reading – Dave Bellous

On becoming a leader, by Walter Bennis

This book is a leadership classic. At least that’s what HBR told me, so I wanted to read it to see if I agreed. I stumbled across this book reading a list of 11 books every young young leader should read. This wasn’t the first book from that list I read, but so far, it’s the best. It’s full of great stories, examples and concepts that have given me a great roadmap for developing my leadership skills.

I’ve got a favourite quote from the book that describes the type of relationship I’d like to have with my company. “I am fully engaged in this company. I pay attention and I know what goes on throughout it. There is a name for that kind of responsive, responsible behavior. It’s called leadership.”

Bennis organizes his book into stories, that break out into some key ideas. I really liked this approach, as it let me bring valuable ideas with me such as his four lessons of self-knowledge:

One: You are your own best teacher.
Two: Accept responsibility. Blame no one.
Three: You can learn anything you want to learn.
Four: True understanding comes from reflecting on your experience.

There’s also a really great section that calls out the adaptation warp we all go through to deal with childhood and growing up. We learn ways of interacting or behaviours that come from life. We got lost as a kid, so we’re risk-averse as an adult. You have to understand those parts of your experience, and be aware so you can listen and respond to a group of people and communicate well. The description of innovative learning and the concrete things you can do to improve yourself are worth the read alone.

The book walks through several topics, from self-knowledge, to innovative learning, to how to craft a vision and how to be comfortable and thrive in the midst of change. The topics are relevant for any leader, and I feel like after reading through this book and taking notes I’ve got a resource I can dip into long into the future with lots of areas to improve and learn.

The stories in the book were well matched to the concepts they were building, and each concept was framed well. There was an idea presented, a story to make it human, and then a lesson clearly laid out in a statement or a set of points. The ideas were very accessible and clear, but still left a lot of room to bring it into your personal experience.

If you’re someone in leadership, and you don’t have this book on your shelf, I’d recommend putting it next on your reading list.

i finished reading “maverick” by ricardo semmler. it’s a pretty fantastic read and opened my eyes to new possibilities about how work can get done. my current office environment is a good example of modern office culture. we have open office spaces, each week a group of my team gets together and makes decisions about how the company should run, and we have free coffee, organic fruit deliveries every week, office snacks, etc. i was impressed to see a vision of corporate culture that didn’t feel corporate in this book, but focused on how to get work done. the vision of the author was getting out of the way of the people doing good work. something i’d like to do more.

at the start of the book, you have to get your head around the time it was written in, and take some of the comments with a grain of salt “You might not need a secretary!” (who has a secretary anymore) but a lot of the core principles, of finding ways to educate the people on the ground, making the decisions every day – give them the training and information to make good decisions and you’ll provide incredible value and meaning to the team you work with.

a lot of the advice and examples are targeted towards large factories, and don’t apply to a small web shop, but overall there are some great ways to rethink what you do. some specific examples are the way decisions are made. rather than pushing all the information up the organizational structure through reports, decision making practices are pushed down the organizational structure, so people on the front lines – doing the real work – can make the decisions. i love this idea, and want to find out how to bring this into our company more.

if you work at a company, or run one – this is a great read.

Maverick on wikipedia

thanks to Carl Smith for the recommend at owner camp.