What are we reading now?

Here are 2 great books we read in the month of March. Add them to your library!

1) Wait, What? And life’s other essential questions by James Ryan

• What we liked: Short read (about 2 hours); reveals 5 essential questions to ask on a daily basis.
• How it helps people ops folks: the questions are easy to practice and can be used in everyday convos, whether you are a manager, HRBP, or people ops lead.
• Sample nuggets: One of the five key questions is ‘How can I help?’. This sounds unsurprising, but the magic is in the timing. Imagine someone is saying that they didn’t like something you did. The first reaction might be to defend, but when we step into an ‘okay, how can I help? mentality’, it disarms the person who is having the challenge and increases conversational capacity. Another question we like is ‘Wait, what?’. The timing on this one is also important. The key point is to interrupt yourself before you talk, silently saying ‘wait, what?, as a cue to remember to find out more (seek first to understand) before talking.
• Great line to borrow: “Picasso once said that he thought computers were useless because all they provide is answers. Being human means asking good, thought-provoking questions.”

2) Scaling up excellence by Huggy Rao & Bob Sutton.

• What we liked: Gives easy to understand ideas on how to spread excellence (in execution, alignment, etc.) as your company grows.
• How it helps people ops folks: each chapter has stories you can borrow and share from other companies, to make your points more memorable (Netflix, Starbucks, GE, Ideo, etc.)
• Sample nuggets: The formula to spreading change is to 1)uncover pockets of great performance 2) Highlight and spread the related story and underlying behaviors 3) As the org grows, recharge that message via setting up rituals and artifacts. We also liked a concept that they call ‘creating onramps’, which means crafting small steps that allow people to try out your newly proposed idea or way of operating.
• Great lines to borrow: “Sometimes you will be knee-deep in a manageable mess, but the best teams live with and revel in the messiness.”