Take five

Reading time: 10 min

Listening to Miles Davis "It never entered my mind" will set you in a mood to write statements of work and advance work on a RFP, but it will also take you to venues one dismisses promptly in sobriety. One being to share a list of 5 books for your summer vacation, if you have the time, then please consider my suggestion. However, if you have kids, try pool frisbee and prioritize playtime with them over reading. Following a small adaptation to Eisenhower matrix, what you can't delegate, and requires your immediate attention, do first rather than later. In between parenting and the football match in the bar, hoping your team qualifies to the upcoming round, either by the swimming pool or in the balcony after the kid's bedtime, try this - pick up a book, while calmed by a summer night, filled with warm air and a drink beside you (these are the requirements, the must-have), try a negroni, or at least a version of it, no more then 2, otherwise, the words and wisdom will not sink in properly.

Read them in the proposed order, for a conducting thread that will drive you to a refined purpose, or rather yet, continuity of purpose. I kind of feel embolden at this point, with a particular drive to set and adjust things in motion. Professionally I have a responsibility in steering a part of a companies vision or at the very least make sure specifications and requirements are detailed to make it happen, by bargaining between business needs, technological capabilities and internal readiness to deliver value. The following list is a path to what value is, but I digress, let's move forward to the intended purpose then, and take these 5 books with you this summer:

1. The Savoy Cocktail Book, by Harry Craddock, 1930 - "Ice is nearly always an absolute essential for any cocktail", p.9, take old Harry's words to your craft, Business and IT in particular, take some ice with you to a meeting, you may need to use it or break it for a smooth outcome. No. 1, you might ask, for a summer reading book list? No, you may not, it's quite obvious, required even, to set the mood, for the next book. Rule of thumb, keep it simple, no more than 3 ingredients, adjust flavour, kick and panache, the thing is, you might be aiming for a product that takes a dash of your favourite bitters or french vermouth, but you realise you have triple-sec in your pantry, well, bare with me, sometimes you have to "respond to change over following a plan", be agile, you know, the time-to-market, the window of opportunity commandments? Strangely enough, for the life of me, I can't seem to find a negroni variation in the book, created in 1919, it became mainstream only in 1947, which teaches us, sometimes a product comes too early, for example, before being reinvented, the Americano into Negroni, Skype into Teams. The purpose of this book is meant to be a conversation starter, a savvy in the bar when ordering drinks, and set you in a reading mood.
2. The Royal Game, by Stefan Zweig, 1943 (reading time: 1 h 30 min) - Long story short, in a boat trip from New York to Buenos Aires, upon a chance encounter, stupid talent meets a monomaniac, two chess players, the first a known chess grandmaster, talented, what nowadays would be classified as some sort of autism, and a second man, an accountant. We'll focus on this one, a split- persona, driven from torture by the nazis in occupied Austria, in order to evade questioning from his captors, he develops the ability of mind mapping a chessboard and all 32 pieces, with game openings, defences and attacks combined, why? To keep track of his narrative, to elude and evade questions from his captors, at first, to be coherent in his answers, later to maintain his wit and focus. By focusing too much on one thing, a single interest, like Gollum and Smeagol, devoured by it, the one ring, or in this case, a game, split into white and black pieces, one man becoming both challenger and opponent of himself. The essence of the book, is the value of strategy, how to envision one, achieve it, test it, keep it or pivot it. By keeping the board simple (as few dependencies as possible), and aknowledge that "strategy develops differently in two different brains" p.29. So you want to, again, keep it simple and fail fast, grab the opportunity, increment it iteratively to adjust to externalities, to competition, bottom line," working software over comprehensive documentation".
3. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, by John le Carré, 1963 (reading time: 4 hours) - speaking of strategy, here is a narrative I can relate to, there's this operative, his name, Alec Leamas, who carries out the better part of a plan, a strategy drawn by his superior, know as Control and one other, shady character, George Smiley. Set in the height of the Cold War, Leamas is convinced his part in the plot is to expose a fellow named Mundt, an east Germany chief counter-intelligence officer. Well not to spoil the story, I'll say this, although the intended strategy pays off, it is morally condemning, even in business, one must be of trust, after all, a scorched earth strategy can only be applied once and diminushes the image and trust in everyone involved in it, not just those responsible for it. Vision must be shared across an organization, to keep people on board, not just to ensure their responsibilities, but of a sense of mission and loyalty to avoid flight risk - "Individuals and interactions over tools and processes", value your team, your people, a trust environment promotes higher productivity, people feel energized and less stressed, reward good results and achievments with autonomy at first, of course temper it with a healthy dosage of accountability, see what I did here? It's a cocktail of meritocracy and empirism, with a dash of spirits.
4. Strategize - Product Strategy and Product Roadmap Practices for the Digital Age, by Roman Pichler, 2016 (reading time: 2 h 30 minutes) - I know you were chasing a pattern here, a list of books ordered by date from oldest to recent, a specific genre, allow me to disrupt your web scraper script, for your NLP bot for content categorization. The keyword being "disruption", and we'll return to this thread after detailing why you must read this book (warning, this is a comprehensive book review). If you're involved in product development, in charge or part of a team responsible to deliver the value proposition, either it being the dairy cow or your companies core and adjacent business, or it's very own disruptive unicorn, a new business built for a new niche market segment, to pursuit a new revenue source or grow brand awareness. Then you require a product strategy to support both vision and the roadmap with tools and practices to aid your organization digital transformation. You will find them this book, as in a sense, you are learning from your own experience while reading it. The books advantage, is being related to SCRUM framework, however, it does not depend on it for product development, or any other like XP, Kanban, or Lean Agile, it kind bends toward your thinking and practice. The book is split into 2 parts, the 1st covers Product Strategy, the 2nd adresses the product roadmap, but if you have to take a quick lesson, take this: "the product Vision (must be aligned with your remaining portfolio and company mission) feeds the Product Strategy (how will it be realized), which in turn is split either in goals or features (depending on the type of product - core, adjacent or disruptive and market segment) into the Product Roadmap (how it will be implemented) and finally the Product Backlog (with detailed epics, user stories and other requirements) note that this relationship works in both directions, the product backlog can cause changes to the roadmap, for instance, which in turn may affect the strategy"- lets say regulation caused by GDPR or a unexpected audit regarding some ISO certification compliance (which by the way, can be a god thing, can make your B2B product more sexy with that stamp on it) cralls its way into the backlog, or integration with the company CRM toke a turn for the worst and you need to set aside a sprint for bug fixes and regulatory compliance, well, all these changes impact product strategy, never forget, as the author so sharply depicts, plans change and all this might just mean the Vision needs to be updated too, or even it may require a bit of soul searching for a new one - this is the magic of the book, the disruption of how the operational can disrupt the strategy, not just the mention of a disruptive type of product that can canibalize another or create a new market segment and how it should be handled in your companies portfolio, which by the way, is brilliantly put by the author, your competitors disruptive product can kill your company (Netflix vs Blockbuster). Another scenario is a company who saved itself trough innovation and was boosted by disruption, everyone knows Apple, facing bad odds in the late 90s, risen by the innovative and disruptive iPod, then later, the iPhone was presented as a piece of innovation, nowadays, one of their major revenue streams comes from the app store, you cant't have of without the other, think of it, Apple was a computer company, they have clearly move beyond it, its more then a product lineup, its a portfolio set by a value chain of related products within a ecosystem. If you want to understand disruption in the digital age, read this article -The winners and losers of digital disruption by Nima Torabi. One other important insight in this book is the product life cycle, how it should be addressed. So, what makes a great book? On my terms it must accomplish 3 things to ones rapport: advantage, knowledge and empathy - funny you should find all 3 in a business book, this is by far, the best bang for your buck, I strongly recommend it, but you have to be in great shape to read it, to have follow a pathos in business and IT, clearly not for scholars, one other thing, a quote from the book , "analyse the data you collect, and take the right action", this refers mainly to the definition of relevant metrics, and the data you gather to meet your KPIs to either proof your MVP concept or adjust the Product strategy. Never has been a more important lesson, "customer collaboration over contract negotiation", but let's update the Agile Manifesto shall we? To people collaboration for value proposition, because people (clients, consumers, users) by using the product give us, the people (whom we collaborate with to develop and increment the product, teams) responsible for it, data, which in turn, is value, by giving us insight on the evolution of the product (or not). Feed your strategy with data, otherwise, you cant measure success. We are on the verge of unveiling new business models in this age of singularity, in which technology has grown from embedded and substantial, to enable change in all aspects of modern society and humanity.
5. Leading Change, by John Kotter, 2012 (reading time: 2 hours) - speaking of change, this book started as an article for Harvard Business Review, published in 1995, but it gained traction in the author's ambition to develop a comprehensive action plan on the efforts of transformation and how to lead them. Just to address the elephant in the room, pretty much everyone, everywhere, either in a corporate, agency or startup environment is accountable for their responsibilities, to perform their tasks and its deliverables, as such, at a given point you'll have to lead, within a task force, a problem solving activity, a product, a project, whatever, you either are assigned or compromised to deliver something, in some capacity, as a subject matter expert or the appointed leader, and it falls on to you to give directions, instructions, advice on how to proceed and move forward. Well if you're in this kimshi and envolved in your company (digital) transformation agenda, then know this, there's a few pitfalls you want to avoid and there's a proven way to make sure you do. I'm not going to transcript the 8 step process provided by the author, instead, the pitfalls, the problems you're most likely dealing with, as described in the book: "Allowing too much complacency; Failing to create a leading coalition powerful enough; Underestimate the power of Vision and devalue the transmission of vision; Allow obstacles block the new Vision; Fail to achieve short-term victories; Announce victory too early; Not anchoring changes firmly in the corporate culture. " - Admitly this is a book made for the corporate environment and addresses change management techniques, but don't be too quick to dismiss it, there is also an important part in the beginning - "why do companies fail" and tells a compelling story, "change is inevitable", and in the very end the author brilliantly puts it, "people who embrace the future, are usually happier". But I'll agree this much, change, is a positive thing when it adds value to people and organizations.

Honorable mention goes to Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu & James Robinson, 2013, which tackles the difference in incomes and living standards in the modern world, tales of greedy rulers of totalitary regims and how they strip their nations natural resources to benefit themselves rather then improving economical and social wellbeing of its people, also, case studies with positive outcomes such as Botsuana. This book addresses the problems on why nations fail and the conditions for sustainable development. But it's not a book to read on your summer vacations, with a reading time of nearly 9 hours it's for your bed side table.

I'm currently reading 2 books, Data driven Business Tranformation: How to disrupt, Innovate and Stay Ahead of the Competition and The Phoenix Project, there's a lot of fuzz about this IT novel, and rightfully so, I'll share my thoughts on these after I've read them. Enjoy your vacation, later this week you can expect a Jazz Hop playlist for focusing, useful while reading or work on that piece of documentation you've pledged, speaking of which, back to my SoW.