Recommended Reading (mmedieros)
Here are some recommendations for books on leading teams This reading list contains book recommendations that cover different areas of leadership, including people, processes and programs. Each book will contain a brief summary of the reasons for reading it (work in progress). Happy reading!
| Title | Author | Category/Topic | Why its Interesting |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Goal | Eli Goldratt | Program Management / Process Design | “This ““business parable”” introduces the ““theory of contstraints”” which talks about how the bottleneck determines the throughput of the system. Through thoughtful design of processes, you can increase performance without additional overhead. It’s told in a relatable style and is considered a business classic.” |
| The Elements of Style | Strunk and White | Writing | “This book describes the Amazon writing style, but pre-dates Amazon’s founding. Write crisp sentences that contain single ideas. Be brief. What makes this book powerful is the ““before / after”” examples after a concept is introduced. Very user-friendly and extremely actionable.” |
| Seven Habits of Highly Effective People | Stephen R. Covey | Program Management / Personal Development | “Published in 1989, you can see the seven habits baked deeply into Amazon’s culture. Habit 1: ““Be Proactive,”” is what we call ““Bias for Action.”” Habit 2: ““Begin with the End in Mind”” we call ““Working Backwards.”” This book breaks down three categories, individual, interpersonal and continuous improvement. It’s a bit lengthy, but it’s wikipedia entry is a brisk read.” |
| Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity | David Allen | Program Management / Productivity | “David Allen’s 2002 book caught fire in the early 00s and spawned a cottage industry of blogs, tools and software. You’ll see a lot of my techniques from here:” |
| “* Apply the ““do it, delegate it, defer it, drop it”” rule to get your in-box to empty” | |||
| * Reassess goals and stay focused in changing situations | |||
| * Plan projects as well as get them unstuck | |||
| “* Overcome feelings of confusion, anxiety, and being overwhelmed” | |||
| * Feel fine about what you’re not doing | |||
| Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion | Robert Cialdini | Program Management / Leadership / Influence | “Originally published in 1984, Cialdini’s work continues to be reissued and refined. Highlighting techniques used by salespeople and in the modern parlance, ““influencers,”” this book highlights what the techniques are and why they work.” |
| Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It | Chris Voss | Negotiation / Leadership / Communication / Influence | “Written by the former lead hostage negotiator of the FBI, this book is filled with real-world tested tactics that are easily understood and highly actionable. Along with Cialdini, Chris Voss forms a powerful dyad on understanding how to influence. It’s a brilliant book.” |
| Leading Geeks: How to Manage and Lead the People Who Deliver Technology | Paul Glen | People Management / Leadership | “This book turns most management books on their heads. In the industrial age a manager could replace the worker at any machine in the factory. In the modern information economy, managers must manage people who know more than they do. Leading Geeks highlights the drives of knowledge workers and how to create a productive and effective environment.” |
| Extreme Ownership: How US Navy Seals Lead and Win | Jocko Willink | People Management / Leadership | “Part Navy SEAL memoir, part leadership guide, Jacko Willink shares stories from the battlefield and as a business and leadership consultant. Ownership is not a new idea at Amazon, but this book highlights why it is critical. ““The best leaders are not driven by ego or personal agendas. They are simply focused on the mission and how best to accomplish it.””” |
| HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Managing People | Harvard Business Review | People Management / Leadership | Harvard Business Review is one of the greatest resources for leaders. This collection of essays condenses years of wisdom into minutes of reading. |
| High Performance Habits: How Extraordinary People Became That Way | Brendon Burchard | Personal Development / Leadership | “In this cross-sectional search of the rosetta stone of high performance, Brendon Burchard found six habits (the ““HP6"”) that are shared across high performers. This book provides anecdotes and data highlighting the impact of these habits. The HP6 are: (1) Seek Clarity (2) Generate Energy (3) Raise Necessity (4) Increase productivity (5) Develop Influence (6) Demonstrate Courage.” |
| Radical Candor | Kim Scott | People Management / Leadership | “Striking the balance between ““Caring Personally”” and ““Challenging Directly,”” a good boss needs to know how to tell people when they are messing up. Radical candor is the idea that you can build a culture of transparency and accountability rather than manipulation and defensiveness. This book shows the way and contains lots of relevant anecdotes.” |
| Kill It with Fire: Manage Aging Computer Systems (and Future Proof Modern Ones) | Marianne Bellotti | Technical Implementation / Program Management / Leadership | “Bellotti works in technical infrastructure modernization and has seen it all. This field guide lays out how to move from the ancient to the cutting edge, as well as how to keep your systems moving and evolving so they never need a complete overhaul.” |
| HBR’s Leading Virtual Teams | Harvard Business Review | People Management / Leadership | “I have been running geographically distributed teams since 2010. Leading virtual teams has its own set of benefits and challenges. Yes, this book was here prior to March 2020.” |
| The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave: How to Recognize the Subtle Signs and Act Before It’s Too Late | Leigh Branham | People Management / Leadership | “Based on tens of thousands of exit surveys, this book distills core reasons individuals leave companies and managers. Accessible and actionable, this resource allows leaders to get ahead of the curve and create a culture that retains top talent.” |
| The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer | Steven Kotler | Personal Development | “There are pockets of the world where impossible things get done and outdone in rapid, almost insane succession. This book talks about those cultures, their traits, and the people who make them so. It contains lots of practical knowledge from someone who has obsessively studied high performance.” |
| Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance | Angela Duckworth | Personal Development | “Grit is often the determining factor between those who persevere and win, and those who give up. Grit can be learned, regardless of I.Q. or circumstances. It also discusses the balance between ““suffering”” and ““ecstasy”” in building ““perfect practice.” |
| Who Not How: The Formula to Achieve Bigger Goals Through Accelerating Teamwork | Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy | Delegation / People Management / Leadership | “An individual cannot scale beyond 168 hours per week. That same individual can build a team of themselves plus four and crush that level of output with a standard 40 hour week. Delegation is key to scale. It is also key to building functional organizational competencies beyond what a single person can do. This book talks about finding the ““right who””, to solve a problem, rather than looking for ““how”” to solve the problem. Delegation is a difficult skill to master, this is a great primer.” |
| The Field Guide to Understanding ‘Human Error’ | Sidney Dekker | Technical Implementation / Program Management / Leadership | “This book does not focus on tech, and instead focuses on failures and lessons learned across other industries. Suddenly mistakes that trigger COEs are no longer seen as personal failings, but rather system effects. This book highlights common anti-patterns that emerge in the heat of the moment when things are going wrong, and how to inoculate yourself against such things to move to a more robust paradigm of incident management, postmortem and correction.” |
| The Twelve-Factor App | Adam Wiggins | Technical Implementation | “These twelve factors let you scale up your application, port it and run it with what we call ““operational excellence.””” |
| “Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs” | John Doerr | Goals / Leadership | “Setting goals is a key skill for both Managers and Individual Contributors. This book goes over the system implemented by Andy Grove at Intel, which got adopted by Google. Amazon uses a very similar system.” |
| “Defining ““Objectives”” and ““Key Results”” make the path forward clearer and give both contributors and stakeholders insights as to how the program is going, increasing transparency and delivery.” | |||
| No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention | Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer | People Management / Leadership | “A culture of high performance with minimal hierarchy made Netflix an object of fascination for business leaders and tech entrepreneurs alike. This book goes inside the streaming giant’s culture of candid feedback, hard work and how defying conventional wisdom is sometimes the right move when building your organization.” |
| The Infinite Game | Simon Sinek | Business Culture / Leadership | “There are two types of games, Finite Games and Infinite Games. Finite games have known players and rules and an outcome with a clear winner. Infinite Games are remarkably different. In business, politics, marriage and life, there is no ““game over”” clock, the players and rules continuously evolve. Yet many business leaders treat business like a Finite game, focused on ““the next release”” or ““the next quarter.”” This sets them up for a fall. How can you build a team that recognizes the difference between Finite and Infinite games? How can you lead an Infinite team in a world of Finite thinkers? These questions and more are discussed and addressed. Commit to a vision of the future based on core principles. Build innovative organizations. Adapt to an ever-changing world.” |
| Brag Better: Master the Art of Fearless Self-Promotion | Meredith Fineman | Career Development / Leadership | “The ““Quiet Qualified”” make businesses run. They put their head down, get work done, follow directions and make things work. But they get passed up for development opportunities by people who are more recognized. This book is about understanding the obstacles to being recognized, both external and internal, and how telling the truth about your skills and accomplishments with grace is a key component to career advancement.” |
| The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers | Ben Horowitz | Personal Development / Leadership | “Straight up, hard hitting talk from one of Silicon Valley’s most well known leaders and investors.” |
| Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World | General Stanley McChrystal | Personal Development / Leadership | “Part military memoir, part business strategy book, Team of Teams discusses the failure of rigid, efficient structures against agile opponents and describes the US Army’s transformation into a decentralized, high-autonomy organization that was more adept at handling unknown circumstances.” |
| “Efficiency remains important, but the ability to adapt to complexity and continual change has become an imperative.” | |||
| “System engineering was formal, elaborate and expensive. It was inefficient, but it worked.” |