Summer Reading Recommendations

by Tom & Kai Gilb
(who we are)

At our recent GilbFest seminar we asked some participants for their recent favorite reading recommendations. If you like to read, you will find some gems here.

Tom Gilb

Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future
2016
Ashlee Vance
978-0753555644

Elon Musk: Biography of a Self-Made Visionary, Entrepreneur and Billionaire
2014
Betsy Storm
978-1500805500

Building Social Business: The New Kind of Capitalism that Serves Humanity's Most Pressing Needs
2011
Muhammad Yunus
978-1586489564

How the Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In
2009
Jim Collins
978-1847940421 (Hardcover)

Dave Snowden

Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions
1999
Gary Klein
ASIN: B00DO8OZMO

A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History
2000
Manuel De Landa
978-0942299328
Or anything by Manuel de Landa!

DS does not recommend another high-profile Jim Collins book (see TSG) Built to last - he argued that it confused correlation with causality.

Nik Silver

How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business
2014
Douglas W Hubbard
978-1118539279

Trevor Lea-Cox

deep-democracy.net
Based on Mindell's Process Orientated Psychology. See its own reading list and blog.

Dan North

The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement
2004
Eliyahu M Goldratt, Jeff Cox
978-0566086656
Management book written as a thriller.

Beyond the Goal: Theory of Constraints
2006
Eliyahu M Goldratt (Author, Narrator)
ASIN: B002SQ1QI4 (Audio Download)
Audio book with series of interviews/stories providing deep insights - available via Audible.

Building Successful Communities of Practice Paperback
2016
Emily Webber
If working with CoP - the author was previously at Government Digital Service.

Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words
2015
Randall Munroe
978-1473620919 (Hardcover)
Technology explained using only the 100 most commonly-used words. Also see xkcd.com

Rolf Goetz

That's Not How We Do It Here!: A Story About How Organizations Rise, Fall - and Can Rise Again
2016
John Kotter, Holger Rathgeber
978-0241255360 (Hardcover)
Short book from the perspective of a meerkat colony that suddenly comes under threat - argues that hierarchies can co-exist with network-based organisational forms.

Petter Abrahamsen

Who Moved My Cheese: An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life
1999
Spencer Johnson
978-0091816971

Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis
1972
Graham T Allison
ASIN: B01182E4A0

On the Psychology of Military Incompetence
2016
Norman F Dixon
978-0465097807

Hope is Not a Method: What business leaders can learn from America's army
1998
Gordon R Sullivan, Michael V Harper
ASIN: B00NPOXWAI

The Puritan Gift: Reclaiming the American Dream Amidst Global Financial Chaos
2009
Kenneth Hopper, William Hopper
978-1845119867

The Laws of Simplicity (Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life)
2006
John Maeda
978-0262134729 (Hardcover)

Niels Malotaux

Out of the Crisis
2000
W Edwards Deming
978-0262541152

Quality Without Tears: The Art of Hassle-Free Management
1995
Philip B Crosby
978-0070145115

Towards Zero-Defect Programming
1998
Allan M Stavely
978-0201385953
Based on practices developed at IBM and elsewhere under the name Cleanroom Software Engineering.

Economic Control of Quality Of Manufactured Product
2015 Reprint of 1931 Edition
Walter A Shewhart
978-1614278115
Design, manufacture, sell, observe, re-design.

More at www.malotaux.nl/books

Gus Power

Selections from Science and Sanity
2010
Alfred Korzybski, Lance Strate, Bruce I Kodish
General Semantics made GP question what he thought he knew.

Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time
2014
Carroll Quigley
978-1939438119
A history professor's poignant look at changes in the USA, especially the impact of large and small forces - not an uplifting book.

Atsushi Nagata

Principles of Software Engineering Management
1988
Tom Gilb, Susannah Finzi
978-0201192469

Root Cause Analysis Handbook: A Guide to Efficient and Effective Incident Management
2008
Lee N Vanden Heuvel, Donald K Lorenzo, Walter E Hanson
978-1931332514

Changing Minds In Detail
2008
David Straker
ASIN: B003641IS0

Just Enough Requirements Management: Where Software Development Meets Marketing
2005
Alan M Davis
978-0932633644

Martin Tate

When It Hits the Fan: Managing the Nine Crises of Business Mass Market
1987
Gerald C Meyers, John Holusha
How to turn crises into opportunities in business.

I've also shared my own personal/work booklist at:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/registry/wishlist/1AS52KV2ZPKBP