Summer reading
Olivier REITZ
Group Director @ Alstom, Driving Process Excellence and People Development | MBA | Master Black Belt | Turnaround, Operator | Intrapreneur | Digital activist
We’re halfway through 2022, that seemed awfully fast, didn’t it?
Summer is a perfect time to get reenergized with good books.
This year I will start and finish with 2 classical book with a central theme, the Anthropocene mainly dominated by the human influence on the geology and all ecosystems. Are you in?
Starting with the famous essay written by American transcendentalist and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson the “Self-Reliance" done in 1841. It contains the most thorough statement of one of Emerson's recurrent themes: The need for each individual to avoid conformity and false consistency by following our own instincts and personal ethical values. Emerson believed that in order for a man to truly be a man, he has to follow his own conscience and "do his own thing". Essentially, do what you believe is right instead of blindly following society. A must read !
Lean Six Sigma For Leaders: A practical guide for leaders to transform the way they run their organization by Martin Brenig-Jones and Jow Dowdal.
As I am leading the Lean 6 Sigma initiative for #teamalstom this book remind that Lean and 6 Sigma require leadership as this is not only a Toolkit. Being able to characterize the defect inside out and get everybody on the same page, that is Leadership !
As business performance evolved in many way in our a more volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world, developing critical thinking become crucial to focus on what really matter to control the controllable in order to fulfil the stakeholders requirements with not only internal KPI but also by considering the externalities and impact on the planet ! A good read for the Lean 6 Sigma thinker !
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I really enjoyed the read of “Doughnut economics”, a didactic book on circular economy written by Kate Raworth an English economist known for understanding this type of economic model that balances between essential human needs and planetary boundaries with a visual and sustainable approach.??
The book “How the world really works” by Vaclav Smil is my preferred one this year, it develops what we can do if we better leverage the available information to better understand how the world really works. This book explains seven of the most fundamental realities governing our survival and prosperity. From energy and food production, through the global supply chain (steel , oil, plastics, semiconductor…), to risks, our environment and its future. A much-needed reality check, because before we can tackle problems effectively, we must understand the facts with data ! A refreshing read
The last is a classic, “Walden, or Life in the Woods” by Henry David Thoreau. This is a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings. Thoreau makes precise scientific observations of nature and poetic uses of natural phenomena. He identifies many plants and animals by both their popular and scientific names, records in detail the color and clarity of different bodies of water, precisely dates and describes the freezing and thawing of the pond, and recounts his experiments to measure the depth and shape of the bottom of the supposedly "bottomless" Walden Pond. The book is a journey of spiritual discovery and a manual for self-reliance. To read or reread this inspirational book.
Easy to have all of them with you on your tablet or kindle ! ;-)
Wish you all good a summer, take care and protect your skin !