We had a great discussion on the book Disrupted, with all the startup war stories coming out. Most people at the discussion group could identify with at least one of the many horror stories from the book. Nobody said they had been at a company quite as bad as the one described by the Disrupted book. We got far off topic several times, but the discussion was still interesting and lively.
This was a pretty good intro book with some decent studies, but didn’t go nearly as deep as I would have liked. That seems to be the case with most popular books in science or psychology.
This book as it’s main point said that you need to understand where the other party is coming from in a negotiation. The secondary points were that negotiation starts with research and building up leverage, along with that you should continually negotiate for information. I really like the lessons that it puts forth and need to remember then when I next am going to be negotiating.
This book has a lot of good insights in how to think strategically, and I’m not doing too many of them. I’ll try to incorporate it more into my life. However, it does put one of the primary goals that it talks about as money and not happiness, so I’ll change that around.
This book was pretty good at explaining how to go about learning to interact with other cultures. the most interesting part however was the grouping that the lecturer goes through at the end of the book. I found the outliers the most interesting, like Ireland and Israel. Some of the aspects of the groupings surprised me, like the Nordic countries not wanting to stand out, but still being very individualistic.
This book is another where the topic wasn’t quite what I was expecting. The focus on healthcare made it not quite as useful as it could have been, however it was still very good. I liked the culture building focus that it had, and I know I need to do more of that.
This book had a lot of good information, but most of it I had heard before in the other books I’ve been listening to. I agree with many of the premises put forward, especially that the leadership style will have be responsive to the situation. I need to work on a basic leadership style laid out in this lecture series, but I’m not too far behind in understanding it. I’m just far behind in implementation.
This was a really good overview of the very specific job of trying to be a Startup CEO. It makes me realize that I’m going to have to really step it up on many of the leadership and communication parts that I’m not particularly good at or have experience in. I’m starting to work on it beginning with organization. If you want to be a CEO of a startup this is a must read.
This book is good, but not as good as Founders Dilemma. The book touches on a little bit later in the process, and on business instead of people. The focus is nice and we will be doing this very soon, and are already starting on it now. The book talks a lot about good structures about finding out what you don’t know. There is also a great bit about how you should take lots of risks in the short term, but always have the long term in mind. I need to follow my tenant of not having fear, but looking at things logically.
It's an Exciting World 