[Off-Topic] Reference Books 2008-2009
For anyone who got interested in the management, administration, and process topics I’ve been exploring in my posts and talks, here are my references. These are the books I’ve read over the past nine months and the ones sitting in my queue to start or finish.
Currently Reading
Free: The Future of a Radical Price
The Visible Ops Handbook: Starting ITIL in 4 Practical Steps
A Study of the Toyota Production System from an Industrial Engineering Viewpoint (Sistema Toyota de Produção: do Ponto de Vista da Engenharia de Produção) – before understanding a specialization like software, it’s better to understand production in general
The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory
Already Read
The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality – every manager should understand relativity, nonlinearity, chaos, etc.
Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means – the explanation of the foundation of self-organization
Outliers: The Story of Success
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference – the practical effect of what Linked explains
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
Turning the Tables (Virando a Própria Mesa) – the seed of democratic organizations, far more than a curiosity: it’s the only way out
You’re Crazy! (Você Está Louco!): A Life Managed a Different Way
School Without Walls (Escola sem Sala de Aula) – today’s education no longer works: the reason we don’t have motivated, proactive, creative workers.
Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant – another definition of “think different”
The Innovator’s Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable – the war of Pareto vs Gauss
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets
Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
Long Tail, The: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More
Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation, Revised and Updated
Lean Solutions: How Companies and Customers Can Create Value and Wealth Together
Beyond the Goal: Eliyahu Goldratt Speaks on the Theory of Constraints
Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything – learning to ask the right questions
Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit
To Read
The Great Game of Business – one of the key elements for creating democratic organizations
Open-Book Management: Coming Business Revolution, The
The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement
The End of Management and the Rise of Organizational Democracy
Managers Not MBAs: A Hard Look at the Soft Practice of Managing and Management Development – I need to read at least one Mintzberg
The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action – still not sure if it’s worth it
Marketing Para o Século XXI – I need to read at least one Kotler
The Six Sigma Way: How GE, Motorola, and Other Top Companies are Honing Their Performance – I’m sure it’s not worth it, but I want to know it with more arguments
Conclusion
I’ll admit I’ve still read very little. There’s more research sitting in the queue, and this counts books only, without the hundreds and hundreds of academic papers, articles, and Wikipedia pages that also went into it.
Even so, I’d say everyone should read at minimum something close to what’s on this list, counting only the general-knowledge titles, not the technical ones.
My specific interest is understanding how Agile and Lean culture leads to concepts like integrated quality, zero defects, and what you read in The Goal. Especially self-organization. From there you get to Open Book Management and The Great Game, which lead to The End of Management and democratic organizations. All of it rests on what’s in Linked and books like The Fabric of the Cosmos. In the end, the whole theory closes in a simple, elegant way.