Book Notes: The Slow Fix
In the 2011 Grand Prix Formula One race in Monaco, Lewis Hamilton’s car collided with another racer. There was damage to the rear wing end plate of his car. Under any other circumstances, his racing day would have been over. Changing tires during a pit stop is one thing, but repairing something more complicated like […]
Book Notes: Good to Great
There is a good reason that Jim Collins’ book Good to Great is a #1 best seller with over 3 million copies sold. It is jam-packed with revealing detail and captivating examples of what it took for some companies to rise to sustained greatness. What you may find most interesting from a leadership perspective are the […]
Book Notes: Drive – The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
Give people more money and they will perform better right? Actually, no. Daniel Pink’s book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, throws cold water in the face of standard management thinking. In fact, he lists seven reasons why the reward/punishment model is a bad idea if you are trying to motivate your teammates. In this post […]
Book Notes: Quiet
You are a member of a small group of survivors that has just crash-landed a float plane in remote sub-arctic Canada. You have been able to salvage 15 items from the plane, but you can’t take all of them with you. So as a group, you must rank order the items based on their importance […]
Book Notes: Start With Why
How is it that that Toyota and Honda were able to expand into the luxury car market successfully, but Volkswagen was not? Why is Apple able to remain so innovative in so many different areas of the market for so long? We can answer these questions and many like them with a one-word question of […]
Book Notes: Lean In
One of the more recent and popular entries to the long list of good leadership books was Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. Authored by Sheryl Sandberg, formerly a vice president at Google and now Chief Operating Officer at Facebook, I found it to be an interesting, edifying, and very worthwhile read. […]
Book Notes: How to Win Friends & Influence People
As a leader, I enjoyed reading How to Win Friends & Influence People and you will too. Part of what made it fun was that it is absolutely crammed with short, interesting stories and examples of the concepts and ideas that author Dale Carnegie is talking about. But I almost didn’t pick up the book – […]
Book Notes: Leaders Eat Last
The book title caught my eye because it’s something the Army has been doing for a long time. One evening, while observing Marines eating dinner in the field, author Simon Sinek noticed that as a matter of routine, the most junior Marines ate first. The highest ranking ones, the leaders, ate last. Through this simple […]
Book Notes: The One Minute Manager
I first picked up the original edition of this little book in December of 1985 and loved it immediately. Don’t be deceived by its small size, it’s packed with very practical leadership tools that you can put to use immediately.
Book Notes: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
This is an all-time favorite of mine, and another one I find myself returning to reference time and time again. Author Stephen R. Covey’s work outlines seven key habits that make people masters of themselves. Taking the approach that our character is essentially the result of the many habits we fall into every day, Dr. […]
Book Notes: The Killer Angels
The first and best historical fiction book I have ever read, and an excellent look into the challenges of leadership, The Killer Angels reads like a novel. But author Michael Shaara combines historical accuracy with a captivating story-telling ability to make this a hard-to-put-down read about the battle of Gettysburg, and for me, a great […]
Book Notes: The Journals of Lewis and Clark
It’s 1803, and President Thomas Jefferson has just completed the Louisiana Purchase. Now he needs to learn about this new land and open up trade routes to the west. The story of how Meriwether Lewis and William Clark crossed the continent is generally well known, but what many forget is that they didn’t do it […]