Business Titles
- Almost any book by Peter Drucker
- Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore
- Inside the Tornado by Geoffrey Moore
- Political Savvy by Joel De Luca
- The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge
- The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook by Senge, Kleiner, Roberts, Ross and Smith
- Human Dynamics by Horne and Seagal
Strictly speaking this isn't really a business book - it can be used in any context where people work together - but in my case the relevance was in my place of work. I advise skipping the first chapter - or at least not giving up after reading it - the rest of the book really is quite insightful. I found this through Senge's Fifth Discipline book and followed the trail, eventually bringing the course into my workplace, where it was run a number of times. At first glance one might be tempted to think this is another of those sort people into pigeon holes kind of exercises, but it's really much deeper than that. There are additional materials available, such as videos of children building model parks, that really show the different dynamics and how they interact with each other. Used properly it is powerful stuff.
- Big Blues:The Unmaking of IBM by Paul Carroll
- Prophets in the Dark by Kearns and Nadler
- The Goal by Eli Goldratt
- It's Not Luck by Eli Goldratt
- Critical Chain by Eli Goldratt
- Out of the Crisis by W.E Deming
- The Future of Pricing by Andrew Boyd
- From Worst to First by Gordon Bethune
- Driving Fear out of the Workplace by Ryan and Oestreich
- Adhocracy by R H Waterman
- One Foot Out The Door by Judith Bardwick
I haven't listed specific titles here yet, there are simply too many. Drucker for me is the most insightful writer of management books ever. He died in 2005 at the age of 95, having been active in teaching up until the age of 92. So much of what he said and wrote strikes a chord with me that it's hard to know where to begin. He wrote 39 books in total, not all of them on management. He was interested in the people side of management, with particular reference to innovation and entrepreneurship.
The chasm referred to is a part of the product acceptance lifecycle, first recognised many years ago in the agricultural industry. In this case it has been moved on to look at the problem of how to sell technology to mainstream customers. Typically one gets some early adopters, but how do you make your products truly successful? Many entrepreneurs and small companies fail at this early stage for a variety of reasons. This book looks at the problem and how to address it.
The follow up to Crossing the Chasm looks at a later stage in the adoption lifecycle. Now the product or technology has acceptance, how do you become the number one, or the gorilla, as opposed to the number two or chimp or a bit player?
I came across this book at an IMS (Institute of Management Studies) seminar that I attended a good many years ago, given by the author. I think he also gave out copies of the book - I subsequently bought more copies and lent them to poeple I know. I think back on this as one of those light bulb moments for me and my subsequent career. De Luca described a situation in his own career when he joined a company, staffed with what he described as cynical engineers. These were guys who had lots of very good ideas, but had pretty much failed to get anyone to take notice of them. Realising this he started to look at what were the differences between those who were successful in getting their ideas adopted in an organisation and those who weren't. The result was this book. He looks at the different political approaches, from the machiavellian to the politically savvy and shows how one can be successful without being underhand.
Simply the book on learning organisations and the disciplines involved.
The practical side of implementing the approaches described in The Fifth Discipline.
An excellent account of how IBM continually snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and handed Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer the success that became Microsoft.
The story of how photocopying was invented by an American named Chester Carlson, Xerox was formed, almost disappeared when targeted by the Japanese and reinvented itself. A very interesting book with a few lessons for any business.
Goldratt writes in the style of a novel to introduce concepts mainly around the Theory of Constraints, or ToC. The Goal is about optimizing a production line using drum-buffer-rope techniques, showing how running every resource at 100% leads to inefficiency and a build up in work in progress inventory which costs money. It's an easy read with useful lessons contained therein.
The sequel to the goal. The characters in the first book were so successful that they all got promoted - and now they have a similar set of problems to deal with from a higher place in the organisation.
Similar to The Goal, the Critical Chain looks at knowledge work and project management. Again the problem is how to optimise an organisation with a lot of work in progress by not running the whole organisation at 100% capacity but subverting the work to the most constrained department or group. Of course, that is really hard to manage in a real organisation which usually has a pile of other issues to deal with at the same time!
This is one of those must read books for anyone who runs an organisation which depends on a repeatable process. One of the masters of statistical quality control, he shows how to focus on systemic issues and not blame people for things going wrong. Deming originally present many of his ideas to American companies but was largely ignored. He ended up going to Japan, who used to be known for producing poor quality products where he was listened to. The results are history - Japanese car manufacturers dominated the world for example. As an aside, around the time I joined Hewlett-Packard in 1982, our division in Japan, a joint venture with Yokogawa won the Deming prize for a significant improvement in manufacturing quality. It was a bit of a fix - we stopped manufacturing one of the most unreliable products - but ultimately it led to me visiting our Japanese division in Hachioji in 1984.
Recommended to me by my new CEO, an interesting treatise on the "scientific" approach to pricing in order to maximise revenue. The reason for the recommendation was to give some historical context to the way airlines set ticket prices - and why people on the same flight sitting next to each other can end up paying wildly different prices. The approach is now being used by other industries. The aim is to maximise revenue - and the approach uses logic and statistics. I have to say it's pretty interesting - although I'm not quite sure what I think about it. The author does raise the question of justice - i.e. is it fair if people don't pay the same price for the same thing and is it reasonable for companies to maximise revenue by charging whatever it is they can get away with. I guess the challenge may lie in the intangibles of areas such as customer reaction.
The story of how Mr Bethune turned Continental Airlines around, written by himself, so a pinch of salt is probably required, but entertaining nonetheless.
Judith Bardwick is a management consultant who is very engaging and in my opinion talks a lot of sense. I watched a video she featured in years ago about the need to build earnings rather than entitlement cultures in organisations which struck a chord. In this book she looks at why so many employees in American businessese (although the principle applies elsewhere) are either looking for new jobs or simply going through the motions in their current one. It addresses the question of what managers and leaders should do to combat the problem and make employees feel valued again.
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