The Client Book Club
This week, Forrester’s Board of Clients was in Cambridge. This amazing group advises the company on strategy, new products, and improving our service. Over the years, they have had a big influence on how we work and where we are going — this year, the discussion was particularly valuable.
I always host a dinner with the Board, and our tradition over dessert is to trade book ideas. I was quite intrigued with the first entry: The Advantage. The book recommends that every manager should have a 15-minute standup with his/her reports every day. The client who recommended the book is doing just that — and he reports that it’s making a big difference in his team’s performance.
Here’s the book list from this year:
- The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business by Patrick M. Lencioni
- The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life by David Brooks
- The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
- The Future of the Professions: How Technology Will Transform the Work of Human Experts by Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind
- Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization by Dave Logan
- Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations by Nicole Forsgren, PhD, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim
- Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
- Brag!: The Art of Tooting Your Own Horn without Blowing It by Peggy Klaus
- Jerusalem: The Biography by Simon Sebag Montefiore
- Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice by Bill Browder
- Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win by Jocko Willink
- Beneath a Scarlet Sky: A Novel by Mark Sullivan
- Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10 by Marcus Luttrell
- Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. by Ron Chernow
- The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk! by Al Ries
- The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You by John C. Maxwell
- How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog by Chad Orzel
- His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass/The Subtle Knife/The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
- Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover
- Panic Attack: Young Radicals in the Age of Trump by Robby Soave