1. Reinventing Organizations

Frederick Laloux

Laloux introduced the world to the concept of the “Teal organization”.  This is just one of a series of colours that he uses to label different eras of organizational history. 

Like people, he believes societies have grown through distinct stages of development. 

There are many stages and colours, but the one of significance is teal, which represents Laloux’s belief that humanity is in the midst of a transition, with a new form of organization emerging. 

To make his case, he tracks 12 of these so-called pioneering organizations throughout his book and seeks to identify what sets them apart and what future they may be pointing towards.  

The three components of a Teal organization that emerge include self-management, wholeness, and evolutionary purpose. Of the three, the one that had the most influence on me is self-management.

Self-management is not a new concept, but it is rarely practiced.  It involves the distribution of management roles and authority back to the teams and individuals who are out on the front edges doing the work.

For many, this is a radical shift in thinking and will be written off as idealistic and impractical.   There may be some truth to this, but for the right organization with the right leadership, I can’t help but feel that this could be a revolutionary way of viewing the workplace. 

It’s where I would want to work.

2. Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment

Daniel Kahneman, Cass Sunstein, Olivier Sibony

Kahneman’s previous book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, rocked my world and fundamentally altered my view of myself and those around me.  After that, I was ready to pick up a copy of whatever he would write next. 

While Noise didn’t hit me like a truck in the way that Thinking did, it didn’t disappoint either.

In his previous work, Kahneman systematically revealed the errors and biases that exist in our unconscious (“System 1”) mind.  In Noise, he tackles an equally pernicious problem in our thinking, one that slips under the radar more easily.  The problem is called “noise” (of course). 

While biases consistently skew our judgments in one direction (think of a target where all your shots hit left of centre), noise refers to the variability in our judgments (now imagine all your shots are scattered randomly all over the target).  In other words, we’re inconsistent and all over the map in how we judge people and circumstances. 

Like bias, noise is a pervasive source of unfairness in organizations and society, and it is worth thinking carefully about how to reduce it.

In the end, I walked away from this book humbled.  While it’s tempting to believe that we’re a better-than-average judge of character and that we can trust our gut when it comes to people, the research just doesn’t support that conclusion. 

Kahneman reveals a number of ways that we can effectively reduce noise in our judgments, but first we have to admit to ourselves that we need them.

3. Brave New Work

Aaron Dignan

Dignan believes we’re stuck. 

If you look at the org charts and management practices of a hundred years ago, there is shockingly little difference from what we see today.  How is this possible when the world has changed so drastically over that time period?  Globalization, cultural upheaval, and technical revolutions have fundamentally altered the landscape in which we operate, yet our workplace practices have been slow to come around.

What we need today, Dignan argues, are workplaces that are people positive and complexity conscious. 

On the people side, we need to shake off the old management assumptions that people will only be productive if they are closely monitored and tightly controlled.  If we can believe that people are responsible, good, and intrinsically motivated, we begin to design organizations characterized by trust and autonomy, rather than control and suspicion.

Not only are our workplaces in need of a more human touch, they’re also woefully ill-equipped to handle the rise in complexity that the average organization faces today.  With rapid changes in the external environment that we operate, leaders need systems and processes that allow them to respond with flexibility and agility.

Essentially, Dignan is advocating for more human and adaptive ways of working. 

For him and his team at The Ready, this is the future of work.  Pick up a copy and see if you agree.

4. Abolishing Performance Appraisals

Tom Coens, Mary Jenkins

Annual performance reviews have become ubiquitous in most organizations, but are they helpful? 

In one study, recorded in the Wallstreet Journal, 90% of managers and employees believe their performance management systems are ineffective.  7 out of 10 people admitted to being more confused than enlightened by them.  If you look at research coming out of Gallup, only 14% of employees said their review helped them to improve in their job.  Worse yet, a third of the time, appraisals actually made employee performance worse.  One newspaper headline, cited by Kahneman in Noise, sums it up nicely:

“Study finds that basically every single person hates performance reviews.”

In light of all the research that has come out over the past few decades that drags performance reviews through the mud, the authors argue that we need to seriously consider shelving this practice as a relic of the past. 

There have been endless attempts to try to redeem them and make them better, but Coens argues that they are fundamentally flawed and irredeemable. 

In short, they’re trying to do too much and they’re based on faulty assumptions. 

Coens systematically unpacks all the problematic assumptions that underlie the typical review system (such as our ability to accurately and objectively rate or rank another human being’s performance), leaving you wondering why such a broken system continues to be so common.

If you too have sensed this brokenness, and have sat through your fair share of terrible reviews, this book will help you get free from going through the motions and create a better way forward.

5. Lean Change Management

Jason Little

Leading change in an organization is always a complex experience.  There will be unintended consequences.  Bank on it.  You can become a certified change management guru and memorize all the frameworks, but it still gets messy.

What I appreciate about Little’s entry into this world is that it seems to embrace this reality.  Rather than offering a rigid, linear system, he proposes a continuous cycle that promotes experimentation, learning, and multiple iterations.

While not an entirely new concept, the simplicity of his Lean Change Management cycle makes it exceedingly easy to pick up and use tomorrow.  There are only three stages:

1. Insights. Use whatever exercise is needed (and he recommends several) to capture insights and learnings from your experience.  Make this a discipline.
2. Options. Based on the tensions, hurdles, and opportunities identified in step one, generate as many potential options to address them.
3. Experiments. Prioritize your options list and start by choosing one to experiment with.  Create the hypothesis and parameters and go test it out in a way that’s safe to fail.  Regardless of what happens, you’ll generate a ton of insights and the cycle will repeat.

The beauty of this is that it’s simple enough for anyone to learn and implement.  Individuals and teams don’t need to wait for their manager to guide them through change, they can own the process and get in the habit of continuously improving their own work.

That’s not only good for business but also makes work more fun.

6. Flawless Consulting

Peter Block

I know what you’re thinking.  “Flawless?  Really?” It sounds like a bit of a hollow promise meant to sell more books.  I felt that way at first, too.

Very quickly, though, you realize that Block isn’t the equivalent of the arrogant YouTube advertiser promising to fill your sales pipeline and help you bring in six figures with no experience.  No, Block is the real deal.  With decades of experience, he brings wisdom to the practice of organization development that is both practical and academically grounded.

He recognizes that there are many variables and outcomes to the work of consulting that are not in our control. 

You cannot guarantee flawless results. 

What the consultant can do, though, is learn to flawlessly execute the steps that are under their control. 

The four stages he identifies are  1) Contracting, 2) Discovery and Inquiry, 3) Feedback and the Decision to Act, and 4) Engagement and Implementation. 

If you know the goals and actions required at each stage, it is possible to “consult without error and to do so quite simply.”

My main takeaways include the need for a mutual partnership with clients rather than a one-sided, do-it-all-for-them approach; the value of being authentic and vulnerable instead of always wearing the “expert mask”; and the importance of being clear and thorough in the initial contracting phase.

This is a must-read for not only external consultants but also internal consultants such as HR and other support roles.

7. High Impact Tools for Teams

Strategyzer group

From the same team that brought us tools like the business model and value proposition canvas, comes an extremely practical and superbly designed guide to build alignment and psychological safety in teams.

The tools are so simple and easy to use that you’ll walk away feeling like you didn’t need the book to tell you about them.  But you did.  If you’re like me, you’ll find yourself using their concepts and replicating their tools on whiteboard sessions almost immediately.

The main tool they focus on is the Team Alignment Map (TAM).  Meant to address the confusion and lack of clarity that plagues most teams, this tool walks you through four columns: 1) Joint objectives, 2) Joint commitments, 3) Joint resources, and 4) Joint risks. 

As you populate the canvas, your team gets a clear understanding of what needs to be done, who will be doing it, what they need to be successful, and which hurdles to avoid. 

So simple, you’d think every team was having these conversations on their projects.  But they’re not, and a tool like this can help them start.

Aside from that, they introduce a number of tools meant to build psychological safety on teams, which is critical for performance and innovation.  The one I pull out most often is their Team Contract canvas.  It’s a quick way for teams to have a conversation around which behaviours and attitudes are acceptable on the team and which are not. 

Great insights here for any team leader or facilitator.

8. Marketing Management

Philip Kotler, Kevin Keller

This is my annual textbook read in 2021.  Since completing my grad degree, I committed myself to continue to include textbooks in my reading list from time to time.  There really is no better resource for a comprehensive overview of a given subject.  And when it comes to marketing management, Kotler and Keller are a staple in many MBA programs for a reason.

As you would expect, the authors cover a wide range of topics, including marketing strategy, market research, branding, product strategy, pricing, and sales and communications. Of this, there are many frameworks that I continue to use and reference.

One of these is the Brand Positioning Bullseye.  It moves out from the centre, where you identfy a brand mantra (e.g. Nike’s “Authentic athletic performance”), through points of differentiation and parity, and finishes out the circle with your brand personality and values. 

This is just one example of many useful frameworks in this book. 

Overall, a great resource to have on the shelf for both new and experienced marketers.

9. Leading with Cultural Intelligence

David Livermore

Did you know that Canada has one of the lowest “power distances” of any country in the world?  Neither did I. 

Power distance is just one of a series of differentiating factors that anthropologists use to describe the different cultures that exist on our planet.  This factor, in particular, describes the expected relationship between people and those in positions of authority or respect.  A culture with a high power distance would be very deferential (think: bowing low, using formal titles, and not asking questions above your pay grade).  In contrast, we Canadians will treat our bosses pretty much like our co-workers. 

Neither culture is right or wrong, but being unaware of the difference can lead to serious social faux pas if you’re traveling or doing business internationally.

The ability to understand and navigate the many cultural variables is what Livermore refers to as cultural intelligence.  This is the ability to recognize and adapt to the cultural differences around you.  

While this is certainly helpful for international ventures, it is also exceedingly useful for navigating the cultural differences that exist in our workplaces or neighbourhoods. 

You will walk away from this book with a greater sense of empathy for those you interact with every day.  Today, that seems especially important.

10. Six of Crows

Leigh Bardugo

Every year, I make sure I include at least one fiction book on my list.  A good novel proves beneficial for my mental health (nobody really wants to read a textbook on holidays, right?).

Six of Crows takes place in the same universe (the “Grishaverse”) as the Shadow and Bone series, which has now become a Netflix show.  It’s a combination of fantasy and heist genres and is just a fun, easy read.

Kaz Brekker, the lead protagonist, is an enigmatic character who you’re never quite sure if you should really be cheering for (he’s not a nice guy. Or is he?).  A rising leader in a gang-ridden underworld, his struggle for power and wealth leads him to attempt an impossible theft.  To pull it off, he brings together a team of “grisha” – super-powered humans with various abilities such as controlling water, air, or physical elements, as well as manipulating the human body (for better or worse).

The whole thing comes together in a way that endears you to the characters and leaves you wanting more of the Grishaverse. 

Thankfully, Bardugo does not disappoint, and I plan on picking up a few more of her novels in 2022.