Foundational Books I Love

While many people are publishing all of the books they read in 2017, before doing that, I wanted to take a step back and cover some of the books I view as foundational and are ones that years after reading are ones I still refer to and use on a daily basis. Many of these are older books, so go pickup a used copy and enjoy. So here are a few books I have read for years and keep around as references.

I started my career in Real Estate Appraisals and Home Inspections. And that was the direction I was headed when computers make me rethink my choices. After working for a company, I became a consultant for GE Capital, where I quickly became the practice manager of their CRM Practice in Chicago. The problem I faced was that I had ZERO background in consulting or project management. So I learned how I always learned, by reading. The problem was almost every book on Project Management covered the “How” to do the actual tasks and project setup. They didn’t cover the “Why” or the thought process behind it. This book by Steve McConnell is the best book on Project Management I’ve ever read. If you are moving from consulting to Project Management or want to understand the mechanic’s behind the why’s, this book is awesome. Software Project Survival Guide (Developer Best Practices) I actually had the fortune of having Steve teach a Project Management Class to partners in DC after starting at Microsoft before SureStep came out.  

Shortly after joining Microsoft, Reed Overfelt, the then General Manager of the Mid Atlantic SMS&P Business came back from a sabbatical. And he had the author of this book come into the office and do a quick session with us. At the time, I didn’t fully appreciate the message, but the older I have gotten and the harder I work, the more I enjoy it. Never Check E-Mail In the Morning: And Other Unexpected Strategies for Making Your Work Life Work – This sounds counter intuitive. But your job isn’t email. This helps put it into perspective.

Once I joined Microsoft, many changes happened organizationally. And I went to work for a manager who to this day remains one of the worst managers I have ever had. Now it probably didn’t help I was in my 20’s and he was in his 60’s. I wanted to push and shake up. He didn’t. Five Dysfunctions of a Team was a book I read that almost perfectly described our team. It was very cool that as a team we went through the workbook and came together as a team to overcome our dysfunctions.

At Microsoft, I couldn’t figure out the reason folks changes jobs and roles. And then I was introduced to this book. The Fiefdom Syndrome: The Turf Battles That Undermine Careers and Companies - And How to Overcome Them. It was written by the first COO of Microsoft. And describes the culture at Microsoft and how they made changes in the early days. And how it still impacts us today. If you are a Microsoft employee, read this now. And the Hit Refresh for the new views.

I love to read words. I am not generally a fan of listening to books. The one exception is this one. The book is awesome. It is also about 400 pages too long. The World Is Flat : A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century So if you can, listen to it. It helped me understand and firmly place in my brain that you have to always be moving forward. You don’t want to be a mainframe operator in 1980 and still be an operator in 2017. You REALLY need to keep adapting and changing to stay away in the world.

Phrases That Sell : The Ultimate Phrase Finder to Help You Promote Your Products, Services, and Ideas and Lifetime Encyclopedia of Letters – I am not a natural writer. It takes me some pump priming to get the creative juices flowing. These books have been VERY useful in providing some examples of words to use and avoid your point across. Whenever I need some inspiration, I use these books as starting points to write something.

This book is one that you need to read, attend a training on and refer to again and again. Despite the number of pre-sales engineers in the world, this is the only book dedicated to it that I know of. Demonstrating To WIN!: The Indispensable Guide for Demonstrating Complex Products. I still have fond Memories of Al Hopp popping the “So What” sign up to me all the time. I still have my fly fishing lure from the first class I have ever taken with 2Win. Training partners on Demo2Win is still a highlight of my early career at Microsoft.  

If you are going to be in sales, involved in sales or talk with sales people, this book is a must read. The New Strategic Selling: The Unique Sales System Proven Successful by the World's Best Companies. So many of the other sales methodologies are built on this. To me this is the granddaddy of sales methodologies. It’s dry to read. It isn’t fun to practice. It is painful to do in deals. It however exposes all of the shortcomings in a deal. It makes you highlight your strengths. Even if your company uses a “modern” sales method, go back and read this, then read Solution Selling and then the Challenger Sale. It’s kind of fun to see the direct linage between those three to me. (And thanks to Rick Miller for the awesome sales training class almost 20 years ago.)

Expanding your mind to me is the purpose of reading. Here are three books that helped me expand my mind. They helped me understand the world, how and why we do things and how to look at things differently.

David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants / Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything / The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine

I would read almost anything by these three authors, just as brain food.  

Malcom Gladwell

Michael Lewis

Steve Levitt

What books do you view as required reading and what books do you read over and over again?