Premise:
The world book and copyright day is celebrated annually on 23rd April, to spread the word about the importance of reading books. As leaders, one of the ways to continually learn is to read books about the topics that we want to develop different perspectives or to learn a new skill.
Good books bring a certain amount of depth of thinking by the authors on a given topic in a given context. Some books are very topical and very good as a flavour of the season, while some books stand the test of time and stay relevant for a long period of time (classics) on any given topic.
Why and How I read a book
I read books to learn a skill and to gain a perspective or a point-of-view on a given topic. And I read a lot of books.
The way I read books, specifically, non-fiction books is to first read the introduction and the contents page. If both of them are interesting, I skim through the chapters to see if there is a framework or an acronym or any other thread that ties the entire book together into a coherent whole.
If I like that, I start reading the book. If there is a certain chapter that is most interesting, I read that first. I highlight interesting passages and make notes where relevant.
I do this both on my physical books or on my digital books. When I am listening to an audio book, I do make a bookmark at places where I want to revisit after having listened to the entire book.
Irrespective of the format of the book, after having read the book, I try to gather the highlights and my notes into a coherent whole and try to create a summary of what I learnt from the book. Sometimes, I share them here on my blog, other times, I keep them for my reference.
Books that have Influenced my thinking
Today, I wanted to share 10 books that have had a significant impact on me and my thinking about running a business in general and leadership and leading innovation, in particular. Here we go.
1. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
This is one of the books that I keep coming back to every few years and every time I read it, I learn something new depending on the phase of life that I am in.
2. The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
This is a book that is so concise yet so dense in its teachings. I believe it contains answers to some of the most foundational questions that we need to think about life, living and dying. I attempted to write my first book Your Startup Mentor in the style of this book, as a tribute to Kahlil Gibran and his masterpiece.
3. The Goal by Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt
This is a book that is one of the few business books that is good even if you do not read it as a business book to learn from. The book lays down the fundamental thinking behind the Theory of Constraints as laid down by its creator – Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt.
It is a business novel that is interesting read in and of itself and if we learn the concepts of ToC and learn to question like the coach questions in the book, we would already be on our way to becoming a good leader.
4. Making Breakthrough Innovations Happen by Porus Munshi
This is the book that introduced me to the true meaning of innovation and how to think about innovation. It taught me the meaning of breakthrough innovations and shaped my thinking about innovation, leading innovation and the challenges that we face when leading innovation in large organization. I have had the chance to work with Porus and learn a lot from him and his thinking process, for which I am truly grateful.
5. The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Zander and Benjamin Zander
This book taught me how to see the world from the lens of possibility and not to take myself and my work so seriously. This is probably one of the books that I talk about the most in my conversations with leaders when it comes to the discussion around building high performing teams and converting people with high potential into people delivering high performance.
6. Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
This book showed me that we could leverage disruption and chaos to get better. The concept of anti fragility was so influential on my thinking, that I used this as one of the core skills to develop in my book Thrive. While reading the book is not so easy, the time, energy and effort that we put into reading it can pay off dividends in many different ways and potentially by a factor of margin we can’t comprehend.
This book probably had the biggest impact and paved my way to start thinking about mindsets and realise that we do not necessarily have one mindset (growth or fixed) as Carol shared in her influential book but we could have many different mindsets, which I expanded upon in my book Thrive (9 of them).
8. Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
This seminal book paved the way for my interest in behavioural Economics and in my quest to understand how our brain functions and why it does so. It has put me on a lifelong quest to understand human behaviour and put me in the path of thinkers like Dan Ariely, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. These extra-ordinary thinkers influenced the content in my book Thrive about how our behaviour is shaped.
9. Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows
This book rekindled my interest in systems and systems thinking that started with the book “The Fifth Discipline“. When I read the fifth discipline, I found it hard to understand the concepts but after reading the book by Donella, everything kind of fell in place and start a lifelong quest to understand systems and how to interact with systems. This has in turn led to my interest in Emergence and how to manage for emergence.
10. The Hero with a Thousand Faces
This book by James Campbell cemented my interest in stories and the important role that they play in how we come together, play together and stay together. And how as leaders, we need to get better at telling stories to leverage the power of this communication medium to build culture, share our vision and to inspire our teams.
In conclusion
In conclusion, I believe that most books are the result of deep thinking by their authors and also a great vehicle for us to learn new skills, ways of thinking and develop diverse perspectives.
This is the reason why I spend my time, energy and thinking to write the three books that I wrote and published. If you have liked and think that I have provided any value to you ever, please consider buying the books (mine or the one that I have recommended above).
Buy my books with the links below:
