Book Reviews

A book about liberty, competition, and the common good. This review is slightly different to others, in the sense that it’s over a month since I read the book, and I no longer have it with me. It’s a good test of how much really sticks. For this read, only one key idea stuck – probably the idea the author wanted to make sticky! The idea is: In markets where there is intense competition on a specific parameter, the market does not optimise effectively for the group OR for the individual....

This read came up in conjunction with taking a certificate on behavioural economics. It’s essentially a business handbook, a reference of sorts that is designed to quickly guide the reader through a series of 25+ ways in which human decision making is biased, and how that affects how business can be conducted. Since we treated the course material as a direct input source for coming up with new projects for work, it was a totally awesome read....

This is the first books I’ve read that deals so specifically with the role of leadership in what’s increasingly becoming an era of algorithms and ML. Mike Walsh’s value offering in the book is advice on how to be smart, when machines are smarter than you. The book is split into 3 sections, further subdivided into 10 individual principles to work with. Section 1: Change your mind Work backwards from the future Aim for 10x, not 10% Think computationally Embrace uncertainty Section 2: Change your work...

This short review deals with the second edition of The Introverted Leader, 2018. I bought this one in the Foyle’s close to Covent Garden in London during my most recent management/leadership book buying spree. Some time in summer 2019. It seemed to be a worthy skim-book to refresh some thoughts, and it fulfilled that promise. The core of this book is about communication skills. It’s a manual for communicating across a sliding scale of introversion and extroversion....

This epic read on business strategy examines what defines good and bad strategy, what powers good strategy, and what strategic thinking is and how to do it. Not small subjects! The value-per-page ratio is high throughout, as the whole book comes in at just under 300 pages. The book is split into 3 roughly-equal-sized sections. Good and bad strategy Sources of power Thinking like a strategist Exploring the definition of strategy might seem bland at first glance....