World Book Day…

I was reminded of it being World Book Day last week, the first Thursday in March, when my 9-year old daughter dug out her Hermione Granger outfit once more. 

A silver lining for me, in the otherwise hugely challenging last year, has been being able to read more – with no where to go, books have been a refuge and a release. I fear I may have bored my family, friends and colleagues with the fruits of my readings though!

While Hermione Granger and the Harry Potter series are obviously awesome, I was prompted to reflect on my favourite business and leadership reads of the last 12-months and these five books really stood out for me ..

First of all, there is Rebel Ideas by Matthew Syed. I’ve really enjoyed Syed’s previous books, Bounce and Black Box Thinking, and Rebel Ideas was superb from start to finish. So good in fact, it made it into my BigHand CEO Book Club recommendations to our leaders of the future. It speaks brilliantly about the power that comes from diverse teams and collective intelligence (versus collective blindness / mirroring), the importance of constructive dissent in situations of complexity and “the outsider mindset” becoming a powerful asset for innovation. We all need to be more “strategically rebellious”!

Equally brilliant was Trillion Dollar Coach, the leadership playbook of silicon valley’s Bill Campbell, authored by Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg and Alan Eagle. Incredible stories and learnings about Bill’s approach and principles in mentoring and working behind the scenes with the leaders of companies such as Google, Apple and Intuit. An amazing book on leadership, developing people, building trust and putting team first. The book reminded me of the importance of great mentors and external influences – thank you to all the people who have mentored me through my career.

Then I was introduced by my CFO to Deep Work, by Cal Newport. Deep work is defined as “professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limits. These efforts create new value, improve your skills, and are hard to replicate.” The book’s hypothesis is that Deep Work is becoming increasingly rare with the distractions we all face, at a time when it is becoming increasingly vital to thrive (with the march of intelligence machines picking off the shallow work). All in all, there were some fantastic ideas and reminders around how to stay in the Deep and out of the Shallow.

I also loved Mandela’s Way, Lessons for an Uncertain Age, by Richard Stengel. Stengel collaborated with Mandela on his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom so knew him well. With Mandela’s Way, Stengel was pushing on an open door with me as a massive fan of Mandela, but he beautifully captured through stories from his life the DNA of the legendary man. 15 great chapters covering the fundamental principles of Mandela’s approach to leadership. 

And finally, Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick by Chris Bradley, Martin Hirt, and Sven Smit. So many great ideas and quotes in this book. In their experience of working with companies from the McKinsey days “the strategy rarely moves the needle very far in the right direction, at least for any length of time.  It’s not so much that the rocket veers off course in mid-air; it is more often a failure to launch with enough energy to shoot for the moon”. Ultimately the book is about how to find the real hockey sticks and how to make the right (big) moves to be successful.

I also got recommended and was blown away by Red Notice, by Bill Browder and Infidel, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali – real life stories don’t come much more incredible than these.

Thank you to everyone who has recommended books to me in 2020, please keep these coming!