Books I read in 2023
Jyoti Malik
Director eCommerce | Strategy | P&L | Sales I Performance Marketing I Digital Acceleration I Marketplaces I DTC I Omni-channel
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After a couple good years of getting back to reading, 2023 was a deviation in the sense that I still consumed a lot of information but in the form of articles, documentaries, and quite a bit of time spent on YouTube. Still managed about a book a month this year. Here are some recommended reads along with little commentary.
'Small is Beautiful (Economics as if People Mattered)' by E.F. Schumacher: Easily an important book to read and recommend. This book was written in early 70's and is only more relevant now than ever.? To briefly summarize what it's about, this book is an argument against the conventional, mainstream economic wisdom, and lays out an alternate viewpoint - to look at economy building through communities and not corporations. There is evaluation of the error in looking at natural resources as income and not capital, flawed foundations of economics as a discipline, and the loss of 'common good' as the end that we should have been building for. And there is an exploration of? alternate approaches to different concepts, and their application in leading us to a better version of modernization and progress.
'An Immense World' by Ed Yong: An absolutely fascinating read, one that takes you away from the self-absorbed, human centered view of the world and sense the world through the species that surround us. The anchor concept for the book is the existence of 'Umwelt' - the part of an animal's surroundings that the animal can sense and experience - its perceptual world. "……a multitude of creatures could be standing in the same physical space and have completely different Umwelten." Different chapters take on different stimuli, like light, sound, heat, or echoes, and how different species in the animal kingdom interact with this stimuli and experience them through their senses, which go beyond the five discrete, one-dimensional senses understood by humans. The book has lots of examples from different species and colored pictures for visualization. I bet once you read this book and you look at your own pet or a wild animal, you'd wonder about their Umwelt, and see and know them as far more complex and evolved beings than you previously did.
'Multipliers' by Liz Wiseman: This is a well-known book on leadership, about 15 years old I think. It had been on my list for quite some time and I picked it up as a lighter read and also because I very much believe in the central premise of the book, that a leader is a leader only if they act as a multiplier for those they lead. Anything else, and not a leader! This book outlines a 'multiplier' as contrasted against a 'diminisher', and elaborates on the key characteristics of a multiplier leader - talent magnet, liberator, challenger, debate maker, and an investor. Finally, the book illustrates how diminishers operate, how they can bring down even the best talent, and how to deal with them. There is also a notable mention of the 'accidental diminsher' and how they can evolve to be a multiplier. I have met very few multipliers, more than a few diminishers, and can attest to the difference they can make in experience at work and one's career arc. Multiplier vs. diminisher is a great lens for anyone to hold, should they ever take on responsibility for other people and this book could be a great recommended reading as part of leadership development programs/manager training in organizations.
'Rage Becomes Her (The Power of Women's Anger)' by Soraya Chemaly: An important book in the sense that it brings to forefront a very core human emotion like anger, how its expression has been regulated for women, and the negative outcomes from anger suppression, for example, when it turns inwards and becomes shame, depression, or self-harm. The book is well researched and written in the early chapters, and traces anger for female gender from early childhood to later years and how the suppression manifests. The author illustrates the damage from this suppression using examples from her own family, including her grandmother, and trends in the general teen population. Second half of the book transitions to anger response and I skimmed over a good chunk there as the book over indexed on one single event in recent political history and the anger response of women, to illustrate the power of anger (I personally didn't see that as the biggest or most meaningful example of what anger could achieve but it's recent and localized to a specific region and maybe the author was quite invested in it). Anyhow, the book ends with underlining the importance of expression of anger for women that anger isn't what gets in the way, it is the way and there is immense power in owning it and wielding it. This book could be a great read for authority figures, like parents and teachers, who have an outsized impact during developmental years.
'Entangled Life' by Merlin Sheldrake: I got interested in the world of fungi in 2022, one that I had paid little attention to since high-school botany classes, and realized just how rich and fascinating it is. I watched the documentary 'Fantastic Fungi', read many articles, and learned about mushrooms that clear oil spills and fungal networks that the trees use to communicate with each other. Entangled Life takes one deep into the world of fungi, how we are surrounded by fungi and know so little about it (more than 90% of their species remain undocumented), and it's absolutely fascinating as human beings continue to learn about different fungi, their make-up, characteristics, networks, and interaction within and with all other species that exist on the planet. A lot of scientific studies and research is referenced as researchers are? studying and making sense of this much invisible but utterly complex and rich world of fungi, to learn and draw inspiration from.
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In other reads, I had started the year with 'Reclaiming the Commons' by Vandana Shiva, an Indian environmental activist who is not from the fashionable Davos Summit and Climate Action Summit crowd, but someone with real research, tangible ideas, and plenty of uncomfortable truths to give voice to. Vandana is hard-hitting in countering the man vs. nature theory that has shaped the world in last couple hundred years. She highlights the harm caused by current economic and political systems when applied to food production & natural resource extraction, and reminds us of the ancient wisdom that we are part of the nature and we need to find our way back to living in harmony with it.
Finally, I'd highlight 'Making Ideas Happen' by Scott Belsky. I love his other book, 'The Messy Middle', which I frequently recommend. This one is a simple, straightforward book about managing the flow of ideas through recording and organization, sorting to determine what to execute on, and getting ideas to execution. It has practical approaches that are good references if one has a constant stream of ideas (a good problem to have) and struggles with remembering, sifting, and making something of them.
Hope some of above is of interest and welcome any recommendations. Best wishes to everyone for the year ahead and ending the post with this thought -
"Whatever the ways of the world, what fruits do you bring?" ~ from 'Gold', Rumi as translated by Haleh Liza Gafori.
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Curious and creative product leader
10 个月Love this list! Thanks for sharing.
Ecommerce Director at Ann Clark, teach Digital Marketing at University of Vermont & Champlain College
10 个月Thanks for the inspiration. I'm reading Immense World now, and Small Is Beautiful is a favorite of mine. The others I'll add to my list. You made us smarter!
Ecommerce Marketplace Leadership | Retail Media | Amazon 1P/3P/Ads | ex-WPP | ex-LEGO | Experience with 250+ Brands
11 个月Thanks for sharing, I really like the format and how concise each review was!
Unified Commerce Leader | Silo Slayer | Possibilist | Omni Integration | eComm| Marketing | Retail Media | Joint Value Realization | JBP | Product Dev | Data+ Analytics | Transformation
11 个月Love this! Would love to have virtual coffee and ask about some of these and catch up!
Head of New Builds, Stand Together | ex-IBM, ex-ShopRunner
11 个月Happy New Year Jyoti Malik … superb list
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