredible job of being a down-to-earth visionary... someone who can see things clearly from 50,000 feet, but has the technical legs to stand on the ground and look the code in the eye. What follows here does the book no justice
This "review" is more of a sketch of notes I took while reading this book. Crandall, Klein and Hoffman deliver an intensely practical look into a realm of psychology that could be very difficult to comprehend. The book surrounds the notion of Cognitive Task Analysis which is essentially a method of studying how people think. Klein's work has surrounded primarily the way people make decisions (Sources of Power) however in Working Minds the authors also look at how people learn to do new jobs,
Robert Austin manages to sum up in this short book the observations that bothered me for 16 years working for FedEx. As a courier for most of those years, I watched the company struggle with measurement dysfunction as they attempted to get more and more productivity from their employees. The symptoms I witnessed first-hand are so clearly described by Austin that it surprises me that no one at FedEx picked the book up and fixed the widespread problem. If you doubt me, stop your FedEx courier s
I have to admit that I get pretty geeked up about books like this one! In Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions, Gary Klein addresses a phenomenal array of questions and issues surrounding the stated topic. Even though the book is written in the style of a research report, it is sprinkled with enough fascinating anecdotes that it will keep your interest even if you don't like that style. The stories make the reading easy, but Klein's approach to the material makes it interesting.
Naomi Karten has written a very comprehensive book dealing with a wide range of issues relating to communication within an organization. While she touches from time to time on personal communication issues, her primary focus is on organizational communication with an emphasis on the information technology field. As with most speakers who also write, her writing style reflects the fact that she is more comfortable with the spoken word and from time to time you get the impression that her humor
I made the mistake of reading the two Taleb books on my list out of order. In fact, had I read Fooled By Randomness first, I could have skipped reading The Black Swan since the bulk of the material is covered in the first book (and covered better in my opinion.) That is not to say that there was no new material in the second book, but rather that the new material was not enough to justify spending the time to read through the re-hash. As far as readability goes, I would recommend Fooled By Ra
Nassim Taleb writes an interesting book about unexpected events. His theories about probability provide a different perspective on some old topics. Taleb's writing style is engaging if not eccentric. He injects dry humor along with plenty of parenthetical comments. He is a self-described philosopher - trader, however unlike most philosophers, he doesn't seem to be too concerned with the reader thinking he is smart. Most modern philosophers seem more concerned with impressing the reader than
Wanting to have a better understanding of Theory of Constraints thinking, I decided to go back and read this novel that Goldratt wrote in the early 80's. The novel is about a production plant manager who is facing a crisis in his career. His plant is going to be shut down in 3 months if he and his team can't show better results. While Goldratt does introduce a "personal" story to go along with the business story, this is a novel you wouldn't want to read just for the "story". Like most busin
Before I was hired on at my current company, the entire organization did a group study and review of Crucial Conversations. After hearing my boss and others talk about the book, I decided to give it a read and fortunately he had an extra copy for me. The book covers a lot of very practical advice for dealing with conversational situations that frankly we all find ourselves in almost daily. While it tries to cover a broad span of conversations (home life, work life, social life) I found it to
Malcolm Gladwell wrote "The Tipping Point" another book that I have on my list to read but I came to this one first. "Blink" is an interesting foray into the power of the unconscious mind... or rather unconscious thinking. Whether we realize it or not, our brains are working non-stop and sometimes we come to conclusions without knowing how or why. Gladwell's exploration of this topic is a detailed, anecdote-filled book that is a pleasure to read and will spark some interesting thoughts along
Ram Charan is a fascinating business consultant with decades of experience dispensing advice to the leaders of many of the world's largest and most influential companies. I recently added this book to my personal collection and was excited to get the opportunity to read it. While the book is geared towards CEO's and other high level management types, there is plenty of advice in the book for anyone who wants to understand how to be more effective in the business world.
The Google Guys are fascinating to a lot of people and of course since I am a software developer they are intriguing to me on many levels. David Vise does a very good job of unveiling the facts and providing some insight into the world of Google. There is a touch of sycophancy in the tone of the book so I read it with the proverbial grain of salt, however true to his journalistic roots, Mr. Vise did portray at least some of the darker side of Google. While I use Google on a daily basis and st
This is a collection of Galbraith's works that, according to the author in the preface, were chosen by his associates, his publisher and the reading public. This books serves as a quick primer on the economics of this renowned economist as well as a fascinating overview of his literary life.