My Top Five Books of 2019; giving me the most impact!

2019 was a fantastic year of creating and growing with its unique challenges and learning opportunities. I always try to find books that meet my current state of needs and interests.

As a marketing and growth entrepreneur with experience and interest in the product, business development and personal growth, here are my top books of 2019 that gave me the most impact.

The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth

These days, everyone is talking about being disruptive. What does that even mean? And what can we learn from companies that indeed have been disruptive? Christensen reveals the different types of disruptive innovations and what companies can expect from the incumbents on the market and their future. He goes over sustaining innovations, the Jobs-To-Be-Done theory, over-serving consumers, emergent strategies, hiring on the ability to learn and more. This book was so impactful; I end up enrolling myself at the Harvard Business School online, where professor Christensen teaches a course on Disruptive Innovation. 

Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life by Nir Eyal. 

Last year Nir Eyal's "Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products" was on my list of favourites. This year he offers us something different but equally impactful with Indistractable. As the title suggests, it's about understanding why we do things that go against our best interests. In Nir's words, "Being Indistractable means striving to do what you say you will do." The book is vital to anyone that needs to get things done - so everyone! It offers theoretical and practical hacks or guides on understanding why we get distracted and how to become Indistractable. While some of it is good sense, the way it's broken down and explained is so thoughtful it's enlightening and useful. Nir's built a fantastic community around being indistractable, which I find very helpful as well. I may even get the word tattoed on my hand!

Inspired: How to create tech products customers love by Marty Cagan

Marty Cagan offers a lot from his own experiences in technology and product while pointing out top lessons learned from companies we all know. He describes how the product is often guided on a flawed and linear process, which ends up being the root cause of many failures. How weak teams are created by following sales requirements vs. following a vision and focusing on consumer struggles. Cagan reminds us of the true meaning of being agile or lean and goes into detail on how successful companies and products maintain authentically agile cultures. The book is well divided, offering a clear overview of his methodology and perspective. While some of it seems idealistic, it's importance and impact on my ventures is unmatched. 

Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell

Pure "Gladwellian" in nature, Talking to Strangers is yet another Gladwell book for your collection. Every section is a case study of sorts with a journalistic and physiological approach to highly popularized and significant historical events. He reexamines each as a journalist would if that journalist was Malcolm Gladwell. Each story is dissected and examined with the conclusion that we are all terrible at understanding each other (or at least people we don't know well). The book is captivating with theories and insights on human behaviour and sociology. I recommend the audiobook.

The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek

Sinek is the fantastic author who wrote the essential, "Start with Why." The Infinite Game is about two types of games that we are all part of, either an infinite or finite one. The point is to understand which game you are playing and when and who you should be competing with (yourself!). In an infinite game, avoid 'quagmire' by looking inwards as a business. Sinek explains this through five practices that are all key to "playing" the infinite game for real success. 

1. 1) To have a just cause (start with why!). 2) A courageous leader that encourages people to work at their best. 3) A trusting team that prevents people from working in fear, but instead, they focus on advancing the just cause in a safe environment. 4) A worthy rival that helps reveal our weaknesses. 5) A flexible playbook (or existential flexibility) that allows companies to make profound strategic shifts.

These five really marked me and gave me the most in return while inspiring me to think differently and inclusively. If you have suggestions for books that you think I would enjoy, please add them in the comments!

Other great impact books I suggest:

• Schadenfreude by Tiffany Watt Smith
• Sprint by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky and Braden Kowitz
• Jobs-to-be-done The Handbook nu Chris Spiek and Bob Moesta
• Build Cool Sh*t by Dan McGaw

Some from my 2020 list:

• Elon by Ashlee Vance
• Goodbye, Things by Fumio Saski
• Fierce Leadership by Susan Scott
• Atomic Habits by James Clear
• Becoming by Michelle Obama
• Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker