My year of reading 2019

At the beginning of 2019 I made a commitment to do a lot more reading. I promised myself to have an active approach to reading and develop more intellectual capital. I share a strong believe that reading compounds, there I am a strong opponent of the more is just more philosophy in reading. Not yet quite there in the Warren Buffet league, but I am getting there.

To me reading is the foundation of building my knowledge and understanding. I is relaxing, meditative and most of all the base of all that I do. Not only does reading offer an awful lot of ideas, it is also a way of getting into a zone, away from smartphones, laptops, and constant neurotic checking of social media and news sites. It offers a base for some deeper thinking and a more sensible way to get new insights.

This is an overview of my reading of last year, as I focused on several main topics like Asia, Innovation Management, Organisational Development, Digital Transformation and some other minor things.

In a previous post I listed the five favorites for 2019 (marked with **). Below is a complete overview of my reading of last year. I got close to 50, lets see what the next year will bring. The books are listed in no particular order.

China

The world is changing and Asia is becoming the new center of the world. For me a reason to increase my understanding.

1. ** Parag Khanna, The Future is Asian (2019) — Khanna is a seasoned analyst and well informed in the ongoing change in the world. The 19th century was British, the 20st century was American and the 21st century will be Asian.
2. ** Kai-Fu Lee, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order (2018) — There is a new technology race going on which is all about artificial intelligence. China, rapidly modernizing is leading this race. If you do not know what the AI Sputnik moment was for the Chinese you have to read this book. Also make sure you see the AlphaGo documentary.
3. (dutch) Rob de Wijk, De nieuwe wereldorde. Hoe China sluipenderwijs de macht overneemt (2019) — De Wijk, a famous Dutch political commentator, explains about the coming of age of China and the end of the age of (western) humiliation.
4. Alec Ash, Wish Lanterns: Young Lives in New China (2017) — Over 320 million people in China are in their teens and twenties, more than the whole population of the US. This book follows the lives of six of them.
5. Jeffery Towson and Jonathan Woetzel, The One Hour China Book: Two Peking University Professors Explain All of China Business in Six Short Stories (2014) — This book really only takes one hour to read and understand something of the dynamics in China in six little stories.
6. Edward Tse, China’s Disruptors: How Alibaba, Xiaomi, Tencent and Other Companies are Changing the Rules of Business (2016) — We all know about the FAANG companies, but what do you know about the BAT? As everywhere unicorns are build by serial entrepreneurs.
7. Peter Hessler, Country Driving: A Chinese Road Trip (2011) — I actually got the suggestion from the World Economic Forum. Three beautifully written stories that really makes you relive the whole transformation in China: the introduction of cars, manufacturing and impact on the country side.

Digital transformation

Going on for quite some time now. Enterprise architecture, Strategy management and Innovation management are all converging. These were some of the titles I picked up.

1. George Westerman, Leading Digital (2014) — Overview of the big CapGemini/MIT study on the future of business for the rest of us. All about the digital and leadership capabilities required to make the change. Somewhat dated (ML, IoT?) but still valuable.
2. Thomas M. Siebel, Digital Transformation: Survive and Thrive in an Era of Mass Extinction (2019). From the company C3 that believes it has a place between AWS, Azure and Google to help you move into the era of Machine Learning.
3. ** Alexandra Jankovich and Tom Voskes, Make Disruption Work: a CEO handbook for digital transformation (2018) — a very strategy led and outcome driven approach to digital transformation as they describe some of their own cases in a simple five level framework: Discover, Define, Determine, Drive and Delight.
4. Scott D. Anthony, Clark G. Gilbert, Mark W. Johnson, Dual Transformation (2017) — The last book of Scott Anthony on how to do innovation in your existing company with all of the digital stuff going on. Keep your business running, while creating the future. This book could also be filed under innovation management.

Innovation Management

This year I picked up quite a collection on innovation management

1. Scott D. Anthony, The Little Black Book of Innovation (2011) — If you have never read anything about Innovation Management, start with this. Still amazed how well connected Scott Anthony is. The other book is in the digital transformation section.
2. Greg Satell, Mapping Innovation (2017) — A simple quadrant to map innovation over two axes (Problem and Domain definition) which is an alternative view to Horizons and Boxes
3. Tina Seelig, InGenius (2012) — Creativity demystified by the professor of creativity from Stanford University d.school.
4. Ed Catmull, Creativity Inc (2014) — All about Pixar, the model to all innovative companies and at the same time an inspiration overview on how Catmull worked on computer graphics for all of his life.
5. Linda A. Hill, Collective Genius: The Art and Practise of Leading Innovation (2014) — A look at innovation from the leadership perspective, what to do and how to create an innovative culture as a leader.
6. Mehrdad Baghai, The Alchemy of Growth (2000) — The source of the three Horizon thinking in Innovation Management.
7. GK Van Patter, E. Pastor, Innovation Methods Mapping: De-mystifying 80+ Years of Innovation Process Design (2016) — Many models all molded into one template. Taught me that Design Thinking is ‘just’ a specialisation of the wider Create Problem Solving process. It is a little thin on what the actual processes are, but good for your historical awareness.
8. Vijay Govindarajan, The Three Box Solution, A Strategy for Leading Innovation (2016) — Three boxes or viewpoints to look at innovation. Those boxes are about maintaining the present, forget the past and create the future. Balance all of your projects, so that the whole is leading you into the future.
9. Vijay Govindarajan, The Other Side of Innovation, Solving the Execution Challenge (2010) — The big discussion on why it is so hard to do breakthrough innovation at existing companies, spoiler: because they are optimized for reliable performance.
10. Vijay Govindarajan, Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators: From Idea to Execution (2010) — How can one setup innovation in existing companies? Three things to take into account: forgetting yesterday’s successful processes and practices, borrowing selected resources from the core business, and learning how the new business can succeed.
11. Oliver Gassman, Business Model Navigator: 55 Models that will Revolutionize Your Business (2014) — Keep this close to you (next to your dictionary), a nice overview of the many business model archetypes.
12. Douglas Ferguson, Beyond the Prototype (2019) — I love Sprint Google design sprints, what do you do afterwards?
13. Andrew Campbel, Operating Model Canvas (2017) — So you defined a new business model, than what? How to translate this to execution? This is where your Target Operating Model comes in.

Organisational Development

This year I wanted to know more about self-organisation, self-steering and responsive organisations

1. (dutch) Jitske Kramer, Deep Democracy (2019) — How to listen to the voice of the minority. Don’t overrule it with majority vote, but truly listen to it and incorporate it.
2. (dutch) Wouter Hart, Verdraaide organisaties. Terug naar de bedoeling (2012) — Interesting revelation on how bureacracy can stifle the effectiveness of an organisation. Pre Reinventing Organisations book on the soul and the core of the company, we call it purpose and the Why now.
3. (dutch) Gerard Endeburg, Sociocratie — Go back to the source and learn one of the first self-steering organisations was based on Cybernetics. This teleological philosophy states that self-organisation can only happen if parts are equal and goal is given from outside the system.
4. Jef Cumps, Sociocracy 3.0 (2018) — Business novel like introduction to Sociocracy 3.0. You either love or hate this kind of intro.
5. (dutch) Arne de Vet, Filipe Lowet, Fluide organisatie (2018) — This is slightly odd in the world of self steering theory, somewhat detached from the other Future of Work movements.
6. Ingrid Spronck and Thomas Beerepoot, The Power of Insight: Finding the Courage to Connect in Business (2003) — About those moments of clear insight in chich reason and emotions are integrated. How to overcome dillema’s and be aware of one state of mind and being. Looking at the undercurrent from a individual decision making point of view
7. Doug Kirkpatrick, Beyond Empowerment: the age of the self-managed organization (2017) — From the perspective of self-managed company The Morning Star Company made famous in Reinventing Organisations.
8. Giovanna, D’alessio Aequacy: the new human-centered organization design to thrive in a complex world) — Alternative model on hierarchy-free self-organizing rapid adapting companies.
9. John Buck and Sharon Villines, We the People: Consenting to a Deeper Democracy (2017) — The book that introduced Sociocracy in the wider world.
10. Ted J Rau and Jerry Koch-Gonzalez, Many Voices one Song: Shared Power with Sociocracy (2018) — Yet another reflection on sociocracy.
11. Jutta Eckstein and John Buck, Company-wide Agility with Beyond Budgeting, Open Space & Sociocracy: Survive & Thrive on Disruption (2018) — Mix three trends and you get great companies. A little too high level and too little insights on how it actually works.
12. Aaron Dignan, Brave New Work: Are You Ready to Reinvent Your Organization (2019) — Like reinventing organisations but different. From the guy that braught you the organisation OS canvas.
13. Emily Webber, Building Successful Communities of Practice (2016) — part of the circles in sociocracy and holacracy are about mastery, like guilds in the spotify model. These are some reflections on the archetypical mastery teams in companies: communities of practise.
14. Tim Mois, 24 Work Hacks (2016) — German company called Sipgate, lists some of the 24 work practises they implemented like peer recruiting and peer feedback. I like their open friday practise.

Other

Just a bunch of other books I opened last year.

1. Ethan M. Rasiel, McKinsey Way (1999) — Our world is dominated by the ways of the management consultant guild. These are their ways. Great insight: the half life at McKinsey is 2 years…..
2. Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money. A Financial History of the World (2012) — This is actually a well writting historical overview of all of the major innovations in the world Finance: from the invention of money, to bonds, stock, insurance and more.
3. ** Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World (2016) — Georgetown computer scientist Cal Newport’s Deep Work sparked a movement around the idea that unbroken concentration produces far more value than the electronic busyness that defines the modern work day.
4. Lois Kelly and Carmen Medina, Rebels at Work: A Handbook for leading Change from Within (2014) — Learn how to speak up in a productive way in business. You will love Francisca Gino, Rebel Talent even more
5. Tom de Marco, Slack: Getting Past Burnout, BusyWork and the Myth of Total Efficiency (2002) — I was triggered by the title, but somehow it was more a pre-agile (although just after the agile manifesto) liberation of work musing. Not too sure if I would recommend this.
6. Bruce Schneier, Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World (2016) — An eye opener on what is going on at nation state level with regards to our lives and our data. Big insight: you are only observed if they actually look at you. Be sure to see The Great Hack too.
7. Frank Buytendijk, Socrates Reloaded: The Case for Ethics in Business & Technology (2012) — We live in a new age of ethical thinking with all of the ML developments going on. An attempt to go back into classical thinking to reflect on the powers of today.
8. Jean M. Twenge, iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood (2017) — For all parents worried about the lives of our kids growing up with smartphones and social media. You now know why, still no resolution though …. (Remember you grew up, your parents not knowing what you did?)
9. Rob Austin, Artful Making: What Managers Need to Know About How Artists Work (2003) — interesting title as management needs to become more artful, an oldy pre agile book to get management less into control and more into experimentation.

** favorite for 2019, also see my previous post.