Friday Books and Talks 11/22/2013

Here are some of the books that I enjoyed this week.

Working Relationships
by Bob Wall

“From C-level executives to front-line supervisors, the research is clear: emotional competencies are more important than training, IQ, and technical experience in determining who succeeds and fails at work. Into this exciting business arena, the revised and expanded edition of Working Relationships takes its rightful place as a classic toolkit for mastering the personal characteristics and social abilities of emotional intelligence (EQ), with new contributions that include two chapters focused exclusively in the power of EQ to influence success regardless of job type, level of education, or scope of responsibility.”

Leading So People Will Follow
by Erika Andersen

“Leading So People Will Follow explores the six leadership characteristics that inspire followers to fully support their leaders. Using Erika Andersen’s proven framework, new leaders and veterans alike have increased their capacity for leading in a way that creates loyalty, commitment and results. Step by step, Andersen lays out six key attributes (far-sightedness, passion, courage, wisdom, generosity, and trustworthiness) and gives leaders the tools for developing them. This innovative book offers a practical guide for building the skills to become a truly ‘followable’ leader.”

Here are some of the books and talks that I enjoyed this week, in no particular order.

The Art of Explanation: Making your Ideas, Products, and Services Easier to Understand
by Lee LeFever

“You’ve done the hard work. Your product or service works beautifully – but something is missing. People just don’t see the big idea – and it’s keeping you from being successful. Your idea has an explanation problem.”

“The Art of Explanation is for business people, educators and influencers who want to improve their explanation skills and start solving explanation problems.”

“Author Lee LeFever is the founder of Common Craft, a company known around the world for making complex ideas easy to understand through short animated videos. He is your guide to helping audiences fall in love with your ideas, products or services through better explanations in any medium.”
TED: The magic of Fibonacci numbers
By Arthur Benjamin

“Math is logical, functional and just … awesome. Mathemagician Arthur Benjamin explores hidden properties of that weird and wonderful set of numbers, the Fibonacci series. (And reminds you that mathematics can be inspiring, too!). Using daring displays of algorithmic trickery, lightning calculator and number wizard Arthur Benjamin mesmerizes audiences with mathematical mystery and beauty.”

TED: Life in the “digital now”
By Abha Dawesar

“One year ago, Abha Dawesar was living in blacked-out Manhattan post-Sandy, scrounging for power to connect. As a novelist, she was struck by this metaphor: Have our lives now become fixated on the drive to digitally connect, while we miss out on what’s real?”

Here are some of the books and talks that I enjoyed this week, in no particular order.

Getting More: How to Negotiate to Achieve Your Goals in the Real World
by Stuart Diamond

“Based on more than 20 years of research and practice among 30,000 people in 45 countries, Getting More concludes that finding and valuing the other party’s emotions and perceptions creates far more value than the conventional wisdom of power and logic. It is intended to provide better agreements for everyone no matter what they negotiate – from jobs to kids to billion dollar deals to shopping.”

“The book, a New York Times bestseller and #1 Wall Street Journal business best seller, is based on Professor Stuart Diamond’s award-winning course at the Wharton Business School, where the course has been the most popular over 13 years. It challenges the conventional wisdom on every page, from “win-win” to BATNA to rationality to the use of power. Companies have made billions of dollars so far using his new model and parents have gotten their 4-year-olds to willingly brush their teeth and go to bed.”

TED: Architecture at home in its community
By Xavier Vilalta

“When TED Fellow Xavier Vilalta was commissioned to create a multistory shopping mall in Addis Ababa, he panicked. Other centers represented everything he hated about contemporary architecture: wasteful, glass towers requiring tons of energy whose design had absolutely nothing to do with Africa. In this charming talk, Vilalta shows how he champions an alternative approach: to harness nature, reference design tradition and create beautiful, modern, iconic buildings fit for a community.”

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.

Ideas Are Free: How the Idea Revolution Is Liberating People and Transforming Organizations
by Alan G Robinson, Dean M Schroeder

“Because they’re doing the day-to-day work, front-line employees see many problems and opportunities their managers don’t. But most organizations fail to realize this potentially extraordinary source of revenue-enhancing ideas. The authors of “Ideas Are Free use real-world examples from their work with hundreds of organizations to show how to exploit the virtually free, perpetually renewable resource of employee ideas. The book explains how sustainable competitive advantages in areas ranging from productivity and responsiveness to cost reduction and quality assurance are only possible with the attention to detail that comes from getting and implementing large numbers of ideas from employees. Subjects include how to make ideas part of everyone’s job, how to set up and run an effective process for handling ideas, how to help people come up with more and better ideas, and how a strong flow of ideas can have a profound impact on an organization’s culture.”

The Ten faces of Innovation
by Tom Kelley, Jonathan Littman

“The role of the devil’s advocate is nearly universal in business today. It allows individuals to step outside themselves and raise questions and concerns that effectively kill new projects and ideas, while claiming no personal responsibility. Nothing is more potent in stifling innovation. Drawing on nearly 20 years of experience managing IDEO, Kelley identifies ten roles people can play in an organization to foster innovation and new ideas while offering an effective counter to naysayers. Among these approaches are the Anthropologist—the person who goes into the field to see how customers use and respond to products, to come up with new innovations; the Cross-pollinator who mixes and matches ideas, people, and technology to create new ideas that can drive growth; and the Hurdler, who instantly looks for ways to overcome the limits and challenges to any situation.”
TED: Why privacy matters
Alessandro Acquisti

“The line between public and private has blurred in the past decade, both online and in real life, and Alessandro Acquisti is here to explain what this means and why it matters. In this thought-provoking, slightly chilling talk, he shares details of recent and ongoing research — including a project that shows how easy it is to match a photograph of a stranger with their sensitive personal information.”

Application to social engineering. The presenter creates facial composites using photographs of a target’s friends. The resulting composite photograph is registered, by the target, as being more trustworthy.

Here are some of the books and talks that I enjoyed this week, in no particular order.

Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation
by Tim Brown

“The myth of innovation is that brilliant ideas leap fully formed from the minds of geniuses. The reality is that most innovations come from a process of rigorous examination through which great ideas are identified and developed before being realized as new offerings and capabilities. This book introduces the idea of design thinking‚ the collaborative process by which the designer′s sensibilities and methods are employed to match people′s needs not only with what is technically feasible and a viable business strategy. In short‚ design thinking converts need into demand. It′s a human−centered approach to problem solving that helps people and organizations become more innovative and more creative.”

Tipping Sacred Cows: Kick the Bad Work Habits that Masquerade as Virtues
by Jake Breeden

“You should try your best, work well with others, and produce excellent work. Right? But these cherished nuggets of advice, in practice, have a dark side that can lead to career-limiting unintended consequences. And they’re not alone. Based on Jake Breeden’s experience coaching thousands of leaders in 27 countries, and new research in economics, neuroscience, and psychology, Tipping Sacred Cows reveals how to overcome the dangerous behaviors that masquerade as virtues at work, and how to lead with fewer self-imposed limitations and greater results. It’s a guide for curious, courageous people at work.”

The First 20 Hours – How to Learn Anything
By Josh Kaufman

“Josh Kaufman is the author of the #1 international bestseller, ‘The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business’, as well as the upcoming book ‘The First 20 Hours: Mastering the Toughest Part of Learning Anything.’ Josh specializes in teaching people from all walks of life how to master practical knowledge and skills. In his talk, he shares how having his first child inspired him to approach learning in a whole new way.”

The game that can give you 10 extra years of life
By Jane McGonigal

“After suffering a severe concussion, Jane McGonigal expereinced physical debilitaion and suicidal tendencie. She searched the medical research for an answer to her problem. She discovered how to extend your life.”

Here are some of the books and talks that I enjoyed this week, in no particular order.

Exploiting Chaos
By Jeremy Gutsche

“Did you know that Hewlett Packard, Disney, Hyatt, MTV, CNN, Microsoft, Burger King, and GE all started during periods of economic recession? Periods of uncertainty fuel tremendous opportunity, but the deck gets reshuffled and the rules of the game get changed. Exploiting Chaos is the ultimate business survival guide for all those looking to change the world. Topics include: sparking a revolution, trend: hunting, adaptive innovation and infectious messaging.”

The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO’s Strategies for Defeating the Devil’s Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization
by Tom Kelley, Jonathan Littman

“The author of the bestselling The Art of Innovation reveals the strategies IDEO, the world-famous design firm, uses to foster innovative thinking throughout an organization and overcome the naysayers who stifle creativity. The role of the devil’s advocate is nearly universal in business today. It allows individuals to step outside themselves and raise questions and concerns that effectively kill new projects and ideas, while claiming no personal responsibility. Nothing is more potent in stifling innovation.”
The unheard story of David and Goliath
By Malcolm Gladwell

“It’s a classic underdog tale: David, a young shepherd armed only with a sling, beats Goliath, the mighty warrior. The story has transcended its biblical origins to become a common shorthand for unlikely victory. But, asks Malcolm Gladwell, is that really what the David and Goliath story is about?”

Why our IQ levels are higher than our grandparents’
By James Flynn

“It’s called the “Flynn effect” — the fact that each generation scores higher on an IQ test than the generation before it. Are we actually getting smarter, or just thinking differently? In this fast-paced spin through the cognitive history of the 20th century, moral philosopher James Flynn suggests that changes in the way we think have had surprising (and not always positive) consequences. James Flynn challenges our fundamental assumptions about intelligence.”

Outside Innovation: How Your Customers Will Co-Design Your Company’s Future
by Patricia B. Seybold

How dynamic businesses of every size can unleash innovation by inviting customers to co–design what they do and make.

The refrain is familiar for Patricia Seybold in her journeys as a top technology and management strategist: “I want our company to be acknowledged as the most admired and most customer–valued in our industry and to be recognized as the company that has forever changed the way things are done.” “How can we become the Google of banking?” “How can we be the eBay of software?” “I want to be the JetBlue of manufacturing.”

“How can we become the undisputed trend–setter in our industry–with a competitive bar no one can topple?”

In Outside Innovation, bestselling author Seybold taps her close relationship with dozens of high–innovation companies to reveal the untold strategy behind the trendsetters and the next HUGE leap forward in customer strategy. Seybold shows that companies that are dominating their category and staying ahead of the pack are collaborating at every level of their business with their customers.

TED: The fiction of memory
By Elizabeth Loftus

“Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus studies memories. More precisely, she studies false memories, when people either remember things that didn’t happen or remember them differently from the way they really were. It’s more common than you might think, and Loftus shares some startling stories and statistics, and raises some important ethical questions we should all remember to consider. Memory-manipulation expert Elizabeth Loftus explains how our memories might not be what they seem — and how implanted memories can have real-life repercussions.”

Relationship Economics: Transform Your Most Valuable Business Contacts Into Personal and Professional Success
by David Nour, Alan Weiss

“Relationship Economics isn’t about taking advantage of friends or coworkers to get ahead. It’s about prioritizing and maximizing a unique return on strategic relationships to fuel unprecedented growth. Based on the author’s global speaking and consulting engagements, Relationship Economics reveals that success comes from investing in people for extraordinary returns. This revised and updated version explains the three major types of relationships—personal, functional, and strategic—and how to focus each to fuel enterprise growth. It introduces new concepts in relationship management, including the exchange of Relationship Currency, the accumulation of Reputation Capital, and the building of Professional Net Worth. These are the fundamental measures of business relationship, and once you understand them, you’ll be able to turn your contacts into better executions, performance, and results.”

TED: The pursuit of ignorance
By Stuart Firestein

“What does real scientific work look like? As neuroscientist Stuart Firestein jokes: It looks a lot less like the scientific method and a lot more like “farting around … in the dark.” In this witty talk, Firestein gets to the heart of science as it is really practiced and suggests that we should value what we don’t know — or “high-quality ignorance” — just as much as what we know. Stuart Firestein teaches students and “citizen scientists” that ignorance is far more important to discovery than knowledge.”

Here are some of the books and talks that I enjoyed this week, in no particular order.

The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results
by Gary Keller, Jay Papasan

You want less. You want fewer distractions and less on your plate. The daily barrage of e-mails, texts, tweets, messages, and meetings distract you and stress you out. The simultaneous demands of work and family are taking a toll. And what’s the cost? Second-rate work, missed deadlines, smaller paychecks, fewer promotions — and lots of stress.

And you want more. You want more productivity from your work. More income for a better lifestyle. You want more satisfaction from life, and more time for yourself, your family, and your friends.

Authors Gary Keller and Jay Papasan demonstrate that the results you get are directly influenced by the way you work and the choices you make. You’ll learn how to identify the lies that block your success and the thieves that steal time from your day. By focusing on your ONE Thing, you can accomplish more by doing less. What’s your ONE Thing?

Unusually Excellent: The Necessary Nine Skills Required for the Practice of Great Leadership
by John Hamm

Master the fundamentals of leadership-at every stage in your career. Often, when leaders experience trouble, they look to blame an outside source or expect a small tweak to right their ship. But many times they’ve actually lost their grip on the very basic foundation of leadership. The business environment may change, but no management trend can displace the core laws, proven over centuries, of excellent leadership. Unusually Excellent is an essential resource for leaders that brings these fundamentals together in a new and comprehensive way. This book will help leaders at any level keep their focus on the bedrock principles that will make them extraordinary.

TED: Listen, learn … then lead
By General Stanley McChrystal

“Four-star general Stanley McChrystal shares what he learned about leadership over his decades in the military. How can you build a sense of shared purpose among people of many ages and skill sets? By listening and learning — and addressing the possibility of failure.”

TED: Learning from leadership’s missing manual
By Fields Wicker-Miurin

“Leadership doesn’t have a user’s manual, but Fields Wicker-Miurin says stories of remarkable, local leaders are the next best thing. At a TED salon in London, she shares three. Fields Wicker-Miurin wants to improve the quality and impact of leadership worldwide by discovering leaders in unique, local settings and connecting them with one another.”