What have I been reading in 2018

As the year draws to a close I thought I'd post a summary of the books I've read in 2018.   It's quite a list ranging from short and amusing to the much slower going detailed read( yes we're looking at you Mcauley, Duberley & Johnson).  A mix of DBA study related texts, general business, faith, couple of novels, and a few on my new found interest in running.

Here they are together ( minus a few that were borrowed from libraries during the year)

.. and here's the full list

1. Why Should Anyone Work Here by Bob Coffee and Gareth Jones - discussion of 6 key attributes that organisations should have if they want to attract and retain the best people.
2. Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed - a call to rethink our attitude towards failure and see it as a path to learning. Richly illustrated with examples from research and practice.
3. Ethics by Peter Cave - Great introduction to the topic and explanations of different perspectives
4. The Social Construction of Reality by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann - not an easy read….book argues that “reality is socially constructed and that the sociology of knowledge must analyze the processes in which this occurs."
5. The Logic of Life by Tim Harford - applying his economist's eye and searching for the underlying rational behaviour in life
6. Energise You by Oliver Gray - short guide to achieving health, energy and happiness.
7. Too Big to Fail: Inside the battle to save Wall Street by Andrew Ross Sorkin - amazingly detailed story of the twists and turns of the 2008 financial crisis. I was struck by just how interlinked the key people were, having worked together at different stages of their careers.   
8. 17 Equations that Changed the World by Ian Stewart - from Pythagoras and the square root of minus 1 through to chaos theory and Black-Scholes this book looks at a set of key equations and their impact.
9. Talk Lean by Alan Palmer - a book about effective communication based on ‘The Interactifs Discipline'
10. Five Go Gluten Free by Bruno Vincent - amusing digression from the more serious books !
11. The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge - systems thinking and the learning organisation
12. Running Well by Sam Murphy and Sarah Connors - great introductory book to world of running including technique, exercises and injury advice
13. Secret Believers by Brother Andrew - presented as a novel but rooted in true stories of christians in Islamic states.
14. A Field Guide to Lies and Statistics by Daniel Levitin - excellent book whose ideas and examples are increasingly important as more and more data is presented to us.
15. Outside Insight by Jorn Lyseggen - conventional decision making in organisations focusses on internal data.  This book argues the case for also looking at external data and what insights it can give you into your customers and competitors.
16. Contemporary Philosophy of Social Science by Brian Fay - Each chapter answers a question and through this the book tackles issue of how we exist independently or in conjunction with others including cultural and social differences.
17. The Ethics Toolkit by Julian Baggini and Peter Fosl -This is a great book that provides short summaries and examples of ethical concepts and approaches.
18. The Rooster Bar by John Grisham - holiday read, law students facing large debts turn to hustling accident victims
19. Revelation Road by Nick Page - amusing tale of his journey through the remains of the 7 churches of Revelation
20. Inside the Banking Crisis by Hugh Pym - British perspective on the banking crisis
21. Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman - classic text on EQ and its importance
22. The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb - really engaging read on the impact of the highly improbable and the two worlds of mediocristan and extremistan.  You'll see I was inspired to read another of his books following this one.
23. The 2020 Workplace by Jeanne Meister and Katie Willyerd - being close to 2020 it is interesting to see how much of what they forecast in the book (published 2010) would already be considered “old hat”.
24. Good Value by Stephen Green - a book of personal reflections and thoughts.  Interesting to think about capturing your own thoughts and beliefs in a simple list. 
25. Survival of the Savvy by Rick Brandon and Marty Seldman - really practical advice and guidance on high integrity political tactics in an organisational context
26. Predictive Analytics by Eric Siegel- Great overview and intro to the topic of predictive analytics with masses of examples of how they are being used across many diverse contexts. 
27. The Rules of Success by Karsten Drath - reviewed as part of the Chartered Management Institute’s Book of the year award, it provides some guidance on how to overcome setbacks.
28. Research Truth Authority by Gary Rolfe - written specifically in the context of nursing but a good overview of different research philosophies. 
29. Great Revivals by Colin Whittaker - exploring examples of church revivals from across the globe and back as far as 1734. 
30. Janesville, an American Story by Amy Goldstein - Detailed account of the human stories behind the closure of a GM plant, the community response and broader impact of the change.  A lot of suffering and huge impacts to lives with some people finding new purpose and role.  
31. Rationality & Power by Bent Flybjerg - fascinating insights into the story of the Aalborg project
32. Educating for Responsible Management edited by Roz Sunley and Jennifer Leigh - collection of contributions looking at how the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) can be embedded into business schools' approach to teaching.
33. The Collaboratory edited by Katrin Muff - collection of contributions on setting up and running collaboratories in various contexts to create spaces for collaborative working
34. Algorithms to live by : The computer science of human decision by Brian Christian & Tom Griffiths - seeing how algorithms are relevant to the decisions and challenges we face in normal life
35. Capitalism 4.0 by Anatole Kaletsky - capitalism won’t be replaced, so long as it evolves
36. The State of Africa by Martin Meredith - astonishingly deep and broad review of the history of Africa since independence, sometimes encouraging but often sad and disheartening.
37. First find your Hilltop by Roy Calvert, Brian Durkin, Eugenio Grandi & Kevin Martin - covers the 7P model of drivers that we all have in differing degrees
38. Nice Work by David Lodge - the coming together of the worlds of academia and gritty industry
39. Coaching for Performance by Sir John Whitmore - new edition of the authoritative text on coaching with the GROW model
40. Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami - intriguing story of death and love
41. How women rise by Marshall Goldsmith and Sally Helgesen - identifying 12 habits that are disproportionately likely to be factors that affect women as they progress their career.
42. Do Greater Things by Robby Dawkins - inspiring stories of salvation and healing 
43. Quiet. The power of Introverts in a world that can’t stop talking by Susan Cain - well considered and researched book exploring differences between us and how some of our assumptions may be gross simplifications and misleading
44. Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey - one of the seminal texts underpinning some approaches to coaching.  Unsurprisingly, a strong tennis focus, but clear insights with much wider applicability.
45. Running up that Hill by Vassos Alexander - engaging story of the author’s participating in a range of ultra running challenges including the Spartathlon
46. Organisation Theory: Challenges and Perspectives by John McAuley, Joanne Duberley & Phil Johnson - Comprehensive discussion of multitude of approaches to organisation theory - who knew there were so many different approaches out there !
47. The Rise of the Robots by Martin Ford - extensive consideration of the impact that rapid advances in technology could have on our lives and society
48. Succession by Marshall Goldsmith - looking at the challenge of preparing for CEO succession and the role of coaching.
49. Journeys of Hope II by Christians Against Poverty - inspiring stories of how the CAP organisation is transforming lives of people facing seemingly impossible debts
50. Organization Theory. Selected Readings edited by DS Pugh - Seminal writing on the topic.  Oldest being 1912 paper by FW Taylor on Scientific Management.
51. God on Mute by Pete Greig - tackling the vexing question of unanswered prayer
52. Fooled by Numbers by Nassim Nicholas Taleb - engaging exploration of probability and why we are so bad at understanding it
53. Grateful Leadership by Judith Umlas - highlighting the impact and arguing the case for leaders to focus on acknowledgement instead of just recognition.
54. 401 by Ben Smith - The extraordinary story of Ben’s life and his 401 marathons in 401 days challenge, changing lives and raising money to combat bullying.

What I've been reading - May 2016

Got through a few more books this month - combination of complete books read at home and others where I have read portions of them in the library.

Starting with the ones I read completely...

Hard Facts, Dangerous Half Truths, and Total Nonsense - Pfeffer and Sutton

Terrific book which makes the argument for Evidence Based management.  Often times we operate based on false assumptions and beliefs about what works - this could be from perceived wisdom or anecdote.   Authors argue for basing decisions in fact, inspired by evidence-based medicine.  They include a range of areas of management and consider how conventional thinking may not be helping.

Well worth a read but be ready to have your assumptions challenged.

Creating a Strategic Human Resources Organization: An Assessment of Trends and New Directions by Edward Lawler and Susan Mohrman

This book is a report on the Center for Effective Organisation's thirs study of the HR function in large corporations.   It dates from 2001 so not current but interesting to see what trends they were starting to see then.

They focus in particular on whether the HR function was changing to become more of a strategic business partner in the organization and the extent to which is was becoming a "value-added contributor to organiizational performance".

The book introduces the study and provides some high level observations before diving into the detail of analysis of the responses they got to the study.  Having performed similar surveys previously they can do some interesting comparisons and trend identification.

Transformative HR by Boudreaux and Jesuthasan

The book looks at how an evidence based approach to change can be taken in HR.  They look at examples where the seemingly obvious answer is not the best one as it is based on partial information and a lack of understanding of context.

They propose that there are 5 principles of Evidence based change.

1. Logic-driven analytics - understanding that one set of measures does not apply universally.  
2. Segmentation - Arising from the logic driven analytics we may find that one group of employees is very different from another.  This then leads to the principle of segmentations.  “HR must understand where segmentation is vital to the organisation and where it is less necessary.”  However need also to avoid over segmentation.
3. Risk Leverage - interesting dimension this one as it focusses on not simply reducing the risk but rather knowing when to take the risk and when not.  If we focus just on the risk of someone leaving the organisation then we may decide not to train them or grow their skills as this could lead to them leaving.   That may be the right approach but we need to think also about the risk that if they are not trained we loose out on the possibility to move them to other roles in our own organisation.
4. Integration and synergy - rather than treating parts of the organisation as closed systems we will want to look at broader cross organisational concerns as well.  
5. Optimisation - this is around making the right investments in the right places to maximise our return.  Hiring the best qualified person for the job may make sense in some roles where we require instant high performance but in others areas there may be more scope for a different approach that brings people in and then grows them in the role.

They also introduce the concept of ROIP - return on improved performance.   This starts by thinking about what the impact would be if the performance of employees in a particular group was improved.  This is a different approach to thinking about who the most important people are in the organisation or indeed those who deliver the greatest value - what we are looking for here is the incremental return potential of improved performance that we could invest in generating.

... and now the ones in the library ( 2 online in the Bodleian and 3 in the Sainsbury Library at the Oxford Business School ) ....

Online first

Fitz-Enz, Jac THE ROI of human capital : measuring the economic value of employee performance - 2000

This author has been writing on measurement in HR for a long time - indeed he is credited as being the first to argue that HR should be measuring the impact it has on the overall business.

Very practical book with lots of details on different metrics that can be used.  Including range of models of human capital eg Human Economic Value Added,  human capital revenue factor,  human capital cost factor etc -  all formulaic metrics based on finance data and HR measures such as absenteeism rates, salary, benefits etc.

He notes that "Measurement of the effectiveness of human capital has been conspicuous by its absence in corporate financial reports.  Only with the advent of the balanced scorecard has there been any attention paid to this most important of resources.  the single typical measure, revenue per employee, is simplistic and out of date. " (p58)

Predictive analytics for human resources 2014 Fitz-Enz & Mattox

As noted above Fitz-Enz has written a lot in this topic area and this book builds on that previous writing but moves beyond descriptive analytics, that tell us about what has happened in the past, to predictive analytics which show us clues of likely future outcomes.  Suggests the Lorenz waterwheel as a metaphor for employees joining a company, moving around inside and then exiting at some point.  Recommendation of James Gleick's book Chaos... watch out for that in a future blog post.

... and finally 3 other books I reviewed in their physical form...

Human Capital Analytics - Pease, Byerly & Fitz-enz

The book focusses on predictive analytics which will not only measure impact but also help to optimize and prescribe future investments.  They suggest that " The human resources industry is just beginning to grasp the value of understanding its human capital and evolving from a shepherd's role to one that can bring change and add significant strategic value."  (p xi)

Mentions how HR has moved from monitoring transactions ( what did it cost to hire someone, train them, pay them etc) to performance monitoring ( how might a change in hiring process affect employee performance) and then to how do we compare with others.

Chapters focus on 

• alignment - positioning human resources organisation as a strategic partner in support of the business.  Need to get broad range of stakeholders on board and also how you need to agree on the measures of success.
• the measurement plan - map out the investments ( what are we going to do, training event, recognition program etc), what are the leading indicators that will suggest we are on track ( these are non financial measure - could be employee engagement for example), what are the business results ( KPIs .. these are tied to financial value.) , strategic goals ( desired end results of our initiative/set of initiatives... likely to be expressed in terms of improvements in revenue or costs )
• data - types of data, linking datasets together to get broader view,  understanding which data you can use will be important part of discussion early on in the project.  Beware issues of people wanting to prove an assertion that they believe to be true - an analysis project that sets out to prove value of some initiative rather than seeking to understand what value it is bringing.  
• descriptive statistics - these are the start point and ensure we are all talking the same language.  Watch out for commonly help views that are actually no longer correct.
• causation - just because things are correlated doesn't mean causal link - has great example of number of firefighters called to attend a fire and the amount of damage done.
• sharing the story - how to communicate what you have found.  

They conclude "We are at a moment in time where theories about human capital, the amount of data available, and the computing power necessary to deal with the data are radically changing how business is done." (p155)

The New HR Analytics  Jac Fitz-Enz

Another book from this author - I told you he wrote a lot on this topic !

Interesting structure to the book with discussion of each topic area by the author followed by a series of essays from other contributors.

The book is about predictive management  or what they term HCM:21 which is the outcome of an 18 month study called the Predictive Initiative.  4 phase process from scanning the marketplace through to an integrated measurement system.  in middle we have addressing workforce and succession planning and optimizing / synchronising the delivery of HR services.

Introduces a five steps approach to analytics

1- recording our work ( ie hiring paying, training, supporting, and retraining) - learnign through measurement about how efficient our processes are 

2 - relating to our orgaization's goals (ie quality, innovation, productivity , service) basically the fundamental goals fothe organization

3 - Comparing our results selves to others ( ie benchmarking) needs knoweldge of the details of who we are comparing to and what we are looking at but can help us to develop

4- understanding past behaviour and outcomes ( ie descriptive analytics )   looking for and describingg relationships that we find in the data but without ascribing meaning to any patterns.

5 - predicting future likelihoods ( ie prescriptive analytics) 

Casccio & Boudreau Investing in People 2nd edition 2015

This book has detailed chapters looking at financial impacts of key areas of HR.  Lots of worked examples and data from companies in a range of industries.   Would probably make a good practical guide if you were starting out to do analysis of your own organisation in one of these areas.

They note that "the current state of the art in HR management is heavily dominated by efficiency measures" and suggest that their book will help instead to look at effectiveness and impact.(p7)

What I've been reading - March / April 2016

A slower couple of months on the reading front so combined into one ...

Predictably irrational by Dan Ariely

Really enjoyed this book.  As the cover puts it …. “In a series of illuminating and groundbreaking experiments, behavioural economist Dan Airely demonstrates how expectations, emotions, social norms and other invisible, seemingly illogical forces skew our reasoning abilities.   Not only do we make astonishingly simple mistakes every day,,but we make the same types of mistakes.  We consistently overpay, underestimate and procrastinate.  We fail to understand the profound effects of our emotions on what we want, and we overvalue what we already own.  Yet these misguided behaviours are neither random nor senseless.  They’re systematic and predictable."

Not going to argue with that - fascinating read,

The book is full of examples of intriguing experiments that have been run.  In one case undergraduate students were recruited to take part in an experiment.  In the first part they were to solve some anagrams.  When the'd done this they were told that the experiment had a second part and that they needed to go down the corridor to another room to complete it.  What was actually being studied though was simply how long it took them to walk down the corridor to the second room.  Some of the participants were given words to unscramble that could be associated with “elderly” - US experiment so examples included Florida, bingo, ancient etc.  The people primed with the elderly words had a considerably slower walking speed to the next room than the control group that was not primed in this way!

In another example they explore how satisfaction with your food in a restaurant can be best assured by being the first person to order!  ( That way your order is not influenced in any way by what people before you have said).

Big Data by Bernard Marr

 

The world is getting smarter and big data is at the core, we increasingly leave a digital trail and this can be analysed by increasingly smart analytic software.  “Big Data” is often talked about and the huge volumes of information that is being gathered.  Arguably though the value is not in the volume but rather in the things that can now be done with that data.

The book provides a SMART framework for Big Data

• Start with strategy - get clear on what you want to achieve, and what questions you want to answer
• Measure metrics and data - understand different sorts of data ( structured vs unstructured, internal vs external etc), think though what sources of data you need to answer your questions
• Apply Analytics - use the appropriate analytic tools to process the data
• Report your results - think through how the data will be visualised, lots of new ways being developed that can be used to enable people to see the data.
• Transform your business and decision making - gain fresh insights into your customers, internal processes, people.

The author has also written “Big Data in practice” - a collection of 45 case studies showing how companies are applying Big Data and analytics to their businesses.   Given my focus on the application to HR it was interesting to note that none of his 45 case studies are from that area.  

The HR Scorecard Linking People, Strategy, and Performance by Becker, Hustlid and Ulrich

The book focuses on how HR professionals can take a more strategic view of HR and its contribution to the success of the organisation.  Issues of alignment and mapping how HR contributes to the business strategy are covered.  Important to note that as HR Scorecard is developed this is not a one off activity but rather something that will need to constantly evolve as the needs of ht business change.  

They draw a distinction between Lagging and leading indicators.  Lagging indicators reflect what has happened in the past, e.g. financial indicators.  Leading indicators, unsurprisingly, are things that you can measure now which are predictors of future outcomes, examples might include current customer satisfaction as indicator of future sales.   Using lagging indicators is easier but they compare it to trying to drive a car by looking in the rear view mirror.

Another important point they make is the issue of using available data rather than relevant data to drive decisions.  Will be tempting to use the data that we are already collecting to base decisions on but this may not be the data that you need.  Using convenient data rather than relevant data to drive your decisions may not be a formula for success.

What I've been reading - February 2016

OK so this is a bit after the fact but here are some thoughts on books I read in February

Corporate Responsibility by Michael Blowfield and Alan Murray second edition 

This is a text book that sets out to provide an introduction to the "key ideas and practices in the field" of corporate responsibility.  Split into 3 sections it starts by covering what corporate responsibility is and its origins.  Next, it turns to the question of managing and implementing corporate responsibility before concluding with a section on the impact it has, some critiques and some thoughts on the future.  Throughout it is an easy read with lots of examples and case studies to illustrate the points being made.

Doing a Literature Search by Chris Hart 

Comprehensive but very dated feel to the book.   Covers all sorts of data sources and where to look for a literature search but originally written in 2001 and a lot has changed since then.  For someone familiar with libraries and working with information sources there in unlikely to be much to gain from reading this book.

Learn to Write Badly, How to Succeed in the Social Sciences by Michael Billig

Some very interesting ideas in this book that looks at the style of academic writing in the social sciences.  He asks, why is the style used by social scientists routinely poor and why does it continue to get worse.   Makes some points about why academic language has evolved as it is and draws various comparisons between natural sciences and social sciences.  For me the second half of the book was less engaging as it became much more specific and less general.

In contrast to today's highly specialised language, he talks (on p15) how writers in the past, such as Adam Smith, wrote in a way that their work could be read by people from different disciplines.  Their writing was rooted in the use of non-technical words which enabled easier understanding.  As he puts it they were "writing in small words for big circles" versus today where "The words have become longer and the circles, in which they circulate, have become smaller."

In talking about league tables and how universities emphasise their research capability he picks the University of Winchester as an example and discusses at some length what their website says about the university.  Guess he had to pick somewhere but still a surprise to see Winchester featuring as the only university whose website he comments on.

When Prophecy Fails by Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken and Stanley Schachter

The first of 2 books this month where the author(s) reflects on experience of having been part of a group - in both cases, especially the first one, some real challenges around how the presence of the observer may affect the group being observed.

The experimental psychologist Leon Festinger had been working on a new theory of cognitive dissonance and how this would affect human behaviour.   In essence this says that when we have 2 mutually incompatible things in our head then we need to work out some way to reconcile them.     For example if I know that exercise is good for me and I also know that I don't exercise how do I reconcile these things?  I could start doing more exercise or I can construct a rationale to explain it away... I would do more exercise but at the moment I'm very busy at work so I can't but as soon as that is under control then of course I will do some more exercise.... that sort of thing.

This book tells how they were able to join a cult which believes that the world is set to end in the coming months.  How would the members of the cult feel when the predicted end of the world didn't occur and they were not picked up by a spacecraft as had been foretold?  

The answer is surprising at first but consistent with the theory.   When they are not picked up and the world does not end, what is beautifully labeled as the "disconfirmation event", the cult grows significantly in its efforts to recruit new members and starts proselytising in a way that they did not previously.

An easy read ( certainly compared with the books above !) and a well told and engaging story alongside the theory.  Given the small size of the cult the researchers did form quite a significant part of the group which certainly did make me wonder about their influence on the group.   This however is something that is addressed by the authors and creatively dealt with - including the time when one of them was asked to lead a session.   No way to back out of it and not wanting to preach to the group ( and hence potentially influence their thinking ) the researcher, in a stroke of genius, leads the group in silent meditation.

Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh

Sociology student goes out into “the projects” and gets involved with the local gang - the Black Kings.  Befriends the gang leader JT and gains insight into the workings of the gang including different perspectives from people inside and outside the gang.   

Fascinating insight into how things work and the similarity of the challenges that leaders face, motivation, discipline etc - all be it in a different context and with very different mechanisms for implementation.

Also interesting to see challenges of observing from within the system that you are studying.   Presence there influences the situation around you so you can never observe detached from the system.