Recommended Reading List for Leaders
/Here is the list of books that I recommend people read when they join my organization or team. Lots of great leadership and team tools and concepts picked up along the way (some new & some old). Thank-you to my many prior leaders that turned me onto some of these gems I still use today.
Libraries are happy places
I’m a big fan of the topics and approach that Jim Collins and team have created as they researched the successful practices of Great Companies.
This one is a staple for me and I have used this one in ‘book club’ for my team. Level 5 Leadership, The hedgehog concept, culture of discipline, it just goes on..
Great By Choice
I like to build off Good to Great with this gem Topics include ‘Fire Bullets and then Cannonballs’, ‘The 10Xers’ and the discipline staple ‘The 20 Mile March’.
Lots of reference materials and tools for group work and exercises at Jim’s site.
Try them at your next offsite or working group for team building (see below for more thoughts on this).
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni
Great book on how to adopt the practices of high performing teams and address the shortcomings that are holding you back.
Mastering the Rockerfeller Habits by Verne Harnish
Full of fantastic things to think about in leadership including one of my favorite team tools the one page plan.
Value Proposition Design (strategyzer.com/vpd) by Osterwalder, Pigneur, Bernarda, and Smith
A fun and easy to consume look at product development and management
The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim et all
Great introduction to DevOps in an easy to consume form (fable style story telling)
The DevOps Handbook by Gene Kim et all
The companion to the Phoenix Project
The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt
Introduces the theory of constraints in manufacturing or product creation. One of the influences of the Phoenix Project and a fantastic management read (fable style) if you are interested in why process mapping is so important. I can’t emphasize the influence of this book on my thinking, I wish I had read this before Phoenix project (Gene and team leveraged the concepts well ;)).
Some other thoughts on how to use these tools with your team:
Book Club
This is something that our team has done and I found it fun and a great way to engage differently with fellow leaders. I would love to do this every quarter with my team, it is always a fun experience to read a book and then review it as a team (as individuals, leave your roles at the door) and discuss what you think about it, what was valuable and how this could be applied, or what was crap, etc. Leads to greater things… If you have a highly functioning team with a high level of trust this can be amazing, or this can be one of the things you use to get to know your team and each other … and build that trust :D.
Offsites and working sessions
Not to focus too much on Jim’s work, but there are a lot of interesting tools and resources on his site. Great videos to stimulate conversations on different topics. If you combine book club with some topics to weave into your offsite or leadership focus time, magic!
Here are some things that worked previously for my team. We were working through Good to Great in book club and during an offsite we focused on several topics to stimulate our succession planning and growth to put our people in the right places (right seat on the bus/hedgehog concept/culture of discipline).
A couple of videos that one of the leaders brought to the table from Jim’s site that we reviewed as part of this process:
Next up for me:
Jim’s first book which he refers to later as the book that better fits better after Good to Great
How the Mighty Fall, Jim Collins
The book before Great by Choice, frankly I want to read the entire series and I have never gotten to this one although it is sitting on my bookshelf.
The Toyota Way by Jeffrey Liker
I still intend to get into this one that heavily influenced manufacturing and Lean.
Parting thought, if you are going to invest in books for growth, please consider buying local and buying responsibly, especially now. In Canada consider Indigo/Chapters or more importantly a local chain or store. In the BC Interior I prefer to buy from the amazing Mosaic Books (since 1968!). I can’t speak to the US or other places, but anyways, you do you.
Thanks for reading I hope you find something of value in any of these books. Have a good book for leaders or management to suggest? Please let me know.
Be Well.
Cheers,
James