My inspirational book list

This informal little article was sent to my students on the SAP Technology Consultant Coursera Professional Certificate. I have had many students reach out with excellent questions with regards to how to develop themselves as consultants and I think sometimes we need to step beyond the product learning to recognise that inspiration comes from having an open and enquiring mind across all aspects of life and thinking. So I wrote a quick summary of some of my favourite books on critical thinking. I hope you find them interesting.

Greetings everyone,

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Over the summer there has been a very substantial growth in the number of people passing the full SAP Technology Consultant Professional Certificate. And at the same time a substantial number of people reaching out to me for career advice and ‘next steps’ via LinkedIn. I’ve also had some very interesting personal stories from people who have asked me how to ‘go the extra mile’ and do things to strengthen their CV / resume prior to making applications.

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I have to say the best initial step is of course just completing the whole Professional Certificate. This shows maturity and focus – two things that are very attractive indeed to prospective employers – together with indicating a desire to learn and grow. After completing the whole Professional Certificate I always point people towards our SAP learning site here to explore some of the career offerings – but what you study there will largely come down to you as an individual.

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What I can suggest however is that when you are in your discussions with employers it always makes sense to show that you have depth outside of academic courses. For me I’ve always been impressed with candidates who have read widely and have formed an insight into their careers as individuals.

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So! I decided to offer some suggestions on books that I have read that have inspired me and that I have drawn on in both my professional and personal life to inform my personal development, career, and overall l approach to life. I hope you enjoy!

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So good they can’t ignore you, Cal Newport

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Newport demonstrates that life and career success isn’t determined by passion but rather by the areas of your life where you decide to focus your skills-building. Over the course of the book, he draws upon a series of case studies to illustrate how passion comes about through study and practice. Passions build over time through the experience of becoming really, really good at something. Focus is paid to the concept of personal capital – the idea that you build a reservoir of capital that can be spent to achieve things that are important to you.

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However, this capital is earned through the building and deployment of exceptional skills where you can differentiate yourself as being the person who is most skilled at that one thing (or combination of things. I often discuss this with students when I deliver design thinking or career guidance talks – what is it that you want to do – and how can you make yourself so good that you are the obvious, natural choice for that thing.

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But it may take a while for you to know what it is you want to be good at. One student example given by Newport is a young MIT maths student who discovered she had a love for biology, then medicine, then anthropology and genetics, and who then used her original maths knowledge to build an expertise in computational genetics – something that took her almost a decade to realize. This leads nicely to my next book.

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Range, David Epstein

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Malcolm Gladwell made popular the famous quote that to become an expert in anything takes 10,000 hours. This was based on research long before his famous book Outliers, but the key argument was that to become the ‘so good they can’t ignore you’ would take 10,000 hours. Newport (above) agrees with this to an extent though he differs slightly in arguing that it is the time spent in deliberate practice on those elements you find difficult that makes you better. But David Epstein had a different view entirely – arguing that to become really good at one thing you must have many exploratory and seemingly unrelated experiences to arrive at a full enough understanding of a topic to really be good at it.

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He gives the examples of some famous sports men and women who don’t spend all their time practicing just one sports or one aspect of their sport, but that rather spend some time practicing their sport, and then spend time on other things that seem unrelated but that ironically make them better at their focus sport.

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The reason for this is that people that learn skills in isolation are chasing a fallacy – that the world is inherently stable and that the rules that apply today will apply tomorrow – thus rewarding extreme over-specialisation. However, the world is not stable, and even within sports the rules change as new strategies, tactics and training methods evolve and new skills beat old ones. So, a better strategy is to have a broad set of skills that allow an inherent flexibility to the environment.

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I’ve always thought these two books work well together and aren’t as far apart as they first seem. Keeping a broad range of interests initially enables you to evaluate what it is that you really enjoy and are good at as well as being able to grow in and develop yourself. Once that is clearer – practice with diligence but ensure you don’t over-focus and become the expert on such a narrow topic that there is no possibility of adaptation. This might be the difference between someone who ‘specialises’ in analysis, and who is able to draw upon an interest in literature to understand the value of storytelling in analysis. As opposed to someone who focuses exclusively on a technical skill within one application.

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Systems Thinking: A Primer, Donella Meadows

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I really should place this book at the top of the list as it is probably my favourite ‘business book’ but the truth is it’s a book that is useful for all areas of life. Meadows was a brilliant Professor at Dartmouth who researched and taught the topics of systems thinking and systems dynamics – the application of mathematical models to systems analysis. In this instance systems don’t just refer to IT systems or processes – but rather the inherent interconnectedness of things and in particular the interconnectedness of the natural world (she was a strong advocate for sustainability and environmental awareness 50 years ago).

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Systems can be loosely defined as a series of elements, and relationships between those elements, in a defined or ‘bounded’ network that share a common goal.? One of the key lessons of the book is that the ‘goal’ of a system is not necessarily the stated goal but rather how the system functions in the real world and the effect it actually produces. So, a government may have stated aim to reduce environmental damage, but if its’ policies and the systems it creates are antithetical to that aim, then the ‘goal’ is actually environmental damage, not the stated goal. She also discusses the notion of leverage points – places in a system where it is possible to effect positive (or negative) change – and these exist in a hierarchy where certain leverage points are easier than others but may not be as effective.

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KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for example are easy to create, but they operate within a system that may exist to achieve some other goal, so KPIs would either not be achievable or may be ‘gamed’ – with the system itself remaining intact. Alternatively, structures, and mental models within a system (paradigms in the vernacular of Schumpeter) are the hardest to change – but are by far the most effective if you want the system itself to achieve a different natural goal.

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Atomic habits, James Clear

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Speaking of systems. This is another of my favourites as it has one very clear message: small and consistent changes add up over time. Aristotle once said ‘we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not a goal but a habit’. This is the essence of Atomic Habits. Habits are those things we do that start of small but that then, over time, become an intrinsic part of our personality and as natural as breathing. Clear used the term atomic to only to illustrate how one small thing can have a large impact. He also wanted to demonstrate how many small atoms become molecules, which in turn become compounds etc. So – systems again! If there is something you want to do – begin by demonstrating, just a little, but on a regular basis – the activity that would lead you to that goal. Don’t try to do everything at once. You won’t become a world class tennis player in a week. But imagine if you played for just 1 minute a day to begin. That is, as Clear puts it, a ‘vote’ for you being the sort of person who consistently plays tennis. The 1 minute will become 2 minutes, which over time becomes 5 minutes, and before you know it you have been playing consistently for 2 years and you’re pretty good! Want to learn a language – don’t try and memorise whole book – try and listen to a 1-minute conversation, then 2 minutes, then 3. Within a year you are listening to 1-hour podcasts with a decent level of comprehension. Habitual efforts lead to consistent effects and consistency trumps ad hoc every time.

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The Infinite Game, Simo Sinek

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This is a really good book about how approaching a goal with the mindset of perpetual improvement – for a person or a business – makes you stronger than a competitor who believes that to succeed you have to ‘win’ in the short term. Sanek compares several businesses who sought to achieve goals for this quarter, or for this financial year, or who wanted to launch one specific product to ‘beat’ their rival. These firms didn’t have a clear understanding of the nature of the game they were playing -which was one that went on beyond the short term and was, in effect, infinite. Part of the infinite mindset is having a clear purpose beyond the short term – in effect ‘why’ are you doing what you are doing and what needs to happen for you to continue to have that purpose in perpetuity? The book focuses mainly on businesses, but I have always thought it applied well to individuals too. After all – as Seneca said (yes I do like my Greek and Roman philosophers and historians ?? ) ‘if a person does not to which port they are sailing, no wind is favourable’.

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Disrupting Class, Clayton Christensen

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Christensen is one of my all-time favourite academics. Up there with Donella Meadows. I studied innovation theory and destructive / disruptive innovation at Manchester University in the 1990s and a lot of Christensen’s work had a bearing on my studies, even though at the time the focus was more on an economist called Schumpeter and his work from the 1930s. Christensen’s most famous work is ‘The Innovators Dilemma’ – another excellent book that discusses the innovation S Curve and the value of achieving high but not necessarily profitable initial rates of growth. This is in order to progress up the S Curve rapidly and then be in a position to improve products and services once a significant market share is achieved (for a good example – look at the history of Amazon!).

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But my favourite book is Disrupting Class. My parents were both teachers, and even within SAP I have had a role in education my whole career (apart from 8 years as an IT industry analyst before joining SAP). And I have seen how difficult it is to scale education in a quality way and particularly to ensure equitable access to all. Daphne Koller – one of the founders of Coursera – once gave a Ted Talk where she discussed a riot at a South African University where one woman died. Why? The riot was because the university had limited spaces and the rioters were people trying to apply for the last few places. The woman who died had been trying to secure a place for her son. As a father of a ten-year-old in an economy where education is plentiful this has always stuck with me. Education is a privilege in many parts of he world and we, as a species, place a high value on it because we recognise its’ capacity for changing lives.

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New technologies, Christensen argued, made individual and tailored education as well as self-directed learning open to both the masses and to educational institutions that wanted to offer creative avenues for learning to their students.

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The First Tycoon, T.J. Stiles

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As a student of business – both academically and as a personal interest – I have always been fascinated by the story of Cornelius Vanderbilt. And for three specific reasons:

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1)????? He borrowed money from his mother to buy a boat and then used the boat to ferry people between Staten Island and Manhattan before there were regular scheduled ferries. He had to borrow $100 – a big sum at the time – and there was no guarantee of success. But he had spotted a gap, and he worked extremely hard to succeed. In his first year he made a $300 profit. That was incredibly precocious. But sometimes you just have to believe in your own judgement and chart your own course.

2)????? He was humble in knowing what he did and didn’t know. He wanted to establish a ferry route but knew that he knew very little about shipping. So even though he could afford to buy his own ferry he took on a regular job as a ferryman for another company just so that he could learn – not just the operations but how to beat the competition. He knew the value of knowledge and was prepared to ne humble to acquire the knowledge he needed to ultimately succeed.

3)????? He recognised the opportunities of, and threats from, technological and societal change. Having established one of the largest shipping companies in the world he began to recognise the threat and opportunity presented by railroads. So, he adopted his tried technique of finding out as much about railroads as possible and then only when ready did he enter the industry. His goal was to have a fully integrated transport chain – and he wasn’t wedded to a specific technology but rather to the concept of having a successful transportation business.

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In other aspects of his life, he wasn’t so great. Labour relations were a particular weakness, and he could be ruthless with city councils and with other railroads. But the concept of ‘learn first, be humble and be flexible’ is one that is, to me, a highly valuable life lesson.

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So – there you go. Those are just some of the books that inspired me – and still do. I could list another 20 as I do have a tendency to be reading 5 books simultaneously – not a habit I would recommend ??. But these are for me – I’d be very interested to learn of your own reading experiences and how any lessons garnered from your studies have led to how you approach your own life and career.

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All the very best

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Martin