Issue No. 458 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (Dec. 31, 2020) delivers my Top-10 book picks from 2020 and my Book(s)-of-the-Year. Also, Happy New Year! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies).
TOP-10 BOOKS FOR 2020
This issue features books I reviewed in Issues No. 426 to 457. In 2020, I published 32 issues. (But I thought Your Weekly Staff Meeting was published weekly? Fake news?) Certainly not all 10 books will have popular appeal—because all of us are at different levels of competency and curiosity across the 20 management buckets. As author Steve Leveen reminds us in The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life, “Do not set out to live a well-read life but rather your well-read life. No one can be well-read using someone else’s reading list.” What were your Top-10 books in 2020?
2020 BOOK(S)-OF-THE-YEAR
Yes…in this crazy COVID year…why not? For the first time, I’m naming TWO books as my “Book-of-the-Year.” You have time on your hands—so read two books!
#1. THE ADVICE TRAP: BE HUMBLE, STAY CURIOUS & CHANGE THE WAY YOU LEAD FOREVER, by Michael Bungay Stanier. Read my review and view the author’s 14-minute TEDx Talk, “How to Tame Your Advice Monster.”
I began my review last March with this: “Hello. My name is John and I’m an Advice Monster.” Yikes! If you’ve got the guts to read this book, you won’t come out unscathed.
Best Quote. “Your job is to stop seeking the solutions and start finding the challenges.” The author adds, “You can be known as the person who helps articulate the critical issue or as the person who provides hasty answers to solve the wrong problem. Which would you prefer? Exactly.”
#1. DOESN'T HURT TO ASK: USING THE POWER OF QUESTIONS TO COMMUNICATE, CONNECT, AND PERSUADE, by Trey Gowdy. Read my review and view the author’s videos on persuasion. Are you a listener? Listen to the book on Libro.fm (8 hours, 52 minutes), narrated by Trey Gowdy.
Trey Gowdy, who served eight years in Congress (2011-2019), confesses, “The mistakes made early in my career were many and largely rooted in two areas: not understanding the dynamics of persuasion and not understanding the nature and characteristics of those I was try to persuade.”
Best Quotes. “Persuasion is not debating.” And, “Debating is science. Persuasion is art.” And, “Debating is for the best talker. Persuasion is for the better listener.”
2020 TOP-10 BOOK LIST: The Other 9
(With brief excerpts from my reviews, these nine are listed in alphabetical order by author.)
#2. NON OBVIOUS MEGATRENDS: HOW TO SEE WHAT OTHERS MISS AND PREDICT THE FUTURE, by Rohit Bhargava. Read my review.
Best Quote. “When you focus on spotting stories that stand out, you gravitate toward collecting interesting ideas without understanding the broader context of what they mean. Calling the multitude of ideas spotted the same thing as a trend is like calling eggs, flour, and sugar sitting on a shelf the same thing as a cake. You can see ingredients, but true trends must be curated to have meaning just as a cake must be baked.”
#3. RUTHLESS CONSISTENCY: HOW COMMITTED LEADERS EXECUTE STRATEGY, IMPLEMENT CHANGE, AND BUILD ORGANIZATIONS THAT WIN, by Michael Canic. Read my review.
Best Quote. The author says “people are bloodhounds for inconsistency. The moment you say one thing but do another—boom!—they’re on it.” He describes a core value of “speed” at one organization, but it took accounting six weeks to send out staff expense reimbursements!
#4. THE AMAZON MANAGEMENT SYSTEM: THE ULTIMATE DIGITAL BUSINESS ENGINE THAT CREATES EXTRAORDINARY VALUE FOR BOTH CUSTOMERS AND SHAREHOLDERS, by Ram Charan and Julia Yang. Read my review.
Best Quote. On Amazon’s relentless drive to invent, “Seek and build big ideas continuously [using a brilliant press release process]…and construct cross-functional full-time and co-located ‘two-pizza’ team with the right project leader.” Why? If two pizzas aren’t enough, the team is too big!
#5. HOW WILL YOU MEASURE YOUR LIFE? by Clayton M. Christensen, James Allworth, and Karen Dillon. Read my review and view the author’s TEDx Boston presentation in 2012. Listen to the book on Libro.fm (5 hours, 34 minutes).
Best Quote. After meeting Christensen and learning about his three questions, co-author Karen Dillon recalls, “I stood in the parking lot of Harvard Business School a few hours later and knew I didn’t like my answers to those questions. Since then, I have changed almost everything about my life with the goal of refocusing around my family.”
#6. SERVANT OF ALL: REFRAMING GREATNESS AND LEADERSHIP THROUGH THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS, by Ralph E. Enlow, Jr. Read my review.
Best Quote. “Are you kidding me?” Enlow asks. Why did Jesus organize an inner circle campout on the mountain top with just three of the disciples? “Nine of the twelve get excluded from the greatest private screening of all time.” I underlined this:
2020 BOOK(S)-OF-THE-YEAR
Yes…in this crazy COVID year…why not? For the first time, I’m naming TWO books as my “Book-of-the-Year.” You have time on your hands—so read two books!
#1. THE ADVICE TRAP: BE HUMBLE, STAY CURIOUS & CHANGE THE WAY YOU LEAD FOREVER, by Michael Bungay Stanier. Read my review and view the author’s 14-minute TEDx Talk, “How to Tame Your Advice Monster.”
I began my review last March with this: “Hello. My name is John and I’m an Advice Monster.” Yikes! If you’ve got the guts to read this book, you won’t come out unscathed.
Best Quote. “Your job is to stop seeking the solutions and start finding the challenges.” The author adds, “You can be known as the person who helps articulate the critical issue or as the person who provides hasty answers to solve the wrong problem. Which would you prefer? Exactly.”
#1. DOESN'T HURT TO ASK: USING THE POWER OF QUESTIONS TO COMMUNICATE, CONNECT, AND PERSUADE, by Trey Gowdy. Read my review and view the author’s videos on persuasion. Are you a listener? Listen to the book on Libro.fm (8 hours, 52 minutes), narrated by Trey Gowdy.
Trey Gowdy, who served eight years in Congress (2011-2019), confesses, “The mistakes made early in my career were many and largely rooted in two areas: not understanding the dynamics of persuasion and not understanding the nature and characteristics of those I was try to persuade.”
Best Quotes. “Persuasion is not debating.” And, “Debating is science. Persuasion is art.” And, “Debating is for the best talker. Persuasion is for the better listener.”
2020 TOP-10 BOOK LIST: The Other 9
(With brief excerpts from my reviews, these nine are listed in alphabetical order by author.)
#2. NON OBVIOUS MEGATRENDS: HOW TO SEE WHAT OTHERS MISS AND PREDICT THE FUTURE, by Rohit Bhargava. Read my review.
Best Quote. “When you focus on spotting stories that stand out, you gravitate toward collecting interesting ideas without understanding the broader context of what they mean. Calling the multitude of ideas spotted the same thing as a trend is like calling eggs, flour, and sugar sitting on a shelf the same thing as a cake. You can see ingredients, but true trends must be curated to have meaning just as a cake must be baked.”
#3. RUTHLESS CONSISTENCY: HOW COMMITTED LEADERS EXECUTE STRATEGY, IMPLEMENT CHANGE, AND BUILD ORGANIZATIONS THAT WIN, by Michael Canic. Read my review.
Best Quote. The author says “people are bloodhounds for inconsistency. The moment you say one thing but do another—boom!—they’re on it.” He describes a core value of “speed” at one organization, but it took accounting six weeks to send out staff expense reimbursements!
#4. THE AMAZON MANAGEMENT SYSTEM: THE ULTIMATE DIGITAL BUSINESS ENGINE THAT CREATES EXTRAORDINARY VALUE FOR BOTH CUSTOMERS AND SHAREHOLDERS, by Ram Charan and Julia Yang. Read my review.
Best Quote. On Amazon’s relentless drive to invent, “Seek and build big ideas continuously [using a brilliant press release process]…and construct cross-functional full-time and co-located ‘two-pizza’ team with the right project leader.” Why? If two pizzas aren’t enough, the team is too big!
#5. HOW WILL YOU MEASURE YOUR LIFE? by Clayton M. Christensen, James Allworth, and Karen Dillon. Read my review and view the author’s TEDx Boston presentation in 2012. Listen to the book on Libro.fm (5 hours, 34 minutes).
Best Quote. After meeting Christensen and learning about his three questions, co-author Karen Dillon recalls, “I stood in the parking lot of Harvard Business School a few hours later and knew I didn’t like my answers to those questions. Since then, I have changed almost everything about my life with the goal of refocusing around my family.”
#6. SERVANT OF ALL: REFRAMING GREATNESS AND LEADERSHIP THROUGH THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS, by Ralph E. Enlow, Jr. Read my review.
Best Quote. “Are you kidding me?” Enlow asks. Why did Jesus organize an inner circle campout on the mountain top with just three of the disciples? “Nine of the twelve get excluded from the greatest private screening of all time.” I underlined this:
“The emotional path between exclusion and resentment
is exceedingly well worn.”
is exceedingly well worn.”
#7. TALKING TO STRANGERS: WHAT WE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THE PEOPLE WE DON'T KNOW, by Malcolm Gladwell. And special thanks to Dave Barton for recommending this depressing book! To listen to the audio version (8 hours, 42 minutes), visit Libro.fm. Order from Amazon.
This best-selling author says we’re rotten at spotting liars. Citing numerous studies, Gladwell notes: “What [the researcher] discovered is what psychologists always find in these cases, which is that most of us aren’t good at lie detection. On average, judges correctly identify liars 54 percent of the time—just slightly better than chance.”
He adds, “This is true no matter who does the judging. Students are terrible. FBI agents are terrible. CIA officers are terrible. Lawyers are terrible.”
Best Quote. “The issue with spies is not that there is something brilliant about them. It is that there is something wrong with us.”
#8. UPSTREAM: THE QUEST TO SOLVE PROBLEMS BEFORE THEY HAPPEN, by Dan Heath. Read my review and view the author’s 4-minute video on “upstream thinking.” To listen to the audio version (7 hours, 47 minutes), visit Libro.fm.
Prophetically, the book is COVID-relevant: “You don’t want to be exchanging business cards in the middle of an emergency.” I listed 10 teasers in my review.
Best Quote. The Dutch bicycle company VanMoof reduced shipping damage by 70% to 80% when “they started printing images of flat-screen televisions on the side of their shipping boxes, which are very similar in shape to flat-screen TV boxes.”
#9. THE VISION DRIVEN LEADER: 10 QUESTIONS TO FOCUS YOUR EFFORTS, ENERGIZE YOUR TEAM, AND SCALE YOUR BUSINESS, by Michael Hyatt. Read my review. Listen to the book on Libro.fm (4 hours, 48 minutes), narrated by Michael Hyatt.
Best Quote. What if your boss (or board) is the Keeper of the Status Quo? Hyatt lists five critical steps for selling your boss on a new vision. And this wisdom when selling to influential stakeholders: “You may not always be able to get agreement, but you can get alignment.”
#10. OH GOD, I’M DYING! HOW GOD REDEEMS PAIN FOR OUR GOOD AND FOR HIS GLORY, by Terry Powell and Mark Smith. Read my review.
Best Quote. In “Releasing Resentment,” the fourth faith lesson, the authors quote St. Augustine: “Resentment is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies.” Powell and Smith list eight very-very-convicting questions on releasing resentment, including this poke-in-the-ribs: “Have I stopped telling others what this person did to me?” (See Ephesians 4:29.)
Bonus Book!
#11. THE LITTLE GUIDE TO YOUR WELL-READ LIFE: HOW TO GET MORE BOOKS IN YOUR LIFE AND MORE LIFE FROM YOUR BOOKS, by Steve Leveen. The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life.
Best Quote. The author quotes Mortimer Adler, coauthor of How to Read a Book: “Whereas a bookplate indicates financial ownership…writing in a book indicates intellectual ownership.” Leveen is encouraging. “If you have led an active reading life, your reading power at age eighty will tower over your reading power at age thirty.” And this:
“If you are not setting some books aside unfinished,
you are not sampling enough books.”
you are not sampling enough books.”
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