All in book review
Another book in my long backlog was Ray Immelman's "Great Boss Dead Boss." I finally picked up a copy and thoroughly enjoyed it. As with many good books, the ideas have me looking at the world in a slightly different way.
John Hagel spoke this evening about his new book, The Power of Pull, at the Berkman Center. I took a boatload of notes and this is the result of that.
I was sent a complimentary copy of The Imperfect Leader because I've been reading and reviewing a number of other business novels. As you might guess from the title, this one focuses on leadership.
I've been meaning to read Bill Dettmer's The Logical Thinking Processes for a while. It covers the "thinking processes" as defined by the Theory of Constraints community. And these are a larger structure of tools used to help describe and define Change programs. In the TOC community, change is defined by What to Change, What to Change To, and How to Cause the Change.
My review of Chip and Dan Heath's new book, Switch. It has been making the rounds of my networks, and now it sits next to me with lots of dog-eared paged and underlinings. And special thanks to Tammy Green for adding another point of view to my thoughts here.
I don't quite know how I got on this kick of reading, but in the last year or two, I have read a number of books that are centered around the 18th and 19th Centuries and many of the discoveries and social upheavals that happened around that time. It's fascinating to learn about how these things are all inter-related. The Invention of Air by Stephen Johnson is another of those books.
A brief review of Digital Barbarism: Mark Helprin is one angry man. And he wants copyright to stay.
My review of Simplifying Innovation by Michael A Dalton, a business novel that shows how Constraints Management principles can be applied to new product development and other areas that require a lot of innovation.
Death By Meeting by Patrick Lencioni is an entertaining and rather direct leadership fable on the importance of creating a good meeting culture. It's helpful for all sorts of reasons, but the key is that bad meetings lead to bad decisions.
Velocity is a business novel from the Theory of Constraints community with co-author Jeff Cox coming at TOC again after his work with The Goal years ago. This one introduces combined improvement efforts that are designed to set direction AND give you speed: Velocity.
I picked up Eli Goldratt's latest business novel, Isn't It Obvious, and absolutely flew through the book. The title of the book is one of Goldratt's favorite ideas: that the best theories are always seen (in hindsight) as obvious solutions.
My friend, Tammy Green, just sent me a copy of her luscious Chicago Cupcake Crawl e-book. Not only is it about cupcakes (cupcakes bakeries) in Chicago, but the pictures are just fabulous. And the writing is funny too - her personality shines right through the pages.