The second year of the book club will continue to offer recommendations of books that will be useful to leaders and managers from the governmental as well as the business sectors.
Mid-December 2010 Dual Book Selection- Steven B. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, FREAKONOMICS(2005) and SUPER FREAKONOMICS(2009), William Morrow. Leaders and almost everyone else are interested in facts and statistics. We assume economics is usually about money. In these two best sellers, the authors look at facts in a different way. They dig deep and show how what we think of as convential wisom may not be true at all. The lesson for leaders is to be careful of numbers and don’t let the numbers lead you down the wrong path. Go below the service and find the true meaning of things. You will be surprised by the results. These books have shown me the value of microeconomics and how much the methodology of this field can give me insights into how we deal with our social reality. Check out www.freakonomics.com
December 2010 Book Selection- James G. March and Thierry Weil, ON LEADERSHIP, Blackwell, 2005. This book is a gem based on the lecture notes for a class on leadership from 1980-1994 at Stanford by the important writer on organizational development and leadership James March. Weil took the notes and translated them into French in a narrative form.. The French narrative was then retranslated into English for this book. As I read the book, a colleague of mine said she took March’s course at Stanford and that it was one of the best courses that she ever took. This book is not only about leadership, it is how we can study leadership by reading classic literature, poetry, and plays. You learn about whatleadership really is by reading Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Eliot and others. One of the best parts of the book for me was Appendix B about organizations and heroic leadership. This is a book to relish.
Mid-November 2010 Book Selection-Frances Westley, Brenda Zimmerman, and Michael Quinn Patton, GETTING TO MAYBE, Vintage Canada,2006. This book is a gem. over the past several years, I have been intrigued by books by Bornstein and Clinton on the wonders of social entrepreneurship. I have also become interested in the science and practice of complexity thinking through the writings of Margaret Wheatley and others. This book looks at the the dimensions of social innovation through a complexity lens. The authors use poetry and complexity to show how social innovation is a process with many twists and turns and often unanticipated consequences. leadership is clearly at the core of the authors arguments, but it is a leadership perspective that permeates the whole social innovation process. Leadership is shared. The authors use many complexity concepts to explain the process of getting to maybe. Complexity thinking also requires a new approach to evaluation which the authors call developmental evaluation. They also discuss the importance of resilience in social innovation. The connections between people are also an important part of social change and innovation.
November 2010 Book Selection-James Surowiecki, THE WISDOM OF CROWDS, Anchor Books, 2005. This is a book which has been quite popular among readers of management and leadership books. When an individual or an expert gives their opinion, bias is often a critical factor in the comments made or decisions which have been affected by bias. With teams, we begin to see some wisdom entering the decision-making process especially when the team is diverse in composition. If everyone on the team has the same opinion, this bias may impact the comments and the decision of the teams. With larger groups or crowds, collective wisdom is often more possible and the decisions made more reflective of the crowd as a whole. This book explores this topic of collective wisdom in great detail with many examples and experiments. The author explores the times when the collective wisdom of the crowd is accurate and the factors which might lead to more biased decisions. The book reminds me of the type of book that Malcolm Gladwell writes. I think my readers will enjoy the book and the interesting cases of collective wisdom that it presents.
Mid-October 2010 Book Selection-Robert Agranoff and Michael McGuire, COLLABORATIVE PUBLIC MANAGEMENT, Georgetown University Press, 2003. Using an economic development perspective, the authors explore in detail the complex nature of collaboration in the public sector. This book is filled with many new approaches to the topic from the idea that horizontal collaboration is different from vertical collaboration. The book also discusses in detail different models of collaborative managment from jurisdiction-based approaches to abstience from collaboration in the public sector. There is also an excellent discussion on the five development activities that impact the development of policy. This is not an easy read but the reader will learn much about the intricacies of collaboration from two excellent researchers in the fielkd of public administration. This book also was the winner of the 2003 Louis Brownlow Book Award.
October 2010 Book Selection-Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom, THE STARFISH AND THE SPIDER, Portfolio, 2007. This book has helped me to better understand the changing face of organizations in the 21st century. It has helped me to better understand how the Center which I run is operating. Spider organizations are top down organizations generally with a command and control approach to operation. If you cut off a leg of a spider, the spider may die or at least need crutches to get around. Starfish organizations are decentralized organizations. They live on chaos and change. It is hard to find the boss since everyone in the starfish organization may be boss. Shared leadership governs. If you cut off a leg of the starfish, another grows in its place. In fact, the leg you cut off may become another starfish and continue to grow. Starfish organizations often have a person who is a catalyst for pushing new ideas and directions and then steps back and lets others implement. The lead implementer is often a champion for the idea and wants to see it grow and flourish. This is the book to read and relish if you believe that decentralization is the way to go. Also see www.starfishandspider.com
Mid-September 2010 Book Selection- James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner, THE TRUTH ABOUT LEADERSHIP, Jossey-Bass, 2010. Over the last two decades, the authors earlier book, THE LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE(Now in a fourth edition and one of the books that I selected on my posting “A Leadership Bookshelf”), has been a standard text in many of the public health leadership institutes around the U.S. The book and its discussion of the five exemplary leadership practices seems to resonate with leaders on the ground. This new book looks at the work of the authors over thirty years and discusses the ten truths of leadership that will guide emerging leaders as well as seasoned leaders. At the end of the book, the authors add an additional truth which makes the point that leaders must always take personal responsibility for their actions. Also check out www.truthaboutleadership.com
September 2010 Book Selection-Charlene Li, OPEN LEADERSHIP, Jossey-Bass, 2010. Being as leader in the 21st century is not only about change, it is about transformation. it is about opening our organizations to the public through the use of the many new social technology tools from Facebook to Twitter. It is about having our successes and failures seen by many and responded to by many others. Open leadership is about redefining our relationships with others. Many different audiences will respond to our messages. Communication will not only occur face to face across organizations, it will occur at many levels of our society and other societies and countries. Giving up control and power is not easy although the gains both personally and organizationally may be quite significant. Synergistic leaders will thrive in this new environment because they are visionary and see how big picture views enhance our leadership effectiveness. Li offers the readers many tools and suggestions for becoming an open leader. this is an important book for the leaders of today and tomorrow. Also see http://www.charleneli.com/open-leadership
Mid-August 2010 Book Selection- Liz Wisman with Greg McKeown, MULTIPLIERS, Harper Business, 2010. What type of leader are you? Do you make all the decisions and take all the credit? Or do you empower others to contribute to the discussion of an issue and give theiropinionions? Do your direct reports get credit for their contributions? Multipliers are leaders who empower others and help to increase the intellectual contributions to the activities of the organization. Diminishers do not listen and think that they are the only ones who have the information to make sound decisions. They diminish the capacity of others and thus lessen the effectiveness of the organizations for which they work. This is an excellent book that shows the value of multipliers to organizational effectiveness. Multipliers are talent managers, liberators, challengers, debate makers, and investors in others. This book will give you important insights into the types of managers and leaders that are needed today. You can assess your multiplier traits at www.MultipliersBook.com Also visit www.TheWisemanGroup.com
August 2010 Book Selection- Paul D. Epstein, Paul M. Coates, and Lyle D. Wray, RESULTS THAT MATTER, Jossey-Bass 2006. This is one of the best books around in recent years on the topic of community engagement. The book is an excellent resource for all leaders who work with communities. The book is based on the authors’ conceptual model of community engagement and the three overlapping components of engaging citizens, getting things done, and measuring results. These three components of the skill model are viewed in the context of community conditions. These three core skills are aligned with the four governance practices of community problem-solving, organizations managing for results, citizens reaching for results, and communities governing for results. The authors present many examples and case studies to test their model. See www.rtmteam.net
Mid-July 2010 Book Selection-Chip Heath and Dan Heath, MADE TO STICK, Random House, 2006. If you like the books of Malcolm Gladwell, you will like this book. The Heath brothers pick up on a theme from THE TIPPING POINT. The idea behind the book relates to the principle of what makes some ideas stick and others not. The image that came into my mind as I read this book two years ago and rereaead it again is the image that I have as a younster in seeing my parents put up flypaper in our kitchen to catch flies. The strip was stick. As a fly hits the paper, it becomes stuck and cannot get away. The same is true of ideas, some stick and some don’t. The authors present a six part checklist to explain sticky ideas—simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotional quality, and storytelling. The book is full of ideas that stuck and those that didn’t. I think you will find this a good read. Also see www.Heathbrothers.com
July 2010 Book Selection-Harvard Business Press, LEADING THROUGH A CRISIS, Harvard Business Press,2009. This is a book in a series called Skills You Need Today. The book has three major sections each of which was put together by experts in the field. The three major sections include leading people, managing crises, and making decisions. These three sections are followed by tools and resources that help the reader further their learning in each of the three topic areas. There are template evaluation forms, reading lists, and tests to check on the understanding of the content. This is an excellent resource for leaders and managers. I would recommend this book for individuals new to a leadership role. Seasoned leaders may also find this book useful as a review.
Mid-June 2010 Book Selection-Donella H. Meadows, THINKING IN SYSTEMS:A PRIMER, Chelsea Green Publishing,2008. Leaders keep hearing about how important systems thinking is to being a successful leader. This book by the late Donella Meadows is an excellent and clear introduction to systems thinking and its tools. The book is an excellent resource for leaders and shows how the use of the sytems archetypes will enhance the leader’s ability to understand how systems work in the real world. The book also includes a number of appendices with a systems glossary, a summary of systems principles and a number of other useful resource guides. I strongly recommend this book to leaders in the public and private sectors. Also visit www.ThinkingInSystems.org
June 2010 Book Selection- Tom Rath and Jim Harter,WELL BEING:THE FIVE ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS, Gallup Press, 2010. For those of you who are fans of the Gallup organization Strengths-Finder 2.0, this new personal development tool will add to your knowledge of your well being as well as your leadership skills. As with Strengths-Finder 2.0, you can take this tool online and get an immediate printout of the results. You can also retake this instrument at different times to seee how your sense of wellbeing changes. The five elements of the tool are career wellbeing, social wellbeing, financial wellbeing, physical wellbeing, and community wellbeing.
Mid-May 2010 Book Selection-John C. Maxwell, HOW SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE THINK, Center Street, 2009. I have been reading the books of Maxwell for a number of years. He brings a blen of thinking on leadership and management that is both practical and very useful. Maxwell is a pastor who brings soul to the discussion of leadership. This book is one of a series of small books that you can easily carry around and read when you are rising a train or just have a few minutes when you want to enjoy his many unique perspectives on how organizations and people work. His goal in this book is to stress the importance of learning the value of thinking. he approaches the subject from elevn perspectives from systems thinking, focused thinking, strategic thinking and eight other thinking categories. See www.johnmaxwell.com You can also find Maxwell on YouTube.
May 2010 Book Selection- Michael D. Watkins, YOUR NEXT MOVE, Harvard Business Press,2009. This book is a sequel to Watkins earlier book THE FIRST NINETY DAYS. Tje new book builds upon his work on organizational transitions utilizing the STARS model of start-up, turnaround, accelerated growth, realignment, and sustaining success. This book concentrates on eight leadership transitions related to different types of career moves- promotion, leading former peers, corporate diplomacy, outboarding issues, international moves, turnaround challenges, realignment challenges,a and business portfolio challenges. The book also presents a number of very useful tools. Specifically, check out the FOGLAMP project planning template. This book is a gem and should be part of your personal leadership bookshelf. Also check out www.yournextmove.net
Mid-April 2010 Book Selection-Patrick Lencioni, GETTING NAKED, Jossey-Bass, 2010. The author tells a good story in making his arguments. In this book, Lencioni discusses the art of consulting. He makes the point that most consultants spend more time on selling their services and prepared a pre-packeded set of recommendations that they lose the real point of good consulting which is about working with a client to define issues and working together to find the solution. Consultants need to be willing to show their vulnerabilities and admit mistakes when necessarty. The author explores the fears of consultants and how to counteract their fears in ways that improve their consultations.
April 2010 Book Selectiom-Mark L. Rosenberg, Elisabeth S. Hayes, Margaret H. McIntyre, and Nancy Bell, REAL COLLABORATION:WHAT IT TAKES FOR GLOBAL HEALTH TO SUCCEED, University of Californai Press, 2010. In 2006, I was fortunate to be selected as one of the delegates to the Conference on Coalitions and Collaboration in Global health at the Carter Center in Atlanta. This book is an offshoot of that conference and a number of collaborations in global health initiatives since. You can follow the proceedings of that conference on a CD-ROM included with the book. The book addresses the critical concern of how to work in the global health environment where many organizations and people need to collaborate to address the world’s major health problems. The book is clearly a labor of love by the authors who share many personal stories throughout the book. Models for collaboration are presented with the underlying importance of good leadership and management at its core. Collaborations are viewed in terms of the first mile, the journey and the last mile. In other words, all collaborations have a beginning, a middle, and an end(hopefully). The second part of the book gives readers tools for each part of the process. This is an important book for anyone working in public health or donors who support public health work both domestically and internationally.
Mid-March 2010 Book Selection-Robert M. Galford and Regina Fazio Maruca, YOUR LEADERSHIP LEGACY, HBS Press, 2006. many leaders don’t think much about their personal legacies until they are close to retirement. The authors look at legacy as something a leader build throughout their lives. It is as much about thinking forward as thinking back. Legacy thinking becomes a skill that helps the leader monitor his or her contributions to various organizations. The authors present an interesting 360 degree exercise that allows the leader to observe how their legacies are viewed by two different organizations for which they have worked. How to write a legacy statement is also explored. The important dimension of impact on organizations by leaders is also discussed. The book makes the strong argument that legacy thinking is an ongoing process that allows the leader to adjust and change their personao views about a legacy throughout their work career. You may also find Galford”s website of interest. http://www.centerforleadingorganizations.com
March 2010 Book Selection-Malcolm Gladwell, WHAT THE DOG SAW, Little Brown, 2009. I have become a real fan of the writings of Malcolm Gladwell. See www.gladwell.com His first three books have given me knowledge that I have been able to incorporate into my understanding of what leaders need to know ( See THE TIPPING POINT, BLINK, AND THE OUTLIERS). This selection includes a number of Gladwell’s New Yorker articles. I recommend the book not only for the leadership articles in Part One of the book but for all the articles which provide not only an interesting perspective on the issues presented, but also on the unique and creative perspective that Gladwell takes in them. The article on profiling was particularly interesting to me. His article entitled “Blowup” on the Challenger explosion raises the important question of whether we can ever completely be prepared for a disaster.
Mid-February 2010 Book Selection-John G. Miller, OUTSTANDING, Putnam, 2010. John Miller has been a business consultant since 1986. What struck me most in reading this book and his two previous books is that Miller has a strong commitment to lifelong learning. He not only gives credit to many of his clients for his own learning, but he also takes personal responsibility for his choices. This leatest book builds on the foundation of his two previous books. In QBQ, he explored and demonstrated the importance of personal responsibility for leaders and managers. He presented the tool of Question Behind the Question to show that our questions often place blame on others or transfer responsibility to others. There is a need for a different type of question that puts responsibility back where it belongs, on us personally. See www.QBQ.com In his second book FLIPPING THE SWITCH, Miller argued that when you practice personal responsibility rather than transfer your personal issues to others. It is like flipping a switch. In this new book, Miller tells stories about what he has learned on his consultancy journey. He tells 47 ways that organizations become outstanding. The secret always relates to the people in these organizations. He makes strong arguments for training as well as the critical issues and techniques for making organizations special. His books are very readable and full of practical advice. See www.OutstandingOrganization.com
February 2010 Book Selection- Gerard J. Langley, Ronald D. Moen, Kevin M. Nolan, Thomas W. Nolan, Clifford L. Norman, and Lloyd P. Provost, THE IMPROVEMENT GUIDE, Second Edition, Jossey-Bass, 2009. This is my second selection on the important quality improvement movement. Many states are studying and implementing quality improvement activities in public health and other human service public agencies. This book like my November 2009 selection by Bialik and his colleagues presents a comprehensive approach to the topic from a theoretical and a practice perspective. The Model for Improvement preocess presented in the book helps to organize this complex field. The book not only walks the reader through the whole improvement process, it discusses 72 change concepts, the tools of quality improvement, and a number of related approaches to performance measurement. Many case studies are also presented. This is a wonderful resource book for leaders and managers. For those in the health field, you may also fing the following website of interest. http://www.ihi.org
Mid-January 2010 Book Selection-T.R. Reid, THE HEALING OF AMERICA, Penguin, 2009. For my first book club selection in January 2009, I selected the book Critical by Tom Daschle as a selection which I felt laid the foundation for a discussion of the leadership issues in health reform. The preset selection carries the discussion of health reform several steps further. Reid raises the important question of why the United States is the only major country in the World without universal health care coverage. He discusses the five myths that all universal health care systems iare socialized medicine, that all these systems ration health care with long waiting lists and limited personal choice, that all these universl systems waste money and create complex bureaucracies, that all health insurance companies are bad, and that all these universal health care systems will not work here. Reid reviewed the health care systems of France, Germany, Japan, United Kingdom, Canada, and the many out of pocket countries.
January 2010 Book Selection- Frances Dunn Butterfoss, COALITIONS AND PARTNERSHIPS IN COMMUNITY HEALTH, John Wiley and Sons, 2007. Over the last two decades, we have become increasingly aware that we as leaders can accomphlish more by collaborating on imporant health and social issues in our communities. In Rowitz 2009, I discussed some of these topics by looking at coalitions, alliances, and partnerships. Butterfoss takes a wide view and discusses all aspects of coalitions across the continuum of coalitions to partnerships. This book is an important compendium of most of what we know about coalitions today. It is exceedingly comprehensive and filled with theory, methods, tools and examples of how coalitions work and don’t work. An important theoretical view is discussed by the author in the chapter on the Community Coalition Action Theory which presents a logic model approach to coalition development which takes the reader from coalition membrship to operations and processes, synergy and then to implementaion of strategies. The book is filled with examples of coalitions, marketing strategies, funding issues, assessment techniques, planning, actions steps, implementation of programs, evaluation strqtegies, and leadership isssues. This is a very important resource for any leader who works with others to address important social and health issues.
Rowitz On Leadership 