OUR 10 FAVOURITE BOOKS OF 2011

by Walter Isaacson

STeVe JoBS: The excluSiVe BioGRaPhY

The Social animal

by David Brooks

ShaTTeRed - modern motherhood and the illusion of equality

by Rebecca Asher

oPen Services innoVaTion

by Henry Chesbrough

ThinKinG, FaST and Slow

by Daniel Kahneman

GReaT BY choice
by Morten T. Hansen

GRand PuRSuiT
by Sylvia Nasar

exPloRinG leadeRShiP
by Richard Boden, Beverley Hawkings,

Jonathan Gosling & Scott Taylor

eVeRYThinG iS oBViouS
by Duncan J. Watts

Good STRaTeGY, Bad STRaTeGY

by Richard Rumelt

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BUILDING POWERFUL ORGANISATIONS

OUR 10 FAVOURITE BOOKS OF 2011

Maybe its the sustained economic crisis thats pushed writers thinking, but 2011 was a good year for great books. One of the defining moments (and books) was triggered by the death of Steve Jobs. For years, ill-defined rumours of his tyrannical behaviour lay alongside the seemingly unstoppable story of Apples transformative effect on the computer and entertainment industries. We worked alongside Apple in the 1990s and again this year and no-one was more surprised than us about the explicit nature of Steve Jobs persona recounted in Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography (Walter Isaacson). Anyone having read Isaacsons biography of Einstein will know what a great writer he is. For megalomaniacs everywhere, a must read. For everyone else, a fascinating insight into a personality that never wanted to compromise on anything. In complete contrast is the work of Jim Collins (Built to Last and Good to Great) and his devotion to what makes company performance endure. At the core of his work are mountains of data that reinforce a recurring theme focus, hard work and humility are what mark out the great. In Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos and Luck (Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen), he looks at US companies that have outperformed the stock market average for their industry by a factor of ten between 1972-2002. His conclusions focus on challenging the need for disruptive leaders in turbulent times and that innovation is of paramount importance. However, time and again his examples of where this fails have little to do with the idea itself but with the context. Companies importing people or ideas that were inappropriate to the culture failed, unsurprisingly, to succeed. Real experience tells us that great leaders blessed with opportunity can create golden eras in organisations. What value can be learnt from aping others is perennially appealing and vexing in equal measures. What worries us about the cult of data is that regardless of the numbers, few (or probably no) organisations have ever succeeded in impersonating such success. Shakespeare probably had it right: This above all; to thine own self be true. Organisations who know who they are and what they want can obviously benefit from the experience of others Weve always been shameless about stealing great ideas said Steve Jobs. But trying to copy the blueprint of another companys success is as unconvincing as thinking a tribute act can ever approach the real thing. The worry with Collins undeniably powerful work is that it represents an either/or choice. His aversion to transformation and egomanics are clothed in reams of data. But as The Economist wrote recently, Mr Collins might profit from a bit more willingness to admit that, like all management gurus, he is dealing in clever hunches rather than built-to-last scientific discoveries. Collins could undoubtedly benefit from the truly impressive Thinking, Fast and Slow (Daniel Kahneman) when it comes to decision making. Over the past decade there have been a slew of interesting books on irrationality demonstrating how our decisions can be distorted beyond our awareness by a whole host of factors. What Kahneman, a Noble Prize winning economist, does, is to describe our thinking more holistically as comprising System 1 (Thinking Fast) which is unconscious, instinctive and effortless, and System 2 (Thinking Slow) which is conscious, uses reasoning and hard work. The last five years have given us great cause to challenge the reasoning of experts. Here is an important body of work that might help us to move to a new level of thinking. If you want to gain some perspective on economic history, then youre in for a rare treat. Grand Pursuit: A Story of Economic Genius (Sylvia Nasar) manages to take the driest of subjects and transform it with warmth and insight into the personalities that have shaped our economic environment. If, as we hope, Marx was accurate when he said capitalisms recurrent crises actually make it stronger, there could never be a better time to form an opinion on the dismal science.

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BUILDING POWERFUL ORGANISATIONS

OUR 10 FAVOURITE BOOKS OF 2011

What is leadership? Not a light read, but useful if youre interested in creating a strategy to develop that elusive capacity in your organisation. Exploring Leadership: Individual, Organisational, and Societal Perspectives is written by a collective of academics who regard leadership as a social process rather than as a set of competencies. It recalls an experience we had of a client asking us to make sense of over 70 competency statements that had been developed to describe great leadership in their client. The sheer complexity and confusion in this picture highlighted that the most fundamental questions about leadership had been missed. What are leaders there for? How do they create value in the organisation? This book doesnt have all the answers by a long stretch, but it might help you to look at the challenge in a new and productive way. Another great book on how experts become over-confident in their ability to extract meaning from seemingly infallible data: Everything is Obvious: How Common Sense Fails (Duncan Watts). Highly recommended for overly certain consultants, strategists, investment bankers, marketers and anyone else trying to bet other peoples shirts on a sure thing. Shattered: Modern Motherhood and the Illusion of Equality [Paperback] (Rebecca Asher). One outcome of the last decades inexorable rise in demand from work is the impact on parenting and the increasingly fragile balance of work and family, particularly for women. Described as a call to arms for a revolution in parenting, she describes the vicious work cycle: The mother feels that she must cut back her paid work in order to look after the children because the father is working long hours; the father feels he should work long hours because the mother has cut back her paid work. The consequence: women lose out on fulfilling and well paid careers, men dont get the granular reality of their childrens lives, missing the real benefits of being a father. In addition to a powerful insight into modern life, Asher proposes a new balance in the parenting split that parents and corporate/government policy makers should read. One of the delights of this year was David Brooks The Social Animal: A Story of How Success Happens. A book that divided opinion probably because it attracted so much attention from politicians and influencers its main critics were the experts behind the story who never get such access or profile. Brooks chief achievement is to synthesise a lot of ideas about what it takes to be a successful human being and bring them to life in a captivating way. The Social Animal describes the research revolution of human consciousness, based on three insights: the importance of the unconscious mind in shaping our view of the world; our emotions are not distinct from reason but inextricably bound up with it; we are not separate individuals but emerge out of relationships. I read it on a beach in Italy this summer and never felt I was working. He pushes his assertions to the limits of his understanding in some areas, but despite this, it is a beautifully written book. Open Services Innovation: Rethinking Your Business to Grow and Compete in a New Era (Henry Chesborough) The idea that innovation or creativity is the preserve of a creative elite in an organisation or can be hard-wired into a process is definitely looking like a losing hand. Building innovation capacity at a cultural level is progressively being recognised as the dominant path. Henry Chesbroughs Open Services Innovation was one of the best innovation books published this year. In it he suggests that true innovation is founded on the notion that every company, regardless of what they produce, must see themselves as a service and that innovation comes from co-creating with customers that service to drive the experience forward. At the heart of the case is the undoubted commoditisation trap that all companies can fall into as they mature. Innovation is the revitalisation fuel to stamp out irrelevancy. Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters (Richard Rumelt) Strategy creep. Strategic marketing plans, a strategic waste management policy, strategic people management policy. The word strategy has crept quietly into virtually every domain of thinking, used by anybody wanting to give their idea, work or point of view that little more weight. In the process, the word strategy has become devalued and for many irrelevant. Richard Rumelt seeks to reclaim the idea and value of the word, describing its holistic meaning and worth to an organisation. We concur!

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BUILDING POWERFUL ORGANISATIONS