Discipline makes Daring possible.

Musings from The Disappearing Boss on People, Process and Responsible Autonomy for small-business employers.

Category: Book Recommendations

Long reads for a long weekend
May 7, 2020

Long reads for a long weekend

As human beings we are complex sytems, inhabiting complex systems.

Some of these are natural – weather, plate tectonics, ecosystems, the galaxy; some we’ve made up ourselves.  And of course, through the social systems we invent, we impact some of the natural ones.

The more we’ve understood our bodies – the physical system we inhabit – the better we’ve been able to cure, contain or prevent individual suffering and maximise the potential for individual flourishing.   The more we’ve understood the natural systems we operate in, the better we’ve been able to exploit or enhance them to our benefit.

As businesses we operate within social systems, and if we want to maximise the potential for it’s individual flourishing, it pays to understand those systems better.

They’re both a long read, but with a bank holiday weekend ahead, Capital in the 21st Century and its sequel Capital and Ideology are a great place to start to understand the social system that’s had the biggest impact on everything in our world for the last 250 years.

If reading is not your thing, Capital is available as a documentary film too.

Remember, all models are wrong, so it’s worth exploring as many as you can.   Some of them may prove useful.

What is Marketing?
May 5, 2020

What is Marketing?

One benefit of this pause we’re in is more time to think about our businesses than usual.

Which makes books like the one I recommended yesterday particularly good reads, if reading is your thing.

Today’s book is “This is Marketing” by Seth Godin.   I recommend it because unlike any other marketing book I’ve come across, it makes you think hard about what marketing is really for.

We usually start our marketing thinking from the wrong side of the relationship:  How much do I need to sell?  Who can I sell it to?  How can I get to that is quickly and easily as possible?

This book challenges you to think from the other side:  Who do you want to serve?   What do they want?  What do they really want?  Can you offer that?   How can you do that best for them?  How does the word spread when you get it right?

The result is a business that may be very hard to get started, but which in the long run creates more, better, more appropriate value.

More, better, more appropriate value is just what we all need going forwards.

This is the book to help you create it.

Deep and deliberate delegation
May 4, 2020

Deep and deliberate delegation

I re-read this book by Dave Stitt over the weekend, and frankly, it made me jealous.

It is just so good.

Clearly and simply written, sharing tools and techniques I’ve never seen before, it delivers a really powerful combination of thought and action, insight and how-to, theory and process.

All of which makes it a much deeper, more thought-provoking read than most business books, yet still one that prompts you to get on and have a go for yourself.

If you are taking stock of how you delegate in your business, with a view to doing it much, much better, I thoroughly recommend this book.

Deep and deliberate.   Pretty good rules to do business by.

The Joy of Tax
July 12, 2019

The Joy of Tax

When things flow, it is sometimes possible to be wrong about their direction.   Like when you’re sitting on a train at a station, and you think it’s started moving when it’s not, because the train next to you has started moving the opposite way.

When you’re operating within a system of systems, as we all are, all of the time, it is sometimes possible to misinterpret a symptom as a cause or a cause as a symptom.

It helps to take a step away every now and then and look for the bigger picture, to try and see how things might work differently, rather than trusting your assumptions.

Writers of all kinds can help us do this.  Their assumptions may be wrong too of course, but at least they help us become aware that we’re making them.  Sometimes, they even help us change them.

 

I thoroughly recommend reading The Joy of Tax, by Richard Murphy.  Even if you don’t agree about the joy.

An eye-opener
January 18, 2019

An eye-opener

I was introduced to this book a few years ago by the people at Matte Black Systems.

It was an eye-opener.

The way we’ve always done things isn’t the only way.

Take a look.