Here are some of the books and talks that I enjoyed this week, in no particular order.
Finding the Next Steve Jobs: How to Find, Hire, Keep and Nurture Creative Talent
by Nolan Bushnell, Gene Stone
In Silicon Valley legend Nolan Bushnell’s first book, he explains how to find and hire employees who have the potential to be the next Steve Jobs. Here Bushnell explains how to find, hire, and nurture the people who could turn your company into the next Atari or the next Apple. Bushnell’s advice is constantly counter-intuitive, surprising, and atypical. When looking for employees, ignore credentials. Hire the obnoxious (in limited numbers). Demand a list of favorite books. Ask unanswerable questions. Comb through tweets.
Just because you’ve hired creatives doesn’t mean you’ll keep them. Once you have them, isolate them. Celebrate their failures. Encourage ADHD. Ply them with toys. Encourage them to make decisions by throwing dice. Invent haphazard holidays. Let them sleep.
The business world is changing faster than ever, and every day your company faces new complications and difficulties. The only way to resolve these issues is to have a staff of wildly creative people who live as much in the future as the present, who thrive on being different, and whose ideas will guarantee that your company will prosper when other companies fail.
Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization
by Dave Logan, John King
Within each corporation are anywhere from a few to hundreds of separate tribes. In Tribal Leadership, Dave Logan, John King, and Halee Fischer-Wright demonstrate how these tribes develop—and show you how to assess them and lead them to maximize productivity and growth. A business management book like no other, Tribal Leadership is an essential tool to help managers and business leaders take better control of their organizations by utilizing the unique characteristics of the tribes that exist within.
The Innovation Premium: How Next Generation Companies Are Achieving Peak Performance And Profitability
by Ronald Jonash, Tom Sommerlatte
In today’s constantly shifting marketplace, “innovation” has become the catchword of companies large and small. In The Innovation Premium, Ron Jonash and Tom Sommerlatte draw on years of research and experience to demonstrate-for the first time-that those companies that consistently achieve innovation leadership enjoy measurable advantages, including an average 15 percent increase in shareholder returns. Bridging the gap between the technological and organizational aspects of innovation, the authors show managers at all levels how to move beyond continuous improvement of products and processes to create the “Next Generation Enterprise,” an organization that thrives on innovation and knows how to harness it to create and capture value, spark and speed growth, and achieve the highest standards of performance.
TED: What we don’t understand about trust
By Onora O’Neill
Trust is on the decline, and we need to rebuild it. That’s a commonly heard suggestion for making a better world … but, says philosopher Onora O’Neill, we don’t really understand what we’re suggesting. She flips the question, showing us that our three most common ideas about trust are actually misdirected
TED: Lead like the great conductors
By Itay Talgam
An orchestra conductor faces the ultimate leadership challenge: creating perfect harmony without saying a word. In this charming talk, Itay Talgam demonstrates the unique styles of six great 20th-century conductors, illustrating crucial lessons for all leaders.