5 Great Books That Shaped My 2022

At this time of year, its customary to write an article that looks forward to the upcoming year with some speculative predictions for the future. All well and good, but this year I thought I’d write something about the books that have most shaped my thinking in 2022.

Since about 2015, I’ve tried to read a non-fiction book roughly every week or so. Most of these have been listened to on Audible I have to admit, but it means that my mind gets regularly filled with other people’s impressive writings whilst I travel around the country. Most of the books I read are enlightening in some way, but some are simply amazing and have really shaped my thinking in 2022. Here are my top 5 which I completely recommend to you. I’d also love to hear about your book recommendations for me to read in 2023.

1.?????“Time to Think” By: Nancy Klein

Both of Nancy’s books (“Time to think” and “More Time to Think”) are must read recommendations for me. In a very gentle and accessible way, these books set out the underlying philosophy of coaching. Recognising that there is real benefit in helping people to think through a problem (coaching) rather than giving them the answer (mentoring).

I wish I’d read these before doing the ILM7 coaching course at GE healthcare, but thanks to Frances Bazire for the recommendation to read these texts. The first book deals with how to coach an individual whilst the second deals with how to get the most from coaching teams. The principle being that if you can get everyone in the room contributing and thinking then good things happen. ?

Some of the techniques proposed for team meetings take a little courage to implement (or at least it’s scary the first time you adopt them) but the results have always impressed me when I’ve asked for input from the room and not made a decision based on the most vocal alone. Give it a go - you might be surprised.

2.?????“Influence, New and Expanded: The Psychology of Persuasion” By: Robert B. Cialdini

Earlier this year I attended a great leadership development session run by Jonathan Calascione and Lee Arthur focussed on how we can focus out behaviours to build Trust with clients and how this then plays out in shared long-term successes. At the end of the session, Jonathan recommended two books one of which was “Influence” and the other was “The Trusted Advisor – by David Maister”. Both books were deeply impressive, but “Influence” grabbed me the most.

This book sets out how compliance practitioners and sales teams subtly influence our interactions to lead our buying thinking and decision making. The book is updated with recent examples and helpfully shows you how to defend against the less helpful techniques employed.

If you ever buy or sell things (and I guess you do), I’d recommend this as a read.

3.?????“The Ideal Team Player - How to Recognize and Cultivate the Three Essential Virtues: A Leadership Fable” , Patrick M Lencioni

I was first introduced to Patrick Lencioni by John Deverill and thoroughly enjoyed his classic book “The five disfunctions of teams”. Spurred on by this, I branched out this year and read Lencioni’s next book “The Ideal Team Player”– I’m so glad I did as its even better than the "5 disfunctions".

In this book, Lencioni goes on to identify three key traits that all staff should possess if they are to work well as a team player:

• Humble. They must be aware of their limitations and the steps they can take to apply themselves to be the best version of themselves that they can be. Humility comes with an expectation of self development and continuous improvement.
• Hungry. They must have a passion to succeed as a member of a team. The success of the individual and the failure of the team is not hunger it is selfishness.
• [emotionally] Smart. They must play nicely in a team. Be self-aware. Understand the dynamics of the team and their impact on it. Seek to be (and be seen as) a team player. Focus on how they can develop the team dynamic and amplify the group’s success

The book also sets out what happens when you recruit staff who have only two of the three traits and resulting behaviours you see and the impact this has on long term success. I've now adopted these three traits as my core criteria for recruiting new staff and for selecting team members for projects.

4.?????“Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0” By: Jim Collins

Before reading this book, I’d heard of but never read any of Jim Collin’s other famous books. But following a recommendation by Rachel Dunscombe , I have to say that I was blown away by this text and it has really changed how I think about building businesses. It starts by asking how come some companies last and others don’t? The premise is that companies that last 100 years do so because of specific actions that they’ve taken to institutionalise a model of innovation, process and purpose that transcends the individual drive of the corporate founders.??

I took away three things that I needed to consider deeply:

• What is the enduring purpose for an organisation which will last for 100 years?
• What are the principles and values for a business that can be measured and will drive decisions and behaviours even when no-one is looking?
• What specific medium-term goal will you set to mobilise the whole business towards a mission-oriented goal. This is your Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG). I suspect that in today's world this needs to be customer outcome based rather than internally based.

More than any other book this one has helped shape my work on corporate strategy and creating value in 2022.

5.?????“Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World” By: General Stanley McChrystal , David Silverman , Tantum Collins , Chris Fussell

Stanley McChrystal came to my attention via his excellent book “Leaders” where he takes the same model as the ancient biographer Plutarch in comparing successful leaders from different cultures and analysing their leadership styles. A really enjoyable read with lots to think about (e.g. despite their many differences, what made Coco Chanel and Walt Disney great leaders?).

Given how good the "Leaders" book was I decided to try “Team of Teams”. This book focusses on how the joint forces in Afghanistan and Iraq combatted ISIS. A couple of times I was surprised by the text (I won’t spoil it for you) and loved his reflections on how to take efficient but rigid teams (in fighting units of 20-30 people) that previously competed for success and morph them into a team of teams. I certainly recognised the internal competition not collaboration model from multiple organisations I’ve worked with in the past.

More unexpectedly provoking however, was his clarity of thought around complex and complicated systems. This impacted on my AI and modelling thinking quite significantly. He defines a complicated system as being like a car. Lots of moving parts that are technically advanced, but each has a purpose and responds to inputs in a predictable fashion (whether you understand how an engine works or not, when you press the accelerator the car speeds up by a predictable amount). He then goes on to define a complex system as a system which has outputs which are difficult to predict from a given set of inputs (for example when ‘breaking’ in a game of pool, a small change in the angle of the cue can produce a massively different set of resting positions for the balls on the table after a break). In the context of AI, I’ve been reflecting that the application of supervised machine learning is most likely to be successful where we have a complicated system and not where we have a complex system. It is therefore important to initially analyse problems from this perspective before jumping into significant AI projects.

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Max Jones is the Managing Partner for Health at Agilisys . With 30+ years of technology enabled change, his focus is on helping UK public sector deliver better outcomes for citizens by making great decisions using the right data and digital technologies.