This is similar to my other post, but I wanted to keep books I read separate from casual online browsing.

Books

Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High

  • Start with Heart: Get the Right Focus
  • Learn to Look: Know when it’s Unsafe
  • Make it Safe: Facilitate and Open Dialogue
  • Master your Stories: Stay in dialogue despite negative feelings
  • State your Path: Share your view persuasively
  • Explore Others’ Path: Be a Good Listener
  • Move to Action: Convert dialogue to results

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

  • Choose: Doing nothing and doing everything are both signs of learned helplessness
  • The 90% Rule: If it doesn’t meet 90% of your needs, then it’s 0%, so remove it
  • 90-by-90 Rule: If you haven’t used it in 90 days, and don’t plan to use it in 90 days, get rid of it. Seasonal items require more thorough thought though

Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink

  • What is Extreme Ownership (E.O)?: A true leader puts aside their ego and takes 100% ownership of everything in his domain, including the outcome and everything that affects it.
  • Victory from Within
    • No Bad Teams, only Bad Leaders
    • Clarity and Belief
    • Manage your Ego
  • Victory in Combat
    • Cover and Move (Team Work)
    • Keep Things Simple
    • Prioritize and Execute
    • Decentralized Command
  • Sustaining Victory
    • Sound Planning
    • Lead up and Down the Line
    • Be Decisive Amidst Uncertainty
    • Discipline Bring Freedom

How to Win Friends and Influence People

  • Engage by connecting, smiling, and being nice
  • Make an impression by actively listening, using peoples names, and be interested in others
  • Gain and maintain trust by giving others the benefits of the doubt, being transparent with it and * faults, and being empathetic
  • Lead and achieve by owning shortcomings and giving others a fine reputation to live up to

Leaders Eat Last by by L. David Marquet

  • The lack of good leaders in the workplace save pic for own assets for later?
    • Only 1 in 5 managers had manager qualifications
    • 43% of employers rated their line manager “ineffective”
    • +70% of companies reported lack of managerial & leadership skills
    • Bad management was linked to 56% of corporate failures
  • Exec Summary
    • A team can only effectively face external threats when there are no internal threats
    • Leaders have some benefits, but need to fulfill responsibilities too (protecting the tribe)
    • We need more leaders, so take it upon yourself to become one

The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People

  • Habit of Responsibility - Be Proactive: Take initiative in your life
  • Habit of Personal Leadership - Begin with the End in Mind: Examine your center and develop your *personal mission statement
  • Habit of Personal Management - Put First Things First: Exercise willpower and discipline, to organize and implement activities that translate your goals into reality
  • Habit of Interpersonal Relationship - Think Win-Win: An approach of achieving mutual benefit for the parties involved
  • Habit of Communication - Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood: Listening with intent to understand - opposed to how most people listen – with the intent to speak or respond
  • Habit of Creative Collaboration - Synergize: “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts”
  • Habit of Self Renewal - Sharpen the Saw: By maintaining yourself it will make it easier to maintain other parts of your life

The Power of Habit

  • Habits work in 3-step loops: cue, routine, reward.
  • You can change your habits by substituting just one part of the loop: the routine
  • Willpower is the most important habit, strengthen it by: planning for the worst, and preserving your autonomy

The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering (Major Points)

  • Brooks’s law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later
  • No silver bullet: There is no single process that by itself promises one order of magnitude * improvement
  • Progress tracking: How does a large software project get to be one year late? One day at a time
  • The pilot system: Plan to throw on away
  • Lowering software development costs
    • Don’t code until the system design is completed
    • Don’t develop software at all, and buy it “off the shelf” when possible.

The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature

  • Evolution is less about Our Team vs Their Team, like Lions vs Antelopes, but more about competition for getting on the starting squad. The best antelopes are able to out survive their peers, thus reproduce more and spread their genes better.

Thinking Fast and Slow

  • System 1 is fast and intuitive
  • System 2 is slow and methodical
  • Learn how and when to use each system to make better decisions

Turn This Ship Around by Simon Sinek and The Leader-Leader Approach

  • Control: Leaders must relinquish control while retaining responsibility
  • Competence: People must be equipped with the technical knowledge and resources to make sound decisions
  • Clarity: People must be equipped this clarity on the organization’s goals, purpose, and decision-making criteria