Great Summer Leadership Reading

I’ve always been a bit of a leadership / management book junkie. I’ve probably ready Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People five or six times and every time I do I come away with a new nugget or perspective I didn’t know was there. Another book I’ve recommended a bunch of times over the course of my career is from Kenneth Blanchard. It’s one of the One Minute Manager series called The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey. If you ever meet someone who has never managed people before, this short book will give them visuals that will dwell in their mind for the rest of their lives.

Recently, however, I’ve been really focused on execution and engagement strategies and would like to recommend two books to add to your list. The first book is called Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality.  The book forces you to change your thinking about the value of meetings for discussion and brainstorming sake, the role of the creative process and why “management by nagging” isn’t such a bad thing.

For an organization like CompTIA or any trade association really, because there is such an incredible diversity of projects underway at any time, taking a systematic approach to keeping priorities and progress front and center is difficult.  So often we get swept up in the “what’s possible” instead of the what needs to get done. Read the book and see your productivity increase.

The second book I think has particularly strong relevance to the channel is Getting Naked by last year’s Breakaway keynoter Patrick Lencioni. In typically compelling fable style, Patrick tells the story of two consulting firms. One is a smaller boutique group in the process of being acquired by a larger more conservative and cookie-cutter firm. A rep from the larger firm is asked to go in and assimilate (indoctrinate) the smaller firm but along the way our hero learns some incredibly valuable lessons on customer interaction, being vulnerable (getting naked), and being a trusted business advisor. One of the things that makes the small firm in the story successful is they don’t go in and try to force their approach on the client. They try to create a custom solution using tried and true methods but tailored to the specific needs they find from dialogue with the customers.

I hope you enjoy these as much as I did.