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?

Reading List for Jan-13

Rather busy month. Plan to read only one book, pretty long one though.

"The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called 'yourself.'"

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Enquiry into Values

I'm actually re-reading this one after I had read this about 10years ago. Now with my bike trips, its even more interesting. One of the most important and influential books of the past half-century, Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a powerful, moving, and penetrating examination of how we live and a meditation on how to live better. The narrative of a father on a summer motorcycle trip across America's Northwest with his young son, it becomes a profound personal and philosophical odyssey into life's fundamental questions. A true modern classic, it remains at once touching and transcendent, resonant with the myriad confusions of existence and the small, essential triumphs that propel us forward.

Reading List for Dec-12

My running is back on track. I bumped into another interesting book, Running With the Mind of Meditation and since I'm a runner who is occassionally into meditation I bought this one. Its back books that help me at office. Little longer list than usual due to holidays ahead.

Running With the Mind of Meditation: Lessons for Training Body and Mind
As a Tibetan lama and leader of Shambhala (an international community of 165 meditation centers), Sakyong Mipham has found physical activity to be essential for spiritual well-being. He's been trained in horsemanship and martial arts but has a special love for running. Here he incorporates his spiritual practice with running, presenting basic meditation instruction and fundamental principles he has developed. Even though both activities can be complicated, the lessons here are simple and designed to show how the melding of internal practice with physical movement can be used by anyone - regardless of age, spiritual background, or ability - to benefit body and soul.

Do More Great Work: Stop the Busy Work. Start the Work That Matters
You work hard. You put in the hours. Yet you feel like you are constantly treading water with "Good Work" that keeps you going but never quite moves you ahead. Or worse, you are mired in "Bad Work"—endless meetings and energy-draining bureaucratic traps.

Do More Great Work gets to the heart of the problem: Even the best performers are spending less than a fraction of their time doing "Great Work"—the kind of innovative work that pushes us forward, stretches our creativity, and truly satisfies us. Michael Bungay Stanier, Canadian Coach of the Year in 2006, is a business consultant who’s found a way to move us away from bad work (and even good work), and toward more time spent doing great work.

When you’re up to your eyeballs answering e-mail, returning phone calls, attending meetings and scrambling to get that project done, you can turn to this inspirational, motivating, and at times playful book for invaluable guidance. In fifteen exercises, Do More Great Work shows how you can finally do more of the work that engages and challenges you, that has a real impact, that plays to your strengths—and that matters.

Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery
Best-selling author and popular speaker Garr Reynolds shows readers that there is a better way to reach the audience through simplicity and storytelling, and gives the tools to confidently design and deliver successful presentations. Whether the reader is in research, technology, business, or education–this book will show them how to take what could look like a really dry presenation and reinvigorate the material in totally fresh (and sometimes interactive!) ways that will make it memorable and resonate with the audience.

Garr combines solid principles of design with the tenets of Zen simplicity to help readers along the path to simpler, more effective presentations that will be appreciated, remembered, and best of all, acted upon.

The Naked Presenter: Delivering Powerful Presentations with or without slides
When we learn to present naked, we reach our audiences by communicating the essence of the message, stripping away all that is unnecessary and embracing the ideas of simplicity, clarity, honesty, integrity, and passion. If "slideware" is used, the slides never steal the show or rise above serving a strong but simple supportive role. The ideas in the presentation may or may not be radical, earth shattering, or new, but there is freshness to the approach and content that makes a lasting impression.

In this invaluable resource from the author for the best-selling books Presentation Zen and Presentation Zen Design, you will discover how to get to the core of your message and deliver presentations that are as natural as they are memorable. Whether you are just in the planning stages or need advice for a talk that begins in an hour, you'll find wisdom in The Naked Presenter that you can use to connect deeply with your audience and deliver a great presentation.