A Higher Loyalty

Finished May 21
A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership by James Comey

I wanted to read this book to see what Comey felt behind the role he held, and this book met that expectation. Comey tracks his career journey from its beginnings, and goes into detail on some of the cases or situations that he dealt with. The details increase as we grow closer to the present, specifically regarding the Hillary Clinton email investigation, and Comey's dealings with Trump. Nothing actually surprised me, and I understood Comey's reasons for doing what he did.
Comey knows that nobody is perfect, including himself, and he does talk about a few actions that he is ashamed of, and details the struggles he had to make some decisions, including often asking for input from others or advice from people he trusted.
He outlines his ideas of what a good leader looks like, and what things a leader must keep in mind to remain a good leader. He talks about ethics, and his personal take on that and how it led him to the career he chose. He also talks about his lifelong goal of helping people, of righting wrongs and bringing those who betray others to justice. Through examples, he shows how he tries to give people chances to redeem themselves, to choose a different path, and how some choose it and others don't.
He talks about his wife, and the strong relationship they have, and how they've dealt with the struggles that life has brought them.
I enjoyed the book, and feel I understand the author better as well.

StandOut 2.0

Finished May 29
StandOut 2.0: Assess Your Strengths. Find Your Edge. Win at Work by Marcus Buckingham

The book builds on two of his previous books: First, Break All the Rules and Now, Discover Your Strengths. Here, Buckingham looks at the tools and systems inside organizations that remain stuck in old theories, preventing the now accepted ideas presented in his earlier books from being fully applied. The center for this book is the new tool to identify your strengths. A key to access one free access to the tool online is included in each copy of the book, but if you're sharing a copy, you will need to pay a small fee to use the tool.
Buckingham has analyzed the idea of strengths and boiled it down to 9 strength roles or factors. There are: advisor, connector, creator, equalizer, influencer, pioneer, provider, stimulator, and teacher. The assessment tool shows a chart with your levels for all, but concentrates on your top two factors. The information says that you will get a weekly tip, insights, information on techniques and other ongoing help with your login. So far, even though I did the assessment nearly two weeks ago, I haven't received any weekly tips and logging in only gives me access to my report. It also says that you can customize the report by adding additional information like videos, pictures, articles, and quotes to add to others' understanding of your skills, and that the resulting annotates report can be exported to any social network, although the only options I have at my login are to send the report via email or to download it as a pdf.
It also indicates that there is a check-in tool to capture weekly priorities, track your engagement, and get customized coaching advice, but I haven't seen where to access that.
The is also an option to get a corporate account, and the book says that will allow you to do additional things like create a team dashboard, with performance and survey tools available to team leaders, which sounds interesting.
A couple of important points that are emphasized. The assessment tool is designed to show how you come across to others, not how you see yourself, so your results may surprise you.
One chapter looks at how to use your assessment information to stand out, emphasizing three lessons to build on: your genius (the combination of strengths for you as an individual) is precise; remember who you are (don't get tempted to wander off into other strength challenges); and always sharpen your edge (using activities such as the love it, loathe it exercise). You should be concentrating on what you are doing rather than what is being done to you, and making sure to go back and revisit this at least twice a year.
Buckingham also reminds the reader that innovation is a practice not an idea, which means that it is connected to others and should be thought of as a best practice.
After explaining the factors briefly, the remainder of this book looks at each factor, showing you how to describe the skills identified with that factor, how to make an immediate impact at work, how to take your performance to the next level, and some pitfalls to watch out for. It then looks at how that strength can be leveraged in the areas of leadership, management, client services, and sales. It tells you what natural advantages people with this strength have. It also provides a short section that describes how to best manage someone with your strengths.

The book also includes a technical summary of the design of the assessment tool.

I liked the assessment tool and found my results hit true to home, and thus were meaningful to me. I would like to see how some of the additional features promised in this book become available and can help me and other readers to stay on track. 

Letting Go of Legacy Services

Finished May 2
Letting Go of Legacy Services: Library Case Studies edited by Mary Evangeliste and Katherine Furlong

Libraries are being asked to do more with less these days, and many of us find it difficult to stop offering services that we've been offering for years to free up resources for those new things people want us to provide. The libraries here looked at the concept of planned abandonment, a concept popularized by Peter Drucker, and how it applies to libraries. Also included are several interviews that look at solutions to common pressure points.
This book contains a number of case studies of libraries who have taken a good hard look at either those things "we've always done" or things "we've always done that way" and determined if they are still worth doing or if they should be done differently. Each case study is wrapped up with a summary by the editors called Bookend.
Case studies included here are:
* a college library that changed the way they provide periodicals to their patrons.
* a county library system that took a good look at their web-based services, overhauled their website and improved community outreach.
* a university library that eliminated their reserve services.
* a university library that redefined reference service.
* a university library that used a series of crisis situations over six years to redefine mission critical services.
* a university library that used ethnographic research techniques to help them redefine library spaces to better meet student needs, reexamine resource delivery, checkout service, fines, ILL, and equipment lending.
* a university library who used collaborative strategic planning to facilitate the shift towards electronic resources.
* a public library who responded to a natural disaster and a financial crisis to look for efficiency opportunities in technical services, acquisitions, and cataloging.
* a university library used surveys and space analysis to create more useful spaces for their patrons

Interviews include:
* talking with David Consiglio about data driven decision making in a library context
* talking with Valerie Diggs about communication strategies for successful change

The conclusion to this book provides a lot of reflection on change in the library community. One sentence in particular spoke to me: "Among the many things we need to abandon is the nostalgia that unfortunately gives us an inaccurate perception of the past and hinders discussions of the present, and the future of libraries." Insights here range from the urgency of library as space for our communities to come together in a variety of ways, you can never had enough communication, and that fostering leadership and diversity is a necessity.

Culture Without Accountability

Finished February 3
Culture Without Accountability by Julie Miller and Brian Bedford

This book looks at accountability starting with a well-written definition of accountability that applies to both business and personal interactions. The authors give real-life examples of what accountability done well looks like, and what the lack of accountability can lead to.
They show the connection between accountability and culture, and outline the 4 necessary elements to create a culture with true accountability.
As they clearly show, it is even more likely in today's world of constant monitoring and instant communication that denials of the truth will come out eventually. But while this is a good reason to follow the course to accountability, it isn't the only one. The benefits of a culture of accountability on an organization are shown, and the personal reasons why accountability would be a goal are laid out.
All in all, a good, easy-to-understand guide to gaining accountability for yourself and your organization are here. The hard part is doing it, at least at first. But it becomes more and more natural as it becomes a true part of your character and your organization's culture.
The cover acronym WTF stands for What's The Fix, and this acronym is used to stand for a variety of phrases in this book. While it may draw your attention, I really found it the one jarring element of the book, tasteless and unnecessary.

Choosing Change

Finished September 19
Choosing Change: How Leaders and Organizations Drive Results One Person at a Time by Walter McFarland and Susan Goldsworthy

This book has two parts. Part I is The Change Focused Leader and Part II is The Change Focused Organization. Both have the base relationship of the 5 Ds: Disruption, Desire, Discipline, Determination, and Development.
For the individual, Disruption is the event or experience that triggers a conscious choice to change.
For the organization the Disruption is more threatening and the natural reaction can be more of a entrenchment as the disruption is usually a revolutionary change that has come about due to external forces.
The Desire is what the person or organization wants to achieve, how much it believes in the possibility, and how serious it is about making the change happen.
Discipline is applying those small, consistent and frequent steps that are required to build the momentum that delivers sustainable change. Discipline is necessary to manage the many demands and still keep the pressure on the process of change.
Determination is having the resilience to focus on and deliver change, even when faced with setbacks.
Lastly, Development covers the continuous improvement, reexamination, and learning that is needed.
There were many things that were aha moments for me here, and I found this book really useful in giving clarity to the process of change. Here are some of my ahas on the individual side:
* "We are not afraid of the unknown, because, how can we be afraid of something we have no idea about? Instead, we are afraid of letting go of the known."
* the 5 attributes of the learning person: self-knowledge, self-acceptance, self-respect, autonomy, and seeking of both solitude and company.
* the opposite of play is depression
Here are some of the ahas on the organizational side:
* make organizational change a formal part of organizational strategy, learning is correlated with performance
* integrate change into the business so that change becomes a routine part of doing business
* develop people continuously, ensuring organization-wide learning as well
* model collaboration in everything
* develop a change leadership competency and integrate it into the overall leadership model
* take time to reflect: you learn more from reflecting on your experiences than you do from the actual experiences themselves
This book gives the reader much to think about and a guide to how to make change a part of your life and a part of your organization.

Nine Minutes on Monday

Finished May 5
Nine Minutes on Monday: the quick and easy way to go from manager to leader by James Robbins

This book lays out an interesting method to increase your leadership skills. Because leadership is, in essence, focused on people, so is this book. It lays out a system that you look at weekly, Robbins suggests Monday morning. Each of your nine minutes is focused on one of nine aspects of how you relate to your direct reports. Robbins warns against trying to do too much too soon, an easy trap to fall into when you go to a good conference or workshop or read an inspiring book like this one. While he lays out nine areas, each with a question to ask yourself once a week, he encourages the reader to start with the basic four and work on those before adding more. He also shows through a couple of case studies how each question doesn't have to be addressed every week, but should respond to your individual circumstances. As the subtitle suggests, the process is easy and doesn't take a lot of time. He also addresses those with staff working remotely. Added to the book is a website with follow-up tools and resources that will assist at putting this plan into action.
I finished this Sunday, perfect timing to get me started for Monday morning.

Help the Helper

Finished April 21
Help the Helper: building a culture of extreme teamwork by Kevin Pritchard and John Eliot

The authors of this book are Kevin Pritchard, the GM for the Indian Pacers, who has managed other basketball teams and played for five NBA teams, and John Eliot, a university professor and consultant to pro atheletes and athletic coaches, as well as a consultant to a variety of businesses and medical centers. Because of their background a lot of the experiences here, and the examples illustrating those experiences are from the sports world, specifically the basketball world. As I am not a watcher of sports in general or basketball in particular, I found some of this hard to follow.
Despite that, this book was very interesting in how it talked about teamwork. Every chapter did have at least one business example as well, as followup instructions on implementation within the reader's circumstances.
The first chapter explains the Help the Helper philosophy, the second is about creating at atmosphere of unselfishness within your team, the third is about hiring for what is best for the team rather than individual excellence, the fourth about moving away from the carrot and stick method of motivation to a motivation based on spirit, the fifth about managing the energy of the team as opposed to the people individually, the sixth about avoiding distracting communication, the seventh about real toughness involving resiliency and authenticity, the eighth about a 3D approach to measuring: observing, listening, and statistics, not relying on numbers as the driver, and finally, the ninth about being an unleader, a leader who carries the load so the team can do what they are out there to do, who looks for ways to make the team's work the team's work and not a task assigned by the leader.
I liked the idea of looking to the sources of success for your team, finding out what drives the team, and then finding team members who are good at those things, and then working to develop and enhance those skills in all team members. Lots of great ideas here to make teams work as real teams not just a bunch of people who work in the same place.

Deep Leadership

Finished March 3
Deep Leadership: essential insights from high-risk environments by Dr. Joe MacInnis

I'm always interested in ways to improve my leadership skills, and that is what this book is all about. MacInnis is a medical doctor and scientist who has specialized in undersea situations. He has done numerous dives, been in deep water submarines and worked in arctic sea exploration. He has spent time writing policy, working with government and doing research, working with a variety of specialists including astronauts. He speaks on leadership and has been awarded the Order of Canada.
This book takes his years of research into leadership and draws it all together. While the experiences he draws from involve high-risk situations, the qualities he notes can be applied to many leadership circumstances.
The traits he believes are important to good leadership are given in short chapters, with an example (or more) in action, and reflections on that quality. They are: cool competence; powerful presentations; physical robustness; hot-zone humour; mental resilience; strategic imagination; high-empathy communication; blood trust; fierce ingenuity; team genius; resolute courage; and warrior's honour. As he says, this isn't a definitive list, it's just his list, and he encourages the reader to create their own. One comment in his summary stood out for me though, "I'm not sure that leadership is driven primarily by intelligence. I believe it's driven mostly by empathy and enthusiasm. Empathy for the team, the task, and the technology, and a sustained enthusiasm for whatever it takes to get the job done."
As he talks about working towards better leadership skills, he emphasizes the following: making the commitment [to improving skills]; commanding the language [of good writing]; building a library [of leadership insights]; finding mentors [throughout your career]; seeking opportunities [for leadership]; and transforming your character [through learning and evolution].
Leadership is not easy to define, and has many different forms, but it is never something you finish achieving. It is always a work in progress.
This book will definitely become part of my leadership library.

Poetry in the business world

Finished March 7
Leading from within: poetry that sustains the courage to lead edited by Sam M. Intrator and Megan Scribner
Poetry has always played a role in my life: inspiring, consoling, and offering broader understanding. This was something I got from both my parents, who also consider poetry a part of their lives. This book takes a variety of leaders: business, non-profit, education, and government and gives their voices to the poems that inspire them. Each of the 93 poems given here is introduced by a leader, who tells the reader the context in which the poem either first came to him/her, or in which they use it. The leaders show an aspect of themselves that one doesn't always see and encourage the use of poetry, both publicly and privately, to give strength and purpose to all of us. I found not only the poetry interesting but also the stories behind the choices.