The Social Distancing Innovation Book Club
I hate business books. Y’know, the padded-out pieces of overpriced guff written by some smug bastard that often knows the square root of fuck all about the real world. Hang on, maybe I should write on? *puts on the COVID-19 social distancing to-do list*
But seriously, they’re often terrible. I rest my case at Simon Sinek.
Even when they’re good, they don’t need to be a book. Thinking, Fast & Slow by Daniel Kahneman is a wonderful thought, but it could be a blog, not a bloody thesis elongated into a book.
Now that’s off my chest, I’ll get to the point. I’ve read some good stuff lately and we’re all about to have some time on our hands.
Here are 5 wonderful books that have both inspired me and given me a new perspective on the world as I explore my own new ventures.
Obliquity by John Kay
This book actually is an extended essay that’s good, the exception that breaks the rule. The basic premise being that we can’t be happy, successful, or get rich by tackling our goals directly, we need to take a different path, muddle through, be open to external forces, accept we can’t explain things.
The richest people in the world, probably don’t start off by saying “I’m gonna do xyz and become crazy wealthy, there’s a greater purpose.”
Likewise, companies with very direct money-making mission statements don’t have a strong track record. Great footballers can’t explain the maths and physics in the technique, they learn it by trying, doing, figuring it out. In geography, the fastest way west from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific is actually southeast on the Panama Canal. Winston Churchill didn’t have a perfect (or maybe any plan for victory in 1940) but he muddled through to it.
My takeaway from this was that so many companies and people try to make the perfect plan, they write it down, make documents, tell everyone about how it’s going to work in detail. Funny how you don’t hear these stories later. All our best startups, innovators, disruptors have a much scrappier story. It’s all founded in the concept of Obliquity.
Shoe Dog by Phil Knight
Now, this is a proper airport bookshop pickup. I know. I grabbed it on the recommendation of a friend into running (I hate running) — Charlie Rowat. I think he knew I needed a business pickmeup.
Anyway, it’s the story of how Nike became Nike told by the founder. I’m sure it’s got the usual embellishments and retelling of history, but even so, it’s inspiring. One of the most famous and recognized brands in the world, something you associate with polish and maybe a bit of glamour has an incredibly un-sexy history.
Long story short, the man likes running, becomes accountant, doesn’t like it, goes to explore the world, doesn’t get very far, goes to Japan, starts flogging a brand of shoes nobody knows in the US, scraps his way through against the odds, relies on the kindness and grit of people around him, takes over the world.
Digital Darwinism by Tom Goodwin
You probably know Tom Goodwin, he’s one of those loud and opinionated people on LinkedIn & Twitter. Did the famous tweet about the biggest hotel company not having hotels, taxi company not having cabs, etc. You probably quote it.
Anyway, his book is probably the one that dragged me back into business books. It’s a really easy read, isn’t really padded out, has good examples and anecdotes. The book is basically about the idea that if you designed your business from scratch today, it wouldn’t look like how it does today.
Technology has made change something that can happen fast, and incumbents are typically crap at making the most of it. As people, we often apply new technologies to the old ways of doing things, how many digital experiences are just the old way, made digital? Email and much computing is like that, the recycle bin anyone? This happened with factories when electricity became a thing, for the first couple of decades, electricity was just applied to the steam way of doing things.
It’s a good poke at why you need to think bigger, ask different questions, measure different things, think harder, challenge yourselves on the value you create.
If most senior business people were being honest with themselves while they read it, it’s probably gonna hurt a bit in how it points out quite a lot of dumb things big companies do.
Be More Pirate by Sam Conniff Allende
This one is a history read and a business book, asking how rogues from ‘the golden age of piracy’ can be updated into bold new ways of thinking for the modern world.
You might be wondering how this is relevant, but we all love a pirate tale and the reason we do is these people were pioneers, rebels with a cause, doing what they needed to do so they could win in a very unfair world. What was true then can with a little manipulation be applied now.
Pirates broke rules and traditional power structures, but they also created their own. The had codes for how their ships would operate, they had forms of democracy we wouldn’t see on a national level for centuries, they embraced and thrived on equality, they were pioneers in showing there was an alternative way forward.
And if that’s not enough to convince you to give this a read, but think what pirates did for branding in the modern world. Consider how they created their own legends, pirates existed in a world where the world’s naval powers had resources far outnumbering theirs, and yet, they wouldn’t fuck with pirates who might not have even had a gun for every man or functioning cannons. Pirate flags were the first cult brands, something that really demonstrated the power of logos and great storytelling.
I’m not saying break the law and go to jail, I’m saying learn from 400+-year-old principles that could be just as relevant now, as they were then.
Extreme Economies by Richard Davies
What could we learn from some less well know parts of the world? Extreme Economies explores 9 locations around the world, 3 each that represent stories of Disaster, Failure, and the Future. Places like Aceh in Indonesia post-tsunami, Glasgow following the collapse of Scottish shipbuilding, and Estonia with their digital society formed following independence from the Soviet Union.
The book tells the story of how informal economies in places that have experienced disaster often fly in the face of authority, stories like how prisoners in Louisiana stay ahead of the authorities when it comes to creating and maintaining their own informal economy that helps a small piece of civility in a bleak place. Or the tale of two contrasting refugee camps in Syria, one that thrives on being unplanned vs. the one with stronger rules and formal power structures set by ‘experts’ resulting in a poorer quality of life for its inhabitants.
The book also looks to previously successful economies that have almost entirely failed, what the loss of shipbuilding and demolition of tenements did to much of Glasgow or how resource-rich Congo ends up being one of the poorest countries on earth.
The book then goes to 3 economies that might show us a piece of the future, considering the Chile story was written before the unrest that took place last year, it’s all the more striking. Meanwhile, tales from Estonia and Japan may paint a slightly more optimistic view of what could be possible for many places that will experience a need for greater digital societies and an increasingly elderly population.
It’s harder to directly translate some of these learnings from cities and countries to a company, but I encourage how it might challenge your thinking of what the future could hold, and how you can have an impact on it.
I deliberately haven’t linked any of these books to Amazon, partly because I encourage you to shop local and take your business to your local bookstore (if it’s open or selling online in a COVID-19 world). Tom Goodwin makes a point about him selling his books himself, even if he makes less profit on them.
I’ve got a stack of books on my shelf I hope to get through over the next few weeks, but if there are recommendations you have, I’d love to hear them. On my list right now are things like:
- Alchemy by Rory Sutherland
- The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan
- Radical Uncertainty: Decision-making for an unknowable future by John Kay & Mervyn King
- Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries by Safi Bahcall
cc: Tom Goodwin Sam Conniff Allende Richard Davies
