Book Review : 2nd Quarter: 2020

Time just flies sometime and you feel the crunch with so many unfinished books to read. This is one catch-up game I like the most ! With my MBA exams up in the schedule, I have included those academic books too in the list. Well, Academic books were something I was allergic (we need to have few biases) and these books have been a revelation for me! Carefully selected, they are a good source of extensive study and research and not just (my) stories.

"Make a mental note of the engineer in the room. Remember his name. He’ll be quiet throughout most of the meeting, but when his moment comes, everything out of his mouth will spring from a place of unknowable brilliance. After he utters these divine words, follow up with, “Let me just repeat that,” and repeat exactly what he just said, but very, very slowly. Now, people will look back on the meeting and mistakenly attribute the intelligent statement to you."

Sarah Cooper, 100 Tricks to Appear Smarter in Meetings

I am reading "Art of War" and needed a lighter one to go along with that. For every of 100 Tricks I could add a name from my career and sometime myself too ;-). Taken in a good light, a book of what to avoid in meetings!

"Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare."

"...there are no shortcuts to excellence. Developing real expertise, figuring out really hard problems, it all takes time―longer than most people imagine....you've got to apply those skills and produce goods or services that are valuable to people....Grit is about working on something you care about so much that you're willing to stay loyal to it...it's doing what you love, but not just falling in love―staying in love."

Angela Duckworth, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

A well researched thought around how grit and perseverance on the right thing plays out in the long run. Talent is a loner without the grit to take anything forward. Beautifully illustrated with lot of real life studies and examples, and for anyone pursuing a significant dream, this is a right book.

"Lesson One: To avoid the pitfalls of local optimization, focus on the end-to-end value stream"

Mik Kersten, Project to Product: How to Survive and Thrive in the Age of Digital Disruption with the Flow Framework

If there is a book mentioned on a Scaled Agile, Inc. course, I should be just reading it. You might call it blind faith, but over the years I have not been let down by any of the suggested books. That's a ??% score. Impressive foreword by Gene Kim, a four minute read which forced me to complete the book in one sitting.

“If you're not confused, you're not paying attention.”

― Tom Peters, Thriving on Chaos: Handbook for a Management Revolution

One author I will recommend again and again for his wisdom, keen observation and simplest and meaningful suggestions.

And a list of Academic books without going into too much details.

Financial Accounting – A Managerial Perspective by R. Narayanaswamy

Accounting Text & Cases by Robert Anthony, David Hawkins, Kenneth Merchant

Managerial Economics: Principles and worldwide applications by Salvatore & Srivastava

Statistics for Business and Economics by David R Anderson, Dennis J Sweeney, Thomas A Williams, Jeffrey D. Camm and James J. Cochran

Quantitative Methods for Business by David R Anderson, Dennis J Sweeney, Thomas A Williams, Jeffrey D Camm and Kipp Martin

Organizational Behavior by Stephen P. Robbins., Timothy A. Judge & Neharika Vohra

Human Resource Management- Text and Cases by Aswathappa K

And the journey continues !