Is your company book driven?
The knowledge gathered from books is amplified when we put in practice what we learned. That’s what we do every day in Looqbox.
My motivation in writing this post is to share with you how fundamental it is for me all the experience that I gathered with the help of books in those six intense years working in Looqbox. When guests visit us, they see our books scattered everywhere. The books are not only used as stands for our monitors, but they are also the base of almost everything we built so far!
We all know that startups try to be as lean as possible, and, at the same time, we have to deal with a wide range of tasks in multiple areas that compose a company: HR, engineering, sales, finance, and so on. Every day we are faced with predictable challenges, and others not so much. When those challenges arrive, books are here for us — it’s like we have mentors by our side, giving us tips about what to do, from their experience in similar situations. Books are one of the fastest and most efficient ways to potentialize learning from daily experiences. Through their lessons, we learn or evolve mindsets that aid us in dealing with the challenges ahead of us in more structured problem-solving methodologies.
In Looqbox, books are not read to only deepen our understanding. They almost literally save us from time to time! We only truly started to grasp the reality of B2B sales after reading Spin Selling and Predictable Revenue.
The knowledge gathered from books is amplified when we have the opportunity to put into practice what we learned. And that’s what we do in Looqbox. Sometimes ideas are transferred from paper to reality exactly as they are proposed (when based in scientific studies, or the experience of an expert is too close to the situation we’re currently in). At other times it’s necessary to adapt, after all, a great solution may not work for all scenarios.
To enable this dynamic, our team must have constant access to new titles. Every Looqer can suggest what to put in our Amazon cart, and we check out every month. It’s exciting to see how new discussions take place because of the books our team read.
I never had formal learning in programming. I started reading about it way before realizing the multitude of videos and tutorials available online. Books are not the only way to learn something, but I found them an organized overview of the subject. I’ve also read — as any other programmer — a zillion questions/answers in Stack Overflow and blogs to solve all the problems I faced along the way. I also realized that the more I studied programming, the harder it started to get to find advanced content online. Some of the highlights from my personal experience are: Refactoring (Fowler), Design Patterns (GoF), and Clean Agile (Uncle Bob). [If you want to know more, contact me!]
Reading books about entrepreneurs and successful companies can be a roller coaster of emotions. Understand their difficulties, challenges, mistakes and successes, highs, and lows. Those stories inspire us to work even harder in Looqbox. We are walking our path to share, in a not so distant future, our own story, so we can help a new batch of entrepreneurs, just like so many authors help us!
Some special mentions:
– Radical Candor (Kim Scott)
I wish I had read this book earlier! Kim Scott shares her professional experiences in startups and large companies, and what makes great bosses we recognized as such. This book is a constant inspiration to how and when to challenge others around me.
– First, Break All The Rules (Marcus Buckingham e Curt Coffman)
I’m lucky to have read this book in 2018 when we had about 20 collaborators. We were hiring, and this book taught us new interview questions and techniques. We also use an organizational climate survey proposed by the authors. This book also reinforces, against standard belief, that managers should treat employees differently even when they have the same job (e.g., everyone has different motivations).
– Clean Agile (Robert C. Martin)
The two biggest lessons in Clean Agile are the frameworks to coordinate technology projects and the responsibilities and tools that every programmer should master to execute excellent work. This one is a must-read for every programmer and tech project manager!
– Trillion Dollar Coach ( Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg e Alan Eagle)
I finished reading this book not long ago, and it’s possible to adapt Bill Campbell’s lessons (decision making, team play, feedback) to companies of all sizes. I’ve had great discussions in Looqbox about how to deal with problems and improve our communication based on this book and Radical Candor!
