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.

A year of Parkrunning

Today is my Parkrun Birthday so I thought I'd look back over the last year.

September 9th 2017 saw me complete my first parkrun - Winchester Parkrun #227 where completed my 5km with a mixture of walking and running, posting a time of 40:12 as the 309th person to finish from a total of 318 participants.

Somewhat to my surprise I discovered I liked it and returned, steadily reducing the amount of walking and seeing my times get faster as the weeks went by.  In the last year I have done a further 46 Parkruns to leave me just 3 short of qualifying for my 50 t-shirt 😄.

I've run in the sun, rain, wind, snow and plenty of mud over the winter - always with a supportive and friendly group of people.

I was there for the 250th Winchester event and, by finishing behind someone photogenic, made it to the front page of the Hampshire Chronicle ( all be it blurred in the background).







Most of my runs (38) have been at Winchester but I have also visited the following park runs..

• Southampton - amazing to be part of a group of over 800 participants
• Cardiff - conveniently placed near drop off point for a university interview
• Queen Elizabeth - beautiful setting in the forest if a tad hilly 
• Eastleigh - memorable for being the only one with a water jump!
• Gorleston Cliffs - not as hilly as the name might imply to a non Norfolk resident
• Shelton Mallet - memorable for youngest run director
• Basingstoke - another big event and Tennis Court Hill 
• Durham - great finish by river with Cathedral in background also furthest walk from finish back to the car

I've posted 15 Personal Best times and have a current PB of 27:40 - with a goal of getting below 25 next spring.

Along the way I have also achieved my "Groundhog day" badge by completing the same course in 2 consecutive weeks in exactly the same time ( 32:10 at Winchester on 17/3/18 and 24/3/18 ).

The seconds in my finish times have included 36 of the possible 60 different readings, getting the remaining ones to complete the set will get increasingly hard.

(Thanks are due to RunningChallenges and their browser extension for some of the stats quoted above)

More significantly, I've also discovered the joys of running more generally and will soon be completing my first 10k race and in October the Great South Run.

I wonder what the next 12 months will bring?

Adding Parkruns C and D to the list

Over the last few weeks I've had the chance to add 2 more letters to my growing collection of parkruns I have completed.

Given that we were taking our daughter to an interview day at Cardiff Metropolitan that meant we were at the campus for 8:30am on a Saturday it would have been rude not to have taken the opportunity to do the Cardiff Parkrun a few hundred meters down the road.   A popular event with well over 700 people taking part made for a crowded start line though the field rapidly spread out along a lovely course beside the river.

Last Saturday a visit back to Durham offered the opportunity of a morning visit to the University Sports Centre at Maiden Castle for their parkrun.  I remember visiting the sports centre to play squash   but that was while I was at school so fair to say it was a considerable number of years ago.   Another lovely riverside course, though recently changed and hence not quite as described on the web site.   The finish line is some distance from the start and the route back is not 100% obvious.  Given that you don't get any marshals after the finish line I recommend you find someone who looks like they know where they are going and follow them - or do what we did and ask someone when you find yourself at the boat club.

With C and D added to the list I'm now up to 7 letters in my parkrun alphabet.    Will be back in Winchester for a few weeks now though I think aiming to cross that 30 minute barrier.  

Parkrun tourism

Waterlogged fields at Winchester have meant recent parkruns there have been cancelled.  I've taken the opportunity to visit a few of the local alternatives.

This morning I ventured over to Basingstoke parkrun in the War Memorial Park and joined 570 others.  Almost entirely on paths around the edge of the park there were no problems with waterlogged fields.   Only stretch on grass was the walk from the briefing to the start.

First timer briefing 

Finish line

On New Year's day I headed down into Southampton to be part of the huge event they have there on the Common.  Mainly on tarmac paths round the park, squelchiest part was around the finish, collecting my position token and getting barcodes scanned.  Notable for being the first park run where I've finished before 200 other participants....mind you it was also the first time I've had over 680 finish in front of me !

after the finish

My first exploration of other Hampshire parkruns was on 30th December when I visited Eastleigh and their decidedly muddy course.   Pretty much all on grass and the only one so far when the welcome briefing included mention of a water jump !  Good fun though and a chance to try out a new pair of trail shoes designed for just that sort of terrain, and happy to report they worked very well.

Before....

...after

Finally for this post, and not due to a cancellation in Winchester this time but rather due to being in Great Yarmouth staying with friends for the weekend, my first piece of parkrun tourism was a visit to Gorleston Cliffs back on 18th November.  The course description mentions how you have to "climb the cliffs" on one of the circuits but don't be put off by that .... these are Norfolk cliffs.  Terrific location for a parkrun, great to be alongside the sea.

Gorleston

I saw mention recently of someone who'd completed the A-Z parkrun challenge which I'm assuming is to complete at least one parkrun starting with each letter of the alphabet.   With my recent tourism I'm now up to grand total of 5 ( B, E, G, S, & W).

From oxymoron to 32:21 on a frosty Saturday morning

On 9th September I tried my first Parkrun.  As part of celebrating my 51st year I was looking for new things to try and had seen various friends referring to Parkruns on social media.  So, I turned up at 9am at Winchester's North Walls Recreation ground and joined the first timers' briefing.   After that we had the welcome and notices from the event's run director and then we were off.   I made my way round the course, mainly at a brisk walk, and posted a time of 40:12.   I don't recall any occasion over the preceding 50 years when I've taken part in a timed event like this, and indeed was firmly in the camp that "fun run" definitely belonged on the list of oxymorons.

Well....that seems to have changed.  Here we are just over 3 months later and I've completed my 10th Parkrun.  Having started walking most of the course on that first go, things have gradually changed to the point where I can now complete the full distance without resorting to walking pace.  Time has come down steadily as well and last 3 times have been sub 33 mins.

I've been really taken by the friendly atmosphere of the Winchester event and the sense of being part of a wider movement.  I also love all the stats and how I can see the progress over the weeks.

I'm enjoying my weekly Saturday morning runs and even a few months back I'd not have imagined me saying that :-)

I  expect the rate of improvement in my times will slow down but have my sights firmly set on the 32 minute barrier in the coming weeks and would be great to get below 30 mins before next September - see, I told you I loved the stats!

June / July 2016 Reading

Playing blogging catchup ... some notes from books I was reading last year...

Beyond HR: The New Science of Human Capital by John Boudreaux and Peter Ramstad

Written in 2007 ..from the preface “This book describes our vision of a future where the issues of talent and how it is organised get the attention they deserve, the kind of deep and logical attention worthy of a resource that’s vital to strategic success.”

In the book the authors argue for a new decision science for HR and provide frameworks to guide its introduction.  They note that rather than having a clear focus on business strategy outcomes the HR function is instead focussed on score cards that focus on costs and activities… HR cost per unit of revenue, ratio of total headcount to HR headcount etc

They make the interesting observation that in the early 200’s lots of organisations adopted performance management systems that were based on stack ranking ( 20% top performers, 70% middle, 10% low).  What could the strategic or economic shift be that caused all of these companies to adopt the same approach?  Answer of course is that it was actually the publication of Jack Welch’s book on management at GE which included this approach.  GE was successful, we want to be successful so we should have the same performance management approach seemed to be what happened.  What was it though about finance and marketing departments that meant they weren’t expected to adopt GE’s approach in those disciplines - why the focus on HR.  Could it be down to a lack of frameworks in HR for determining how decisions like this should be taken?  

I also particularly liked when they suggested that organisations should ask themselves how worried they would be if their competitors had a copy of the company's HR strategy?  How would that feel compared to them having a copy of the finance or marketing strategy?   If you aren't as concerned about the HR strategy being known does that say something about how strategic you view it to be?

Human Resources in the 21st Century edited by Marc Effron, Robert Gandossy and Marshall Goldsmith

The book is a collection of chapters by different authors drawn from the editors' contact lists.   The theme is around how HR will change as it comes to terms with forces that are driving change across the corporate world.  Issues of speed, technology, complexity, globalisation, demographics etc all substantial changes to the dynamics of organisations.  How will HR evolve and morph in the 21st Century.  Includes a chapter by IBM’s Randy MacDonald, as I read more books in this area it is interesting how often I come across case studies/quotes/chapters relating to IBM.

Is this the End of HR? by Stan Davis p 240   Talks about how in the mid 1960s industrial relations was starting to morph into personnel.  The shift in wording linking to a more enlightened era for company’s approaches to the people who worked there.  “Industrial Relations” had been the theme since unions were formed around the 1920’s-1930’s.   From then through to the 60’s the concern of firms was on their “labour relations”.  In the 60’s we see emergence of a focus both on the administration of employees entitlements - pensions, benefits etc and a focus on training and development for the staff.  The personnel label lasts through to the 1980’s where we see emergence of human relations.  Here again the name change reflects a shift in attitude.  Underlying philosophy now recognises that employees are very important to the success of an organisation.  “Trust, cooperation, and Theory Y replaced confrontation, negotiation, and Theory X."

How to Manage by Jo Owen

I was asked to read this book as part of the Chartered Management Institute’s Management Book of the Year award.  I liked it and was pleased to see it make it onto the shortlist for the Practical Manager category.

The book covers 3 areas of management, providing sensible advice in each.

• Rational Management concerns the skills to deal with problems, tasks and money
• Emotional Management concerns the skills to deal with people
• Political Management concerns how you acquire the power to make things happen

The author’s thesis is that all three are needed for success and that all can be developed.  Concepts are presented but the clear focus is on the practical challenges faced by managers and what steps can be taken in response, this is particularly true in the section on political management.   The writing is clear, succinct and refreshingly candid, which means that a lot of valuable advice and guidance is fitted into the text.  Relevant mini case studies are included to illustrate key points and demonstrate how the concepts can be applied.   I would certainly recommend this book to anyone starting out in management and to anyone with experience of the role who wanted to take a step back and consider how to further develop their capabilities.

One sentence I particularly liked on the importance of keeping things simple ... “The best strategic thinking is very simple: clever people make things complicated; really clever people make things simple.”

Postgraduate Research Winter Symposium at University of Winchester

Today I attended my first post graduate research symposium for University of Winchester students.   It was a terrific opportunity to listen to a series of 20 minute presentations on a wide diversity of research topics and to spend time chatting with fellow students on what they are doing.

Here are a few short notes on the 10 talks we had during the day that give an indication of what was covered.

Investigating endings - looking at endings in novels that have been short listed for the Booker and Costa prize since 2000.  Different sorts of endings, different approaches of writers - including one who starts writing a novel by writing the last sentence.   Given that some people will start a book by reading the ending it made me wonder if authors might respond to this by creating last lines that could make sense as an end to the novel and yet if which read first would purposefully send the reader on the wrong track.

“I Love you, guys” - looking at inclusive masculinities in a Californian High School Cross country running team.  Exploring issues of attitudes to homosexuality and how that impacts on displays of masculinity - if homosexuality is not socially acceptable then this could lead to hyper macho displays of masculinity as boys/men seek to avoid any suggestion that they might be gay.  Introduced me to a new term “homoerasure” when society denies the very existence of homosexuality.   Interestingly in this context there may actually be greater acceptance of less macho behaviour.

The effects of anxiety and depression on eyewitness memory - this one struck me as hugely ambitious research activity given the breadth and detail of what was being studied as it will cover perceptions of legal professionals as well as questions of how people perform in interviews, video identification lineups and under cross examination.

The next topic was a case study of the Whitney Plantation and how it represents slavery from the perspective of the slave and not, as is more usually the case, from the perspective of the plantation owner.  Powerful talk based on the speaker’s experience of having visited the plantation and clearly having been deeply affected by it.   Reminded me of my visit to the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg a couple of years ago - you can read about periods in history but there is something deeply impactful about visiting the place.

Thomas Jefferson and slavery -  exploring paradox of man who penned US Declaration of Independence and promoted abolition of slavery yet held views that blacks were inferior to whites and owned slaves through his life, was opposed to interracial relationships and yet had 6 children by one of his slaves.  

John Rawls and his theory of justice - talk from someone who has recently started their doctoral journey so this one was more of a scene set on Rawls and "contractarianism" then their own research findings.

Presentation on career paths post PhD - given by first person who graduated with a PhD from University of Winchester when it became able to grant its own research degrees.   Interesting examples of how engagement in the right networks led to opportunities.  Also reference to article that compares structure of academic roles in the UK with how drugs gangs are organised - lots of poorly paid insecure roles at the start taken by people hoping to be the ones who succeed and breakthrough to the better stable roles further up the hierarchy.

“Embodying another’s memory” was an interesting investigation by the speaker into her father’s past in war time Poland.   Again the impact of visiting the place came through and how she had discovered a very different narrative to his life when she investigated what had happened compared to what he had told them.  Fascinating how he seems to have woven stories from his family into his own life story when presenting it.

The Last Judgement mosaic on West Wall of Torcello Cathedral, Venice was a detailed exposition of the iconography and meaning of the various complex elements of this 11th Century mosaic.  Astonishing level of detail on the individual elements and how they might have been intended to be “read” by the people viewing it.

Last talk of the day explored how different types of dual-task performance would have different effects on novel skill acquisition.   As an example consider people learning for the first time how to play an Xbox game.  Experiment then looks at how ability to learn how to play the game ( bowling in this case) if that is the only thing you have to do vs learning to play game while also counting backwards from 300 in 3’s vs learning the game whilst listening out for and responding to an audio beep that is played periodically.   The underlying research question is whether an exploration of this sort of dual-task approach could improve how stroke patients are helped to relearn tasks that can lead to greater independence and improved recovery.

All in all a very interesting day and I shall certainly be looking out for the next symposium.  As well as learning a lot about such a range of topics and feeling a sense of inclusion into the research community at Winchester, it was also good to reflect on how my own identify as a researcher and DBA student has evolved over the last year.   More than once I was able to think of things I had read in my own research which had relevance or informed me about something being presented.   Was also a whole lot better placed to cope with some of the more social sciences style of language used by some of the presenters.