Brief Summary of Escaping the Build Trap

“Escaping the Build Trap – How Effective Product Management Creates Real Value” by Melissa Perri, is a wonderful book on Product management – a must read for Product managers. With lots of great examples, the book takes you through various concepts of Product management, the importance of Outcomes over Outputs, the need for organizations to be Product-led instead of being Sales-led how to make the Product manager effective, having a vision, strategy and initiatives for an organization and a focus on customer centricity.

The book ends with these 6 questions which help you to ensure that the company will support and encourage you to do everything you can do to succeed
* Who came up with the last feature or product idea you built?
* What was the last product you decided to kill?
* When was the last time you talked to your customers?
* What is your goal?
* What are you currently working on?
* What are your product managers like?

Here is a brief summary of the book –>

Brief Summary of Escaping the Build TrapDownload

Brief Summary of Scaling Leadership

In a world that is becoming increasingly complex,  organizations need leaders who are both effective and conscious, capable of scaling innovation, adaptability, sustainability, agility and engagement.

It is not enough to cope with the volatility and unpredictability in our markets – we must develop a new level of leadership literacy, mastery and agility. Scaling leadership is about how senior leaders develop conscious leadership at scale in their organizations. Leadership that worked well when organizations were small, no longer serves the organization. We either rise to meet the challenge or get swamped.

Scaling Leadership by Bob Andersen and Bill Adams is a wonderful book about how leaders successfully transform themselves to the next level of effectiveness and then scale as they transform the organizations.

Here is a brief summary of the book –> Brief Summary of Scaling Leadership

Brief Summary of “Leadership is Language”

“Leadership is Language” by David Marquet, is a follow up to his earlier book “Turn the Ship Around”.  In this book he talks about how as a leader, he changed the way he talked to people and the words that were used and the impact it had on others. According to Marquet, the language changed in three ways

• from a reactive language of “Convince, Coerce, Comply and Conform” to a proactive language of “Intent and Commitment” to action
• from a language of “Prove and Perform” to a language of “Improve and Learn”
• from a language of Invulnerability and Certainty to a language of Vulnerability and Curiosity.

David bases his new leadership playbook on an incident in 2015 , when a container ship, El Faro, with all the modern radios and navigation equipment sailed directly into a hurricane and sank. With the transcripts available of all the conversations on board the ship, he came to a conclusion that had the captain acted differently or played a different leadership playbook, the ship could have been saved.

The new Leadership playbook which consists of 6 plays – based on a specific use of language, forms the core of the book. They are

• Control the clock instead of obeying the clock
• Collaborate instead of coercing
• Commitment rather than compliance
• Complete defined goals instead of continued work indefinitely
• Improve outcomes rather than prove ability
• Connect with people instead of conforming to your role

Here is a brief summary of the book –>Brief Summary of Leadership is Language

Brief Summary of “The Fearless Organization”

Amy Edmondson defines psychological safety as “the shared belief among team members that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking” and explains that “team psychological safety involves but goes beyond interpersonal trust; it describes a team climate characterised by interpersonal trust and mutual respect in which people are comfortable being themselves”

Psychologically safe teams share the belief that within the team, they will not be exposed to interpersonal or social threats, such as being branded negatively on an individual basis, when engaging in learning behaviours such as asking for help, seeking feedback, admitting errors or lack of knowledge, trying something new or voicing work-related dissenting views.

Research has shown that the absence of such threats is strongly associated with team members bringing their whole self to work, expressing their creativity, talents and skills without self-censoring and self-silencing and learning actively on the job developing their capabilities and those of their team.

This is a brief summary of the book “The Fearless Organization – Creating Psychological Safety in the workplace for Learning, Innovation and Growth” by Amy Edmondson. This also includes links to articles and videos on Psychological safety –> The Fearless Organization

 

Brief Summary of 7 Rules for Positive Productive Change: Micro Shifts, Macro Results

Esther Derby, in her book, 7 Rules for Positive, Productive Change : Micro Shifts, Macro results, comes out with seven practical rules for organizational change. The 7 Rules are

1. Strive for Congruence
2. Honor the past, present and people
3. Assess what is
4. Attend to networks
5. Experiment
6. Guide and allow for variation
7. Use your self

Esther Derby provides a lot of examples which provides clarity to these rules. Easy to read book – great book to have on Change Management on your bookshelf.
Here is a link to the summary –> Brief Summary of 7 Rules for Positive Productive Change

Brief Summary of Humble Leadership

In their new book, “Humble Leadership – The Power of Relationships, Openness and Trust” , Edgar Schein and Peter Schein talk of new approaches to leadership which are based more on personal relationships rather than a transactional role relationships.

They talk of 4 levels of relationships that are generally accepted in society and that great leaders exhibit qualities of openness, trust, empathy to being emotionally intimate relationships.

* Level Minus 1
Total impersonal domination and coercion.

* Level 1
Transactional role and rule-based supervision, service and most forms of  professional helping relationships.
Interactions are routine and there are low levels of personal investment

* Level 2
Personal, cooperative, trusting relationships as in friendships and effective teams

* Level 3
Emotionally intimate
Total mutual commitments

This book is a great read for any one who intends to build quality relationships at work. Here is a link to a video where Edgar Schein talks more about Humble Leadership – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wJaNKIALLw

Here is a brief summary of the book –> Brief Summary of Humble Leadership

Brief Summary of “Enterprise Agility – Being Agile in a Changing world”

This is a brief summary of “Enterprise Agility – Being Agile in a Changing World” by Sunil Mundra.  Pretty comprehensive book covering the need for Enterprise Agility and different aspects of Enterprise Agility –  Mindset and culture, Leadership, Organization structure, process, people, technology, governance and customer.  Enterprises are considered as a living system and Complex Adaptive Systems are dealt with at length.  This is a great book  to understand the different aspects of Enterprise Agility.

Here is a brief summary of the book  –> Brief Summary of Enterprise Agility

Brief Summary of Kanban Maturity Model:Evolving Fit for Purpose Organizations

This is a brief summary of “Kanban Maturity Model:Evolving Fit for Purpose Organizations”. As David Andersen and Teodora Bozheva say, the purpose of the Kanban Maturity Model is to help organizations relief from overburdening, deliver on customer expectations, predictable outcomes and survivability.  Kanban Maturity Model bases itself on the 5 levels of CMMI – but borrows a lot of concepts from Lean/TPS, Real World Risk Institute, Mission Command and Maturity Model of Jerry Weinberg.

The Kanban Maturity Model architecture rests on two dimensions – Maturity Levels on the Vertical and the Kanban Practices on the Horizontal.

The Seven Maturity levels are
Maturity Level 0 – Oblivious, Maturity Level 1 – Emerging, Maturity Level 2 – Defined, Maturity Level 3 – Managed, Maturity Level 4 – Quantitatively Managed, Maturity Level 5 – Optimizing, Maturity Level 6 – Congruent.

The Six Practices are Visualize, Limit WIP, Manage Flow, Make Policies Explicit, Implement Feedback Loops, and Improve Collaboratively and Evolve Experimentally.

Having been in Agile and Kanban coaching for a few years, I feel this book is pretty comprehensive in terms of assessing organizations at different maturity levels and what is needed for organizations to get to the next level. This is a very brief summary of the book – the book is a must read for Kanban coaches.

Here is a link to the summary –> Brief Summary of Kanban Maturity Model

Brief Summary of “More Fearless Change – Strategies For Making Your Ideas Happen”

Mary Lynn Manns and Linda Rising, in their new book “More Fearless Change”  have come out with an excellent sequel to their first book “Fearless Change” – a collection of tactics and strategies to make change happen in an organization.  As the authors say, this book is not a recipe for change but a collection of patterns which will provide ideas to  change the mindsets and behaviors of people involved in change in organizations .  Their first book had a set of 49 patterns and their second had 15 patterns.

Here is a brief summary of the 64 Change Patterns  –> Brief Summary of More Fearless Change

Quick summary of Leadership and Self-Deception

Leadership and Self Deception by the Arbinger Institute, is a leadership fable which discusses two concepts – “In the Box” and “Out of the Box”.

Once a person is “in the box”, they see others in a distorted way and as a source of their problem. The person “in the box” sees himself as the centre of the world and others as mere objects – whose needs are secondary and less legitimate than their own.  He, more often than not, blames others and finds faults with whatever others do or say. For the person “in the box”, his needs come before anybody else’s and only after they are satisfied, does he look at needs of others. And   a person “in the box” could face issues such as  a lack of commitment, lack of engagement, poor team work, backbiting, lack of trust, communication problems among others. It is because being “in the box” limits our ability to reach our full potential and betrays the basic obligation that we have to see others as they are, as people.

A person “out of the box” sees others as People – as a person who has feelings, hopes, fears and needs.  A person who is ‘out of the box’ places his needs and the needs of others on the same level.  He is a good communicator, tries to motivate people around and can deliver even the hardest messages without any ill feeling.     The motivation for smart people to be smarter and for skilled people to be even more skilled, is for them to be treated in a straightforward manner, and to give them the respect and dignity they deserve.  A person “out of the box” creates an environment of openness, trust and teamwork where people work hard, put in effort for the collective good of the group not for individual accomplishments.

There is a nice summary at the end of the book :

• Self betrayal leads to self-deception and “the box”
• When you are in the box, you cannot focus on the results
• Your influence and success will depend on being out of the box
• You get out of the box as you cease resisting other people
• Don’t try to be perfect. Do try to be better
• Don’t use the vocabulary “the box” and so on – with people who don’t already know it. Do use the principles in your own life
• Don’t look for others’ boxes. Do look for your own
• Don’t accuse others of being in the box. Do try to stay out of the box yourself
• Don’t give up on yourself when you discover you have been in the box. Do keep trying
• Don’t deny that you have been in the box when you have been. Do apologise, then just keep marching forward, trying to be more helpful in the future.
• Don’t focus on what others are doing wrong. Do focus on what you can do right to help
• Don’t worry whether others are helping you. Do worry whether you are helping others.

I particularly liked a 10 minute video by Callibrain summarizing the book  – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-X-P0tzlF8