Reading List

Below is a list of resources I have found valuable and often recommend to others. I have divided the list into two categories: “General Use” and “Financial.”

The reason for the materials in the “General Use” category is straight forward and obvious; the “Financial” category necessary because contemporary university educations are strikingly deficient in some key areas with respect to providing necessary skills for professional life, and at least a basic understanding of personal finance and the handling of money is the one that is most glaringly prominent.

I have simply listed the resources, then later and where appropriate, I have included a brief summary for each of the materials that indicate what I found most valuable from the material for it warrant inclusion on my list. This is, of course, heavily editorialized and reflects those points that I personally have found most valuable. Another reader may derive a completely different set of useful items from the same material.

Each resource typically has a link to the amazon.com page for the item should one wish to acquire it directly. However, most of these materials are available in local libraries and many of these are even available in audiobook format. I have bookshelves full of audio books that have accompanied me to and from work and on long drives over the last 20+ years; I find them an effective way to take in new material during driving where I would have otherwise been unproductive.

General Use

Financial

General Use

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Steven Covey
This is a classic for personal productivity and effectiveness that should be standard reading for everyone. I discovered the fundamentals of Habit 3, which is about time management, on my own and in painful fashion as an undergraduate student. Life would have been significantly easier had I read the book rather than discovering it on my own. The other habits (“Begin with the end in mind”, “Seek to understand and then to be understood”, etc) are also quite valuable, but given our fast paced life-style, time management is a key skill.

A brief comment on time management; a resource I will reference later suggests that a focus on time management is insufficient, and that the real focus should be on energy management. For example, if one has three intense meetings scheduled for Monday morning, the rest of the day may be of marginal productive due to fatigue.

A whole flock of “Seven Habits” derivative material is in the market place dealing with various aspects of life.

The Eight Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness, Steven Covey
A follow on to the Seven Habits book, the eighth habit is “find your voice.” There is an excellent analogy in the book that compares a soccer team to typical organizations. For example, if a soccer team was oriented in the same way most organizations are, most of the players would not even be aware of where the goal was.

Off Balance – Getting Beyond the Work-Life Balance Myth to Personal and Professional Satisfaction, Matthew Kelly
The term “work-life balance” has been conventionally accepted over the last few decades, but alas, it is illusory. Mathey Kelly aptly notes that what people want is not balance, but satisfaction. Given that most waking hours are spent in the workplace and in the commute to and from it, achieving balance on the basis of the quantity of time spent is rarely achievable. Satisfaction, however, is indeed achievable.

The terms “pleasure” and “satisfaction” are carefully differentiated. Pleasure lasts until the activity producing it completes. Satisfaction lasts considerably longer. For example, pursuing a college degree is rarely pleasurable, but there is lasting satisfaction upon its completion.

Kelly argues that, despite what Covey and others articulate, time is not the critical limited resource that we should carefully manage. Instead it is (mental) energy. If multiple exhausting meetings are scheduled for early in the day, what is the energy level available to be productive for the remainder of the day? A system for developing personal and professional satisfaction is introduced, as well as a classification of one’s current energy level into one of four states and what the impact of this is.

Last, Kelly touches on a technique that is particularly useful for establishing ranking seemingly unquantifiable priorities. This is done by doing a binary comparison amongst each combination of priorities and indicating which is more important. Each time a priority is selected as more important than another, it is scored a point. When all of the possible comparisons have been completed, sort in descending order of score. In the case of a tie, there will have already been a comparison done between the priorities with the tied score that can be used to break the tie. I found this technique exceedingly useful.

The Plateauing Trap: How to Avoid It in Your Career…and Your Life, Judith Bardwick.
This book was written a few decades ago, but it is as applicable today as when it was written. Upon entering an organization, many people earn frequent promotions. Over time, however, the promotions begin to slow and effectively stop. Organization structures are generally pyramid shaped and the closer one is to the top, the less room there is. What to do?

For professional satisfaction, the answer may well one or more a lateral moves. This may give one an opportunity to learn new material, develop new relationships to extend their “network,” and increase their overall effectiveness and value to the organization. For personal satisfaction, this is likely to involve increasing one’s scope to include participation in community organizations, charity work, professional organizations, and hobbies – essentially methods of remaining intellectually stimulated outside of the work place.

The Retirement Myth: What You Must Know Now to Prosper in the Coming Meltdown, Craig Karpel
This book could also fit into the collection of financial resources I enumerate. Indeed, Rich Dad, Poor Dad references this book. A brief history of the concept of retirement is given, followed by one of the most depressing assessments of our retirement prospects that one might imagine (watch for the “silver bullet” concept introduced). The three legged stool of pensions, social security, and personal savings, is addressed and destroyed one leg at a time. From the ashes of our freshly demolished retirement expectations, the book describes some viable strategies for surviving and prospering in a climate where the concept of retirement is quite different than it has been for the last several decades.

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni
This has become a classic and mandatory reading for all managers. It is written as a fable and is extremely readable compared to the vast majority of business books. The principles of team dynamics described are essential for any organization. To address the five dysfunctions, Lencioni advocates:

  1. Trust – the ability to expose mistakes, vulnerabilities, imperfections, etc., without fear of being attacked.
  2. Conflict – constructive conflict to discuss and resolve issues, bringing real problems forward rather than letting them linger unresolved simply to maintain “the peace.”
  3. Commitment – after decisions are made, all must support them, even when some individuals did not necessarily agree with the decision that was made.
  4. Accountability – calling out others when they do not meet their obligations. The saying “Do what you said you were going to do.” (Credit Buzz Woekener of Nationwide for the quote).
  5. Results – My personal favorite. Results mentioned here are the results for the team, not individuals. Decisions must be made based on what is right for the organization, not what is right for individuals, sub-groups, their careers, egos, etc. One can never go wrong by making decisions with the simple litmus test, “What’s the right answer for the company.” If one makes a decision with any other criteria (e.g. “what’s right for my career?”), others will question the motivation of every subsequent decision  and credibility as a leader is lost indefinitely.

Death by Meeting, Patrick Lencioni
For all those who have been bored out of their skulls in mind-numbing, soul sapping, hideous experiences known as contemporary business meetings. This book, like The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, is presented as a highly readable fable. The two major points are 1) all good meetings have some notion of (constructive) conflict to address real issues, and 2) a model is presented that draws an analogy between different types of meetings and television shows, a domain with which most are intimately familiar.

The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business, Patrick Lencioni
You might get the idea by this point that I think highly of Patrick Lencioni. I think him to be the best business author in the field today. The Advantage is not presented as a fable. It is something of a capstone work that ties together material from all of his previous works, including the two referenced above. This premise is that the culture of an organization is more influential in its ultimate success than any other factor over which it has control.

Getting Things Done, David Allen
Tips and techniques for improving productivity by leveraging the way the mind works to its best advantage. “The mind was meant for having ideas, not holding them,” is the underlying basis for checklists – used by pilots and secretaries alike. Keeping your email inbox to a minimum number of emails has an impact on one’s utilization of attention and focus.

Financial

The Wealthy Barber, David Chilton
This book set the standard in the 1990s for providing an introduction to all of the major aspects of personal finance. It is highly readable. There is a video tape of the material which includes a subset of what is provided in the book. The first version was made available in 1994; at present, it is now on the third edition.

The Millionaire Next Door, Thomas Stanley and William Danko
Full of statistics for the data driven mind, this book suggests that while many people do well in earning money (“offense”), less than optimal economic reasoning is used in how money is spent (“defense”). The result is that while income may be high, accumulated assets often are relatively small. The book includes data to illustrate the point: millionaires typically do not live in showy houses, own Rolex watches, or drive expensive cars (the most popular vehicle for millionaires was a Jeep Cherokee).

Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Richard Kioyosaki
This has become one of the more popular personal finance texts over the last 10 years, with many seminars based on the material scattered throughout the country. It is highly readable and is in the general style of The Wealthy Barber (see above). One of the key concepts in this is a definition of an asset: an asset is something that earns money for you. As an example, the house you live in would not qualify as an asset; a house that you are renting for income would indeed qualify as an asset.

Prosperity in the Age of Decline, Alan Beaulieu
Financial trends likely to affect us before 2030 include a depression level economic event fueled by government spending and changing demographics in key populations in the world.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.