Our (da) Must-Read List of Books to Go Back To Work Bolder
At daphni, we love reading books and especially talking about books. I ran around the office and asked the team about their favorite and recommended books from the last few years. I got some great recommendations from avid readers in the office. Some of us are even so passionate that they are able to have a whole debate about the difference between a list of favorite and a list of recommended books. Some of us write reading notes just for fun, while others simply enjoy looking at the beautiful bookshelf in the kitchen, near the mandatory coffee machine.
Obviously, all of the books listed here have been bucket-listed so trust us, and please, give us your own recommendation in the comments below.
Willy Braun selection’s is eclectic. He confesses: “I would have trouble finding a clear governing principle for my selection. But lately I’ve read Pascal’s Penséee n°347, which states that “think[ing] well [is] the principle of morality. This would be the closest thing of a common theme that I could think of: these 5 books helped me boost my moral, in a ‘Pascalian‘ way”
#1 Pragmatics of Human Communication — Paul Watzlawick
I read this book when I was young and it changed my life. Pragmatic should be as the field of study focusing on how communication affect behavior.
Here are some key output from the reading:
1. communication is systemic, every part of the system has an effect on the rest; causality is not linear but circular (cf point 5);
2. you are always communicating — you cannot not behave;
3. it pays off to favour effects instead of intents;
4. communication has both a content (communication) and a relationship (metacommunication) aspect, the latter matters; it is both digital (content) and analogical (non verbal)
5. the meaning of communication is highly dependent (and it’s totally arbitrary) of how you see the punctuation of the sequences (did you shout because he was silent or was he silent because you shout?), punctuation is the interpretation;
6. communication is either symmetrical (equality of status) or complementary (difference of status)
And much more.
The book is intellectually stimulating (a lot of theory behind) and offers many actionable principles for your daily life.
#2 The Idea of Justice — Amartya Sen
This book is a masterpiece to better think of the notion of justice. The title itself suggests that thinking of Justice might be just an exercise of abstraction, while his book is rooted firmly in the opposite direction: after explaining the main traditions of thoughts regarding justice, A. Sen focus on how “to address questions of enhancing justice and removing injustice, rather than to offer resolutions of questions about the nature of perfect justice”. It’s not “what we should think even if it doesn’t make a practical difference”, it is “how should it be done?”. You’ll end up not only with an invaluable knowledge about political philosophy and actionable framework to better act and think, you’ll also discover concepts such as positional objectivity and capabilities, which would be enough to be worth reading.
#3 Blockbusters — Anita Elberse
This book studies different industries, which have the common characteristics of being driven by big hits. These hits, the so-called blockbusters, are driving the economics of films, television, publishing, sport, music… and venture capital. It’s a great manual for producers, portfolio managers & talents in all these industries (and a great glimpse of how social the human mind is). Also, you’ll never look at the theory of the long tail the same way after that (you can also read my post to know why).
#4 Thinking Strategically — Avinash K. Dixit & Barry J. Nalebuff
Game theory is fascinating: it helps us predict what should be other’s decisions and thus ours, to reach optimality.
Yet there is a big issue with this field is: you’d better remember your math classes, because it becomes hard very fast. This book is one of the very few, which offer a very serious approach to game theory without needing to be mathematically savvy. By reading it, you’ll become a better strategist, learn proper backward reasoning, better anticipate your partner or opponent’s thinking, and get why setting the right structure of incentives is paramount.
#5 Superforcasting — Philip Tetlock
Superforcasting is a book about decision-making, reasoning and anticipation. The author organized a forecasting tournament with the IARPA and analyzed what makes a good forecaster. This book is dedicated to understanding “superforecasters” and shows how an average person may become one of them (or at least improve significantly). You’ll discover the qualities required to predict well and the important principles (breaking down a question into smaller components, sorting out the know from the unknown, looking at all the assumptions, considering the outside view (checking the base rate), discover why your view might be different from others, take granular probability and update them frequently….). Well, let’s not spoil you this precious book. Just read it and understand the world better.
Bonus: The Brothers Karamazov — Fiodir Dostoevsky
The book is a drama full of struggles between three brothers, their father, their lovers and one of the brother’s spiritual advisor. It talks about faith, doubt, duty, morality, free will and much more. It is a deep dive into the complexity of the soul, human relationship and the multiplicity of perspectives for a given situation (remember Sen’s positional objectivity). Among this book’s fan list, you may find Albert Einstein, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, Haruki Murakami, Edgar Morin, Franz Kafka,Jean-Paul Sartre, Aldous Huxley, James Joyce or Albert Camus. Oh, I forget Sigmund Freud that said that The Brothers Karamazov was “the most magnificent novel ever written”. The only difficulty is to start, when you know how many pages are left. But after the first few lines it’s just a bliss.
Mathieu Daix recommend you those books to buy (or you could pass by the office, we may have a version to loan ;) )
#1 HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Strategy — Michael E. Porter, W. Chan Kim, Renee Mauborgne
In Startup Land, strategy is sometimes seen as Lord Voldemort. We know that it exists and that it’s very powerful, but few people really want to face it. If you want to try the infernal taste of strategy in only one bite, it would be this book. HBR selects the most important academic papers from the Harvard Business Review in their Must Reads series, and the one dedicated to Strategy is a masterpiece. And if you think that reading a whole book about this overrated topic is already too much, you can just pick the first article, written by (King) Michael E. Porter. This 36 pages are a wonder.
Extract: “Operational effectiveness and strategy are both necessary to achieve better performance but they work in very different ways:
- Operational Effectiveness means performing better activities like creating, producing, selling… Companies can reap enormous advantages from OE but the problem is that best practices are easily emulated. Consequently, the productivity frontier (the maximum value a company can deliver at a given cost, given the best available technology, skills and management techniques) shifts outward, lowering costs and improving value at the same time. Such competition produces absolute improvement in OE for everyone bet relative improvement for no one.
- Competitive Strategy is about being different. Choose deliberately a different set of activities to deliver a unique mix of value.
#2 The New Strategic Brand Management: Advanced Insights and Strategic Thinking — J.N Kapferer
Every CEO or CMO wakes up someday thinking: “damn, we need to really work on our brand!”. Yes my friend, you should. And then comes the second question: who are the experts in branding? Ask around you who are the masters of branding, you will get you only american names (Debbie Millman, Seth Godin, David Aaker, David Ogilvy, …). So I suggest you to stand out from the crowd with Jean-Noël Kapferer, the French Pope of branding. Yes, we also have some pretty nice brands in France — Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Evian, Paris, to name few). JNK is inspired by this age-old savoir-faire as much as he helps these companies to keep track on producing new constellation of relevant meanings. Brand identity, brand image, brand positioning, brand equity, pull marketing, identity prism are some of the concepts that become clear and simple, in a way that make them usable for every venture.
#3 Mastering the VC Game — Jeffrey Bussgang
The best about the VC industry is certainly not its very low level of transparency. Few books are describing the thinking and drivers from the inside, and even fewer do it both with fun and precision. Jeff Bussgang explains all the hidden rules, from the basics to the most advanced ones (you will by this way discover that being a VC doesn’t require to be a genius of finance). So whether you work in startup, want to raise money or just care about what is happening in this small world, you won’t lose your time at all. Because Jeff Bussgang always embraces the two sides of the table, you will see that the way media and commentators talk about us is very often manichean.
#4 The Wisdom of the Crowds — James Surowiecki
You believe in the power of diversity and don’t always know how to rationally argue about it? Read The Wisdom of the Crowds. You will for instance learn how crowds (under certains conditions) can collectively take decisions that are better than the ones taken by the most expert or clever individuals of the same crowd, even if most of the individuals of the crowd have a bounded rationality and limited information. When our action as citizens is often driven by the quest of the expert(s) (thinkers, politicians, gurus and other so-called icons), we finally understand that crowds don’t have to be dominated by the most clever ones to be clever.
#5 Tribe — Seth Godin
I must confess that I am not a fan of hype authors. This is why, working on community building, I have only read Tribe in 2015. And I also have to admit that Godin’s book is great. Clear, concise, straight to the point and actionable, you will get a lot from this small essay. What a tribe is, how it works, how you can build one, which size, which drivers, which mediums, etc. If your job is from near-and-far about managing communities, it’s the must-read, the source of all the stories that have been written after (and often with far less talent).
Bonus: The Water of the Hills — Marcel Pagnol
Jean de Florette and Manon of the Springs are the two parts of the masterpiece written by the French author Marcel Pagnol. This 2018 dry and hot summer is the perfect setting to read the Provence’s most wonderful drama ever written. Marcel Pagnol, member of the French Academy and herald of southern France, tells a story of misery, desperation, envy and betrayal. In the background, the burning sun, the hills and the wild lavender, to form a picture of the French rural society of the early 1900’s. This is our The Godfather, with less blood and a more picturesque taste.
Vincent Touati Tomas is picking some of his kindle books in his “booksheld” for you:
#1 How to Win Friends & Influence People — Dale Carnegie
This bestseller isn’t only a book about being a better “social animal” but above all about behaving in society where codes and tacit rules are legion. How could you stay a leader in all situations, without being bossy, how could you leverage on debate to make people believe in your opinion… all these kind of tricks are just here.
#2 Stop Stealing Dreams — Seth Godin
Have you ever asked yourself, or your children, what school is for? Why should you trust and develop your passion in order to get a job where you get paid to bring yourself (your true self) to work? I’ve been asking myself this question very often since I quit school a few years ago. Seth Godin argues that the actual school system is pushing kids to simply execute jobs as they have been told, forcing them into a race they can easily win by being the best of the compliant masses. Our digital economy no longer requires those type of workers, even if today, being part of that workforce is a safe place, for now.
He delivers an interesting point of view about how we should stop destroying kids’ dreams by always pushing them to comply with a model that our society enforces. When the skills and attitudes we need from the graduates (and employees) are changing, access to information (and even degrees) is global. This book is, of course, only available online and free on Seth Godin’s blog
#3 Steve Jobs — Walter Isaacson
I’ve been a fan of Steve Jobs since the very beginning of my digital native life (for the record, I even had a “fanboy” podcast about Apple) The company is now famous for his great success, design, and marketing achievements, but the history of Jobs himself is an fascinating innovation journey. From the very beginning of the company, to his firing from Apple by his shareholders, to his comeback, this biography covers every piece of detail of his life. You must be into biographies in order to start this one because the book is -insanely- long, but you’ll not regret it if you want to understand how Steve Jobs made his fortune and built this life-changing company.
#4 Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo!, Nicolas Carlson
Marissa could have been appointed CEO of a great growing trendy startup in Silicon Valley, but she chose to lead a company that was dying. If you love personal stories, and women fighting to make it to the top, you’ll be addicted to this book that goes through the challenging but ultimately successful save of Yahoo! by Marissa Mayer, one of the first employees of Google as an engineer. Another biography, more business-oriented because Nicolas Carlson is writing for Business Insider, but still powerful with pieces of meaningful interviews.
Bonus: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harari
There have been plenty of theories over the last century of how Homo Sapiens evolved but which one is the reality? What exactly is separating Homo sapiens from animals? This book was the most impactful non-fiction book I’ve read in the last several years, maybe because I’ve never before been interested by scientific and evolution books. The scientific revolution has allowed us to learn about things that just a hundred years ago would have been impossible to apprehend.
