Issue No. 397 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting delivers my Top-10 book picks from 2018 (and my Book-of-the-Year) and three master lists of over 400 books I’ve reviewed since 2006. Also, Happy New Year! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here for my 2017 Top-10 picks.
Top-10 Books for 2018
James Mustich, the courageous author of the new 960-page book, 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die: A Life-Changing List, notes: “Readers read in so many different ways, and any one standard of measure is inadequate. No matter their pedigree, inveterate readers read the way they eat—for pleasure as well as nourishment, indulgence as much as education, and sometimes for transcendence, too. Hot dogs one day, haute cuisine the next.”
My goal in 2018 was to deliver both fast food and great food—along a diverse continuum of books for every leader’s and manager’s appetite. I don’t speed-read my book picks (shocker—I actually read entire books!).
This last issue of the year features books I reviewed in Issues No. 376 to 396. To read other 2018 book reviews from Your Weekly Staffing Meeting, visit the archives here at John Pearson’s Buckets Blog. To download a PDF of the chronological list of book reviews from 2006 through today (all 397 issues), visit the Book Bucket on my Management Buckets website. Another list, with more than 400 books categorized within my 20 buckets, is also available. You’ll also find my updated 2018 personal list (not necessarily prescriptive for you) with my Top-100 books (I add a few and drop a few every two years or so.)
In 2018, I published 22 issues. (But I thought “Your Weekly Staff Meeting” was published weekly? Not!) Certainly not all 10 books will have popular appeal—because all of us are at different levels of competency across the 20 management buckets. What were your Top-10 books in 2018?
2018 Book-of-the-Year
[ ] Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It…and Why the Rest Don’t – Mastering the Rockefeller Habits 2.0, by Verne Harnish (Read my review.)
BEST QUOTE: “Senior leaders know they have succeeded in building an organization that can scale—and is fun to run—when they are the dumbest people in the room! In turn, if they have all the answers (or act like they do), it guarantees organizational silence, exacerbates blindness (the CEO is always the last to know anyway), and means the senior team ends up carrying the entire load of the company on their backs.”
Scaling Up is one of the most complete books I’ve ever read. The alignment with the great leadership/management experts (Drucker, Collins, Lencioni, Gerber, Blanchard, and many more) is stunning.
The Other Nine on My 2018 Top-10 Book List
(With brief excerpts from my reviews, these nine are listed in alphabetical order by author or publisher.)
[ ] Before and After Babe Ruth: A Story of the New York Yankees Told Through the Lens of Tickets and Passes, by Dan Busby (Read my review.)
Even if you’re a Chicago Cubs fan like me (I survived 21 winters in Chicago), you can’t put this book down. It’s absolutely fascinating—and there’s something in this gorgeous coffee table book for everyone: fans, CEOs, marketing/branding teams, church leaders, parents, fundraisers, and team builders! Read my eight water cooler conversation starters.
[ ] Joy Giving: Practical Wisdom from the First Christians and the Global Church, by Cameron Doolittle (Read my review.)
Cameron Doolittle says all of us fall into one of three categories: 1) Listening to God is new to me. 2) I listen to God, but not about money and giving. 3) I listen to God about money and giving. Joy Giving describes a church in Beijing that was blessed with resources—but seemed to have a blind eye to community needs. Keung, a giver in the church, noted “The church wasn’t a conduit for giving; it had become a reservoir.”
[ ] ECFA Governance Toolbox Series No. 4: Succession Planning – 11 Principles for Successful Successions: “Every CEO is an Interim CEO.” (Read my review.)
This toolbox (four videos, viewing guide, and facilitator guide) quotes William Vanderbloemen and Warren Bird who caution that one size doesn’t fit all. “As the variety of successions in Scripture illustrate, our universal recommendation about succession is that there is no universal recommendation. Healthy succession is more art than science. The plan and details must be tailored to each situation. It is also a deeply spiritual process that calls for prayer and recognition of God’s leading.”
[ ] Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, by Atul Gawande (Read my review.)
This book changed—totally changed—my thoughts about end-of-life decisions. Whew. On one level, I agree that this New York Times bestseller (7,000 reviews on Amazon!) is a brilliant and deep look at the “…still unresolved argument about what the function of medicine really is—what, in other words, we should and should not be paying for doctors to do.” Yet on another surprising level, this writer (four bestsellers), surgeon, and public health leader—delivers fresh management and leadership insights in every chapter.
[ ] The Softer Side of Leadership: Essential Soft Skills That Transform Leaders and the People They Lead, Eugene B. Habecker (Read my review.)
Habecker says all leaders have blind spots. The problem: we’re blind to our own blind spots—and that creates frightening situations. He quotes Henri Nouwen in the important chapter, “Welcome Self-Discovery Learning.”
Nouwen: “…the house I had finally found had no floors…. It seemed as if a door to my interior life had been opened, a door that had remained locked during my youth and most of my adult life… The interruption…forced me to enter the basement of my soul and look directly at what was hidden there.”
[ ] Your Best Year Ever: A 5-Step Plan for Achieving Your Most Important Goals, by Michael Hyatt (Read my review.)
My favorite and most practical take-aways:
• The dramatic difference between achievement goals and habit goals.
• 10 very practical pages of sample goal templates (pages 237-246)
• Myth-buster: you can perfect new habits in 21 days (research says it's 66 days).
• The calendar chain concept. I’ve started using it.
• “We share our goals, but not with everyone.”
[ ] The Top 10 Leadership Conversations in the Bible: Practical Insights From Extensive Research on Over 1,000 Biblical Leaders, by Steve Moore (Read my review.)
When I joined Steve Moore’s trek for leadership gold, wondering what themes made his Top-10 list of leadership conversations in the Bible—I started with “Chapter 8: Humility.” Powerful!
• “Pride hides from the consciousness of leaders behind a mask of overconfidence. Overconfidence isn’t just annoying to followers. It is dangerous for leaders.”
• Did you ever read this parenthetical note in Numbers 12:3? “(Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone on the face of the earth.)”
• “I find it easier to admit my lack of patience than my lack of humility.”
And this quote from Larry Osborne: “The journey to accidental Phariseeism begins with a blind spot, not a sin spot.”
[ ] Stories of Sheer Pure Grace, by Nancy L. Nelson (Read my review.)
On the back cover is a nickel-sized head shot of Eugene Peterson (1932-2018), along with his endorsement of this special, special book. Wow! The candid photo captures Peterson laughing his head off—and Nancy explains their connection and her deep appreciation for The Message.
She quotes from Eugene Peterson’s introduction to 1st and 2nd Samuel in the Old Testament, “…as we submit our lives to what we read, we find that we are not being led to see God in our stories but to see our stories in God’s. God is the larger context and plot in which our stories find themselves.” Then Nancy adds, “And like 1st and 2nd Samuel, these Stories of Sheer Pure Grace are all framed by someone praying.”
[ ] Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box (Second Edition), by The Arbinger Institute (Read my review.)
Trust me—read and study this book with your team (and family) and you’ll be using the “box” metaphor within an hour. The second edition of Leadership and Self-Deception (over two million copies sold!) includes a short section on how to maximize the book’s impact. The authors list stunning (stunning!) examples of how the principles have transformed organizations (nonprofit and for-profit) and even police departments. In Japan, a word-of-mouth movement has launched “out-of-the-box” clubs.
The business novel/fable/story format makes for an easy read (about three hours) with memorable characters, but—warning—it’s not a comfortable read.
Happy New Year and Happy Reading in 2019!
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“A Good Book Is the Opposite of a Selfie”
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook (2nd Edition)
James Mustich, the author of 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die: A Life-Changing List (just published last fall and just 960 pages!), writes:
“A good book is the opposite of a selfie; the right book at the right time can expand our lives in the way love does, making us more thoughtful, more generous, more brave, more alert to the world’s wonders and more pained by its inequities, more wise, more kind.”
Click here to watch the C-Span interview with James Mustich and whether or not he’s actually read all 1,000 books. Click here to visit his website and his list (and short blurbs) on all 1,000 books. Amazing!
REMINDER: Visit the Book Bucket webpage here to download three lists of books I’ve reviewed since 2006, including my updated list of Top-100 books. And, if you’re a listener—and not a reader—visit the audio books available from Libro.fm, including Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box (six hours). I have some fantastic book reviews coming in 2019!
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