5 BOOKS TO MAKE TEAMS THAT GEL
🟡 Creativity Inc
By Ed Catmull (one of the co-founders of Pixar Animation Studios).
The book explores how the company achieved its revolutionary success in animation, with its focus on the joy of storytelling, inventive plots and emotional authenticity. It also serves as a guide to building and sustaining a creative culture, with advice and examples from Pixar's own experience. Through this story, the reader learns what creativity really is and how to lead their employees to new heights.
🟡 The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups
The Culture Code explores the strategies and techniques used by some of the most successful organisations in the world to create strong team cohesion. Coyle looks at verbal and physical cues, collaboration strategies, trust building and how to reform toxic cultures. This book combines science, insight and practical ideas to demonstrate how effective cooperation can lead to extraordinary achievements.
🟡 Org Design for Design Orgs
By Kristin Skinner and Peter Merholz.
This book is one of the favourite books of many design leaders. The book provides valuable insights and guidance on how to effectively design and manage an organisational structure for a design team or company. It can help you better understand the unique challenges and opportunities that come with leading a design team and provide you with practical strategies for building a successful and high-performing design organisation. In addition, the book offers valuable advice on how to create a strong and supportive culture within your design team, which can help foster collaboration, creativity, and innovation.
🟡 The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable
In Patrick Lencioni’s book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, he tells the story of Kathryn Petersen, CEO of Decision Tech, and her struggle to unite a team that is in disarray. Lencioni outlines the five dysfunctions that cause teams, even the best ones, to struggle and provides a model and actionable steps to overcome these hurdles and build a cohesive, effective team.
🟡 Radical Candor: How to Get What You Want
Radical Candor is a guide for managers, providing actionable advice to help build better relationships with employees. It emphasises the importance of making it personal, getting stuff done, and understanding why it matters, with the overall goal of helping employees develop their skills and boundaries of success. The book provides advice on how to be successful while retaining integrity and humanity and is the perfect handbook for those looking to find meaning in their job and create a work environment of love and motivation.
3 BOOKS TO GET AHEAD IN THE BUSINESS WORLD
🟡 Design Leadership: Securing the strategic value of design
Design Leadership is an essential guide for all those who influence how organisations work and how to use design as a business resource for competitive advantage and social benefit. It is of particular relevance to those with design management and leadership responsibilities, as well as those who aim to work in such roles. The book provides straightforward advice on how to make design work and become more effective more quickly.
🟡 Principles
Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, the most successful hedge fund in history, shares the unconventional principles he has used to achieve success. These principles, which revolve around ‘radical truth’ and ‘radical transparency’, include tools such as ‘baseball cards’ to distil strengths and weaknesses and computerised decision-making systems. He believes anyone can apply these principles to their own life or organisation to achieve their goals.
🟡 No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention
By Erin Meyer & Reed Hastings.
Netflix is renowned for its revolutionary culture, which has enabled the company to rapidly transform from a DVD mail order service to a streaming superpower. In this book, Netflix Chairman and CEO Reed Hastings and Professor Erin Meyer from INSEAD Business School explore the unique leadership philosophy behind the company's success, which rejects accepted beliefs and offers a new way of running any organisation. It includes unorthodox policies such as unlimited holidays and the abolishment of financial approvals and provides insight into the creativity, productivity and innovation that the Netflix culture has enabled.