Reading list for Aug-13

Necessary But Not Sufficient - Eliyahu Goldratt

ToC applied to Technology! This book is not as engaging as Goldratt's other books like Goal, but nevertheless the ToC is now applied in a high tech context. Introduces you to some interesting concepts like Drum-Buffer-Rope, Buffer Management and Pull Inventory.







 Better Than Good - Zig Ziglar

Recognized as the motivational genius of our times, Zig Ziglar, makes you feel good— not complacent or pampered—but good about your possibilities. “Better than good” means taking your life beyond where it is by cultivating passion, especially about serving others. His aphorisms, stories, and historical clips are priceless, each one having exactly the right punch and momentum to illuminate his points and excite his listeners.






Hypnotizing Maria - Richard Bach

 Another classic from Richard Bach. Flight instructor Jamie Forbes guides a woman to landing her plane safely after her husband loses consciousness, then flies on to his own destination unimpressed by his act...flight instructors guide students every day. Only after she tells reporters that a stranger appeared in an airplane alongside hers and hypnotized her into landing, and after he meets his own guiding stranger does he solve the bigger mystery: how each of us creates, step by step, what seems to be the solid world around us. The best mysteries are the ones whose answers lie in front of us, in plain sight. The best solutions are those moments when all of a sudden we realize what we've known all along.

Readling list for Jul-13

Its Not the Big that Eat the Small .. Its the Fast that Eat the Small

Conventional wisdom once told us big companies are unbeatable... and eat smaller competitors for breakfast.

Not anymore. These days It's Not the Big that Eat the Small... It's the FAST that Eat the Slow!

Jason Jennings and Laurence Haughton discovered what separates today's icons of speed from everybody else.

 

How Will You Measure Your Life

From the world’s leading thinker on innovation and New York Times bestselling author of The Innovator’s Dilemma, Clayton M. Christensen, comes an unconventional book of inspiration and wisdom for achieving a fulfilling life.  Christensen turns his considerable intellect and experience to perhaps the most fundamental question of all -- why are we here and how do we know we are making a difference. The book is exceptional in its combination of deep feeling that is personal and experiential alongside deeper thought and business experience.

Like the Flowing River

 Another master piece from Paulo Coelho. 

In this riveting collection of thoughts and stories, Paulo Coelho, the author of ‘The Alchemist’, offers his personal reflections on a wide range of subjects from archery and music to elegance, traveling and the nature of good and evil.
An old woman explains to her grandson how a mere pencil can show him the path to happiness…instructions on how to climb a mountain reveal the secret to making your dreams a reality…the story of Ghengis Khan and the Falcon that teaches about the folly of anger – and the art of friendship…a pianist who performs an example in fulfilling your destiny…the author learns three important lessons when he goes to the rescue of a man in the street – Paulo shows us how life has lessons for us in the greatest, smallest and most unusual of experiences.
‘Like the Flowing River’ includes jewel-like fables, packed with meaning and retold in Coelho's inimitable style. Sharing his thoughts on spirituality, life and ethics, Paulo touches you with his philosophy and invites you to go on an exciting journey of your own.

 

 

Reading List for Jun-13

8 Steps to Innovation
This is a book by a very close friend and my guide/philosopher for years, Vinay Dabholkar (along with Prof. Rishi Krishnan of IIM-B) and they present a guide to systematic, as opposed to incidental, ad-hoc innovation. I had privilege of going over the manuscripts a while ago as and when they were developed, but now I'm reading with an intention of running an Innovation Campaign in my team.

Innovation need not only be jugaad. For the first time a book shows us how in India, innovation can be introduced in one’s organization in a systematic, deliberate way.

8 Steps to Innovation explains how you can do this by building an idea pipeline in your organization, improving the velocity of ideas coming in, and implementing the ideas within the given constraints. All this is shown through nice, snappy examples, mostly homegrown Indian ones. Few books in the market talk about innovation in the Indian context with Indian examples as this one does.

More articles by the authors on the subject of innovation can be found here.



Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice


Syed, sportswriter and columnist for the London Times, takes a hard look at performance psychology, heavily influenced by his own ego-damaging but fruitful epiphany. At the age of 24, Syed became the #1 British table tennis player, an achievement he initially attributed to his superior speed and agility. But in retrospect, he realizes that a combination of advantages—a mentor, good facilities nearby, and lots of time to hone his skills—set him up perfectly to become a star performer. He admits his argument owes a debt to Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, but he aims to move one step beyond it, drawing on cognitive neuroscience research to explain how the body and mind are transformed by specialized practice. He takes on the myth of the child prodigy, emphasizing that Mozart, the Williams sisters, Tiger Woods, and Susan Polgar, the first female grandmaster, all had live-in coaches in the form of supportive parents who put them through a ton of early practice. Cogent discussions of the neuroscience of competition, including the placebo effect of irrational optimism, self-doubt, and superstitions, all lend credence to a compelling narrative; readers who gobbled up Freakonomics and Predictably Irrational will flock to this one.

 

Reading List for May-13

The Icarus Deception

In Seth Godin’s most inspiring book, he challenges readers to find the courage to treat their work as a form of art

 

Everyone knows that Icarus’s father made him wings and told him not to fly too close to the sun; he ignored the warning and plunged to his doom. The lesson: Play it safe. Listen to the experts. It was the perfect propaganda for the industrial economy. What boss wouldn’t want employees to believe that obedience and conformity are the keys to success?

 

But we tend to forget that Icarus was also warned not to fly too low, because seawater would ruin the lift in his wings. Flying too low is even more dangerous than flying too high, because it feels deceptively safe.

 

The safety zone has moved. Conformity no longer leads to comfort. But the good news is that creativity is scarce and more valuable than ever. So is choosing to do something unpredictable and brave: Make art. Being an artist isn’t a genetic disposition or a specific talent. It’s an attitude we can all adopt. It’s a hunger to seize new ground, make connections, and work without a map. If you do those things you’re an artist, no matter what it says on your business card.

 

Godin shows us how it’s possible and convinces us why it’s essential.

Reading List for Apr-13

Soar With Your Strengths

We had a "Strengths Training" and this book is one of the recommended reading. Sounds like the next version of the author's best seller "Now Discover Your Strengths" but with more stories from the field.






Manuscript Found In Accra
I'm a huge fan of Paulo Coelho and when the new book was released I got it on the same day as it got released. Like his international best seller The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho's new novel weaves a story that takes place in the past while the ideas it explores, he says, are more relevant than ever to the present.

Manuscript Found in Accra is set in 1099 in Jerusalem on the eve of the Crusades, where a wise man known as the Copt dispenses philosophical guidelines for living to an audience of Christians, Jews, and Muslims gathered to ask questions and listen.

Reading List for Mar-13

Mojo: How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Get It Back if You Lose It  

Mojo is the moment when we do something that's purposeful, powerful, and positive and the rest of the world recognizes it. This book is about that moment--and how we can create it in our lives, maintain it, and recapture it when we need it.

  In his follow-up to the New York Times bestseller What Got You Here Won't Get You There, #1 executive coach Marshall Goldsmith shares the ways in which to get--and keep--our Mojo. Our professional and personal Mojo is impacted by four key factors: identity (who do you think you are), achievement (what have you done lately?), reputation (who do other people think you are--and what have you've done lately?), and acceptance (what can you change--and when do you need to just "let it go"?). Goldsmith outlines the positive actions leaders must take, with their teams or themselves, to initiate winning streaks and keep them coming.

Mojo is: that positive spirit--towards what we are doing--now--that starts from the inside--and radiates to the outside. Mojo is at its peak when we are experiencing both happiness and meaning in what we are doing and communicating this experience to the world around us. The Mojo Toolkit provides fourteen practical tools to help you achieve both happiness and meaning--not only in business, but in life.

 

 

Reading List for Feb-13

Busier even than last month. Only one book this month too.

Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit
The narrator of this extraordinary tale is a man in search for truth. He answers an ad in a local newspaper from a teacher looking for serious pupils, only to find himself alone in an abandoned office with a full-grown gorilla who is nibbling delicately on a slender branch. “You are the teacher?” he asks incredulously. “I am the teacher,” the gorilla replies. Ishmael is a creature of immense wisdom and he has a story to tell, one that no other human being has ever heard. It is a story that extends backward and forward over the lifespan of the earth from the birth of time to a future there is still time to save. Like all great teachers, Ishmael refuses to make the lesson easy; he demands the final illumination to come from within ourselves. Is it man’s destiny to rule the world? Or is it a higher destiny possible for him—one more wonderful than he has ever imagined?