iMBA - reading, watching, listening and learning list
One unexpected benefit of being a student again is having more time to read. I bought a Kindle for my travels last year and was using it almost every day when I was away. I read 10 books in about 6 weeks and while I haven’t been able to keep up at that speed, I have continued the practice. Of all the books that I have read in the last 12 months or so, there are three that really stand out and I tend to recommend them to everyone. They have changed the way I think about building organisations but also how I work with people more broadly:
The Mom Test - Rob Fitzpatrick
Essentially, this book is about learning to ask the right questions so that you can get closer to understanding the truth. It turns out that we often ask questions that validate our existing assumptions or simply don’t give us the insight we need. The Mom Test was written for entrepreneurs that are at the beginning of their startup journey but I think it has much wider applications. From friendships to family relationships, asking better questions as described in the Mom Test is something we should all aspire to.
Radical Candor - Kim Scott
There are parts of Radical Candor that make me nervous about recommending it. Kim Scott seems to have had an extraordinary career surrounded by some extraordinary people (she is friends with Sheryl Sandberg and many of the Silicon Valley set). But at it’s core Radical Candor is just a call to arms for more of us to speak our truth more often. The book is explicitly about culture in organisations but I see the lessons in it widely applicable to all areas of our lives. Speaking the truth may hurt in the short-term but it’s better for all of us in the long-term.
Team of Teams - General Stanley McChrystal
I heard about this book a few years ago and put off reading it because I really wasn’t sure what to expect. Since then I have been lucky enough to meet a few people that spent a lot of time in the military and something about their mindset really fascinated me - this book felt like a window into that. Yes, it describes a world I know next to nothing about (leading military campaigns - specifically the more recent ones in the Middle East) but I see this as something more valuable. To my mind, Team of Teams is about leading and adapting in times of huge and uncertain change. We could all do with knowing a bit more about that.
The formatting on posts in LinkedIn makes putting all the info on this post a bit unwieldy but you can find the full list here: iMBA - reading, watching, listening and learning list