Just returned from my weekly trip to the library; also in the stack are a few new acquisitions to my library.
It’s a varied list that’s for sure, but I believe that wide reading develops deep leading.
Look for a few short ideas from these books in the next few days.
If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.
–Haruki Murakami
It’s amazing how our brain can connect events separated by several years and spur us on to discover more about the world around us.
A few years ago I was consulting with a church in the Bronx, and fascinated by the subway there. Last year, I spent several days in a hotel in Nashville, TN that had its origins as the train station for the L&N railroad – which I traveled on as a boy to St. Louis, MO. Last fall, I flew into Baltimore and took the train from the airport to Union Station in DC, where I had a couple of days of meetings and sightseeing.
It will come as no surprise to regular readers that this curiosity turned to recreational research in the world of books: histories of subways in general, the ones in New York City in particular, and histories of railroads, starting with the ones in and around New York City.
Reading the book Grand Central last night, two particular passages caught my eye:
Not long after the Harlem Railroad linked the teeming city of New York to country homes in Harlem, what would become the Bronx, and the Westchester and to small Hudson Valley villages, a perceptive railroad superintendent remembered only as M. Sloat noticed a new class of customer: the repeat passenger, whose to-and-fro trips to work and home represented a potential marketing bonanza. Seizing the opportunity, the railroad initiated an imaginative fare structure for tickets based on a onetime passage or even a round trip, but on unlimited rides for six months or a full year at a steep discount from the single-fare rate.
The full fare was commuted, and with one bold entrepreneurial stroke the commuter – in name, at the very least – was officially born.
Cornelius Vanderbilt (owner of the above mentioned Harlem line), the steamboat tycoon turned railroad magnate, had an on-again, off-again relationship with Daniel Drew, a devilishly clever Wall Street buccaneer.
Drew’s reputation for bloating his cattle by quenching their thirst before delivering them to market and for later outwitting Vanderbilt by diluting Erie Railroad shares would give rise to a double meaning of the term watered-down stock.
The origins of words are fascinating. Here are two terms commonly used in our vocabulary today that were taken from the 1870s. They exist because of the rapidly ascending influence of new technology and industry – the railroad.
I wonder – what words are we creating today from the digital world we live in?
Quotes from Grand Central: How a Train Station Transformed America, by Sam Roberts
Leadership requires a constant flow of intelligence, ideas, and information. There is no way to gain the basics of leadership without reading.
As a boy in elementary school, I remember with fondness the Weekly Reader Club, a newspaper of sorts as well as an opportunity to buy books. My parents, especially my dad, were always happy to accommodate my asking for books to buy and bring home.
Some things never change…
Here is part of my current week’s reading list:
Weekly Reading List
These are from my local library. There’s another 10 on the waiting list (that’s all I can have at one time).
Then there’s my newest stack this week in my passion area of Guest Experiences:
Latest Guest Experience research
And a few magazines:
a weeks worth of magazine reading
Last but not least, I’ve always got my Kindle loaded up:
a few of my recent Kindle acquisitions
I like to read.
The leader learns to invest deeply in reading as a discipline for critical thinking.
Al Mohler
Want to know more about a few of the books? Here’s a teaser for one of them:
Shaun Abrahamson, Peter Ryder, Bastian Unterberg
We’ve been using brainstorming techniques for more than sixty years. Now it is possible to greatly improve the process by organizing large crowds of diverse talent.
The authors call it crowdstorming.
Crowdstorm will teach you how to effectively work with external networks to solicit, refine, and select ideas. By learning the patterns and gathering the right tools, organizations will discover the best approaches to planning, organizing, and executing crowdstorming projects. Crowdstorm shows you:
Buy the book
Download the Kindle
and another:
Ray Fishman and Tim Sullivan
We create organizations because we need to get a job done – something we couldn’t do alone – and join them because we are inspired by their missions (and our paycheck). But once we are inside, these organizations rarely feel inspirational. Instead, we’re often baffled by what we encounter: clueless managers, a lack of clear objectives, a seeming disregard for data, and the vast gulf between HR proclamations and our experience in the cubicle.
So where did it all go wrong?
In The Org, the authors explain the trade-offs that every organization makes, arguing that this everyday dysfunction is actually inherent in the very nature of orgs. The Org diagnoses the root causes of that malfunction, beginning with the economic logic of why organizations exist in the first place, then working its way up through the org’s structure from the lowly cubicle to the CEO’s office.
Buy the book
Download the Kindle
What will you be reading this weekend?
Dr. Al Mohler is one of the most brilliant men I have ever met. He was a PhD student at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary while I was pursing my Master’s degree there in the early 1980’s. Within a decade, he had returned to Southern as President, celebrating his 20th anniversary next year.
Dr. Mohler released a book this year entitled The Conviction to Lead. It contains 25 principles for leadership that matters. One of those principles is that “Leaders are Readers.”
The following is a compilation of the powerful truths of that statement, as taken from his book. I thought they were an appropriate inclusion in Reading Week 2012.
When you find a leader, you have found a reader. The reason for this is simple—there is no substitute for effective reading when it comes to developing and maintaining the intelligence necessary to lead. In all likelihood, your desk has a stack of books, magazines, and journals waiting to be read, and your briefcase is filled with reading materials. Leadership requires a constant flow of intelligence, ideas, and information. There is no way to gain the basics of leadership without reading.
Leading by conviction demands an even deeper commitment to reading and the mental disciplines that effective reading establishes. Why? Because convictions require continual mental activity. The leader is constantly analyzing, considering, defining, and confirming the convictions that will rule his leadership.
Leaders know that reading is essential, as it is the most important means of developing and deepening understanding. That is why leaders learn to set aside a significant amount of time for reading. We simply cannot lead without a constant flow of intellectual activity in our minds, and there is no substitute for reading when it comes to producing this flow.
The careful reader is not reading merely to receive data. The leader learns to invest deeply in reading as a discipline for critical thinking.
How to Read
You are already a reader, but how can you hone that skill to your greatest benefit? Reading is like any other skill—most people are satisfied to operate at a low-level. For some, the skill of reading seems to come naturally, while others have to work hard to develop it. The key is to keep improving over a lifetime.
Your first concern is to read for understanding. If you don’t, reading will add little to your life and leadership abilities. Before you start to read a book, ask certain questions about it:
Develop your own rules and habits for reading. I like to start with the book’s cover and table of contents. The cover of a book used to be mostly for its protection, but now it contains a significant amount of information, ranging from a short biography of the author to the identification of the publisher. The table of contents, if well constructed, is like a map of the book. Reading is much more effective if the reader knows where the book is headed.
You should read a book or article only for what it is worth. If you find that the book is not contributing to your life and leadership, set it aside. The world is filled with books and other reading material. Is the book making you think? Do you find that it is sparking new thoughts and reflections as you read? If so, read on. If not, set it down and move on.
Learn to read critically. Reading is not merely an exchange of information and ideas. It is a conversation between the author and the reader. Argue with the book and its author when necessary, and agree and elaborate when appropriate.
Treat the book as a notepad with printed words. In other words, write in your books. Make the book your own by marking points of agreement and disagreement, highlighting particularly important sections of text, and underlining and diagraming where helpful. The activity of marking your books adds tremendously to the value of your reading and to your retention of its contents and your thinking.
Reading critically also means evaluating the author’s credibility and clarity of thought. Does the author have the credentials and authority to make these arguments or to present this information? Do the arguments meet the tests of truthfulness, honesty, and relevance? Are claims backed up with credible evidence and argumentation? These are all crucial questions any reader should ask of a book. A couple more include: What is the author’s purpose in writing this book? What do I hope to get out of the experience of reading this book?
Keep reading and developing the skill of reading over your lifetime.
What to Read
Think of reading like you think of eating. In other words, pay attention to your diet.
For the Christian, the highest reading priority is the Word of God. Our spiritual maturity will never exceed our knowledge of the Bible, which is an especially urgent principle for Christian leaders.
In terms of other reading, Christian leaders should read serious Christian books—books that contain spiritual health and deep thought. The leader’s reading diet should include books covering a range of subjects, though most of us will invest first in those books that are most relevant to our work and mission.
Expanding from there, the leader should learn to consult book reviews and notices in major newspapers, magazines, and online sources. Of course, friends recommend many of the books that will mean most to us. When leaders gather, books are usually part of the conversation.
Should leaders read fiction? This is where many leaders admit uncertainty, but the answer is surely yes. Leaders need to read fiction for enjoyment, for learning, and for context. Fiction is important because it allows the reader to enter into the times, life, and mind of someone else.
Novels and short stories are powerful units of narrative, telling a story with compelling force. While enjoying the story, leaders are also learning how to improve their own narrative presentation and communicative ability.
Leaders are ravenous consumers of historical biographies. Their natural instinct is to learn about leaders of the past in order to embrace their strengths and avoid their weaknesses. But the wise leader will range across the waterfront of disciplines, from history and economics to current events and politics. Add to this the expanding number of business and management titles published each year. No leader can read all of these, of course, but the best of the lot should be on the leader’s reading list.
What about newspapers, magazines, and newsletters? The capable leader knows that these are important as well. Even as printed newspapers suffer from circulation losses, they remain extremely influential and informative.
If newspapers represent the first level of report and analysis, then magazines, journals, and newsletters represent the second. The newsweeklies and major intellectual magazines are extremely influential in terms of popular culture.
In addition to keeping up with the news, leaders will also learn communication and writing skills from the best magazines and journals. The writing in these periodicals tends to be fresh and lively, intended to draw and keep the reader’s attention. That is the wise leader’s concern as well.
When to Read
There will never be enough time to read all that you want to read, or even all that you think you ought to read. Just keep reading. Set aside segments of time devoted to reading and grab every spare minute you can find. Keep reading materials with you at all times, or at least close at hand. Keep a stack of books ready for reading, and take a couple with you as you travel.
When possible, read when you can retain and think most productively. I have found it helpful to plan reading projects. Each year, I plan two or three of these, intending to pursue understanding on a specific issue or area of knowledge. Develop a short list of books in an area, and work your way through them. You will be amazed at how much you can cover in a year.
I also advise dividing your reading plan into three categories. First, books you must read. Second, books you should read. Third, books you want to read. Given a bit of honest thinking, you will have a good idea of how this breaks down for you. Once you have this structure in mind, you can plan the stewardship of your reading time accordingly.
Read With Discernment
Christian leaders learn to read with discernment drawn from our deepest convictions. Constant worldview analysis comes like a reflex as the leader develops the capacity and skill of spiritual discernment. Test everything you read by viewing it through the lens of biblical truth and your convictions. Know that your most faithful and productive thinking will often come as you are reading from an author with whom you disagree, even as you apply critical thinking and discernment. Those who would lead with conviction must read with conviction.
Next: My Favorite Books of 2012
As one of America’s foremost inventors, Thomas Edison was certainly adept at questioning the world around him. In order to better understand the natural world, Edison was constantly developing new context by asking different questions. And the framework for formulating these challenging questions?
Edison read – broadly.
I didn’t read books – I read the library.
Thomas Edison
Among Edison’s first steps when undertaking a new collaborative effort was zeroing in on reading material with themes aligned to the subject matter he was evaluating. This often meant plowing through textbooks and papers spanning diverse scientific topics. But he also read fiction and fantastical works that were completely unrelated to the subject of his endeavors.
Edison believed feeding his mind diverse perspectives through the written word was critical to prevent specifically shaping or tainting his perceptions in any one direction as he began his questioning process.
An ardent lover of books and newspapers, by 1887, when Edison was 40, his personal collection at his laboratory exceeded 10,000 volumes. Though seemingly small by today’s standards, it was one of the top five libraries in the world during the late nineteenth century.
Drawn from the reaches of acoustics, botany, electricity, mathematics, photography, chemistry, materials sciences, and physics, Edison shared the resources of his library with his employees, encouraging them to continually stimulate their own thinking and questioning skills.
Reflecting on his love for storytelling and the deft use of language, Edison’s library also embraced extensive works of classical Greek literature plus a vast collection of Shakespeare. He particularly valued science fiction novels by pioneering French writer Jules Verne for the flights of fantasy and freedom from logic they spurred.
We can link Edison’s reading to many of the provocative questions he asked. Diligently recording his queries and insights in the notebooks that were ever-present at his side, Edison returned to these deep, probing questions again and again. His intentional gathering of questions became a pivotal spur for experiments and hypotheses that he later introduced when working jointly with his team.
Just as Edison’s hours of reading in his library sparked questions to be pursued via new hypotheses and experiments, your own reading endeavors can yield serendipitous yet brilliant questions from angles you least expect.
For Your Consideration
Material from this post adapted from Innovate Like Edison by Michael Gelb and Sarah Miller Caldicott and Midnight Lunch, by Sarah Miller Caldicott
Next: Al Mohler on Reading
Today kicks off an annual tradition: taking a look at why reading is important for leaders, hearing from leaders on reading, and announcing my version of the best books of 2012.
And there’s no better way to start it off with a little make that a lot of Seth Godin…
Yesterday I met our mailman at the door with a not too happy look on his face. In addition to the increased volume of holiday mail, he was straining to carry a large, heavy box – one I have been anticipating since mid-summer:
Seth Godin’s latest work, This Might Work, is a huge behemoth of a book weighing in at 15.4 pounds and measuring 15x11x3 inches. It contains Seth’s incomparable blog posts from 2006-2012, curated by his most avid follower, Bernadette Jiwa. Jiwa is an Australian writer and Seth’s only choice to undertake this Herculean task.
She succeeded.
Here is her choice for the opening page, from Seth’s blog on May 20, 2004:
Five years from now…
Assume that:
Hard drive space is free
Wifi like connections are everywhere
Connections speeds are 10 to 100 times faster
Everyone has a digital camera
Everyone carries a device that is sort of like a laptop, but cheap and tiny
The number of new products introduced every day is five times greater than now
Wal-Mart’s sales are three times as big
Any manufactured product that’s more than five years old in design sells at commodity pricing
The retirement age will be five years higher than it is now
Your current profession will either be gone or totally different
What then?
Classic Seth Godin…
Also in the package was Seth’s latest normal book, The Icarus Deception, due out on 12/31. Continuing with the theme he first introduced in Linchpin, Godin shows how we can thrive in an economy that rewards art, not compliance. He explains why true innovators focus on trust, remarkability, leadership, and stories that spread. And he makes a passionate argument for why you should be treating your work as art. A review will be coming soon!
In a few sentences above, this is why leaders read..
And why you should, too.
Next: Thomas Edison on Reading
Today would have been my father’s 85th birthday.
It’s also Book Lover’s Day.
Those two seemingly incongruent circumstances actually have a powerful connection for me.
After suffering a major stroke on February 10th, my father passed away on February 25th of this year. By the time I was able to get back to Tennessee to see him, he had lost motor functions and speech capacity. Over the few days I was there, the slow but steady decline continued.
I had last seen him during the Christmas holidays. While there, I spent some time alone at home with him. After suffering a series of strokes over the past several years, he could no longer read – but the legacy of his reading lines the bookshelves all over my boyhood home. In the quiet hours when everyone is asleep, I scanned the shelves and remembered hearing him talk about this book or that one. I pulled a few off the shelf, and opening them, was instantly transported back in time to a conversation about the subject, or to memories of the event itself.
I’ve been a reader of books since, well, before I can remember. My father was an avid reader, and he passed that passion along to me at an early age. Even though he worked 6 days a week, 12 hours a day, he often spent several hours reading at night. He and my mother insisted we go to the library in the next town and check out books – every two weeks. I would get the maximum number of books, take them home, and read them – usually in the first day or two. Then it would be an impatient wait till the next library trip.
Reading is a passion I treasure, and one that I am thankful to my dad for.
So here it is Book Lover’s Day, not an official holiday but one I eagerly celebrate. Book reading is a great hobby. It’s an important one, too. Employers look for it on resumes. Reading is educational, informative, and relaxing. It makes us both smarter, and happier people.
Book Lovers Day is a great day to celebrate. Just grab an interesting book, find a quiet, cozy place, and crack open the cover. Celebrating Book Lovers Day in August is pleasurable on the deck, under a shady tree, poolside, or in a cozy hammock. If you fall asleep while reading, that’s okay. It’s all part of the relaxing benefits of being a book lover.
I’m celebrating this Book Lover’s Day in a new vocation – Vision Room Curator at Auxano. My role requires me to read – and then write book summaries, Tweets, and blogs about what I’m reading.
How cool is that!
On this Book Lover’s Day, and in memory of my father, I’m trying to emulate Thomas Edison, who believed that voracious reading was the key to self-improvement. He read books on a remarkable range of subjects to address his endless queries. As Edison noted, “I didn’t read a few books, I read the library.”
My reading list this week:
If you want to know more about my dad, here is the eulogy I gave at his funeral. After the funeral, while my sons and I were moving some things around his gas station and I discovered one reason I am so passionate about guest services. And read this post to find out why readers are leaders.
Start making smaller to-do lists. Long lists collect dust.
When’s the last time you finished a long list of things? You might have knocked off the first few, but chances are you eventually abandoned it (or blindly checked off items that weren’t really done properly).
Long lists are guilt trips. The longer the list of unfinished items, the worse you feel about it. And at a certain point, you just stop looking at it because it makes you feel bad. Then you stress out and the whole thing turns into a big mess.
There’s a better way. Break that long list down into a bunch of smaller lists. For example, break a single list of a hundred items into ten lists of ten items. That means when you finish an item on a list, you’ve completed 10 percent of that list, instead of 1 percent.
Yes, you still have the same amount of stuff left to do. But know you can look at the small picture and find satisfactions, motivation, and progress. That’s a lot better than staring at the huge picture and being terrified and demoralized.
Whenever you can, divide problems into smaller and smaller pieces until you’re able to deal with them completely and quickly. Simply rearranging your tasks this way can have an amazing impact on your productivity and motivation.
And a quick suggestion about prioritization: Don’t prioritize with numbers or labels. Avoid saying, “This is high priority, this is low priority.” Likewise, don’t say, “This is a three, this is a two, this is a one, this is a three,” etc. Do that and you’ll almost always end up with a ton of really high-priority things. That’s not really prioritizing.
Instead, prioritize visually. Put the most important thing at the top. When you’re done with that, the next thing on the list becomes the next most important thing. That way you’ll only have a single next most important thing to do at one time.
And that’s enough.
The inspirational words above come from the book “Rework,” by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, the founders of 37signals.
If you don’t own it, you should.
The artwork is by illustrator Mike Rohde.
Continuing an annual tradition, the final posts of the year are devoted to the importance of reading (covered in yesterday’s post) and my best book list for the year.
Making a “Best of” list is always hard – it’s a very subjective process, driven by my personal tastes, professional needs, and plain curiosity. It’s also hard to narrow it down: in 2011, I checked out 107 books from my local library, purchased 91 print books, and downloaded 37 on my Kindle. I also perused dozens of bookstores on my travels, writing down 77 titles for future acquisition. There were also a lot of late releases that I just didn’t have time to take a look at. Be that as it may, here is my list of favorite books published in 2011.
The Zappos Experience, Joseph Michelli
Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life Without Losing Its Soul, Howard Schultz
Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck – Why Some Thrive Despite Them All, Jim Collins and Morten Hansen
Be Our Guest: Perfecting the Art of Customer Service, 2nd Edition, Disney Institute
Brilliance by Design: Creating Learning Experiences that Connect, Inspire, and Engage,
Vicki Halsey
The Orange Revolution, Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton
The Experience Economy, 2nd Ed, Joseph Pine and James Gilmore
Blah, Blah, Blah, Dan Roam
Missional Communities: The Rise of the Post-Congregational Church, Reggie McNeal
For the City: Proclaiming and Living Out the Gospel, Matt Carter and Darrin Patrick
Practically Radical, William C. Taylor
That’s my list for 2011 – if you are unfamiliar with any of the books listed above, I encourage you to check them out.
The new year is just around the corner, and the book releases are lining up already – I wonder what the Best of 2012 list will look like a year from now?
Leaders are readers.
Today and tomorrow’s posts are an annual tradition at 27gen – all about reading and my favorite books of the year. Here are a few links to previous year’s posts - click and follow the link for a few thoughts on the importance of reading – and how to read!
Getting the Most Out of Reading
Reading – Deliberate Practice Required
A New Chapter in My Reading
I’ve been a reader of books since, well, before I can remember. My father was an avid reader, and he passed that passion along to me at an early age. It’s a passion I treasure, and one that I am thankful for. Over the recent holidays, I spent some time at home with him. After suffering a series of strokes, he can no longer read – but the legacy of his reading lines the bookshelves all over my boyhood home. In the quiet hours when everyone is asleep, I scanned the shelves and remembered hearing him talk about this book or that one. I pulled a few off the shelf, and opening them, was instantly transported back in time to a conversation about the subject, or to memories of the event itself.
Books enjoyed that way are a multisensory experience – you not only read the words on a page, you feel the binding and turn the pages, hear the crackle of a very old book being opened for the first time in a long time, and then there’s that “book” smell – a combination of age, dust, maybe a little dampness – but all telling you an adventure is waiting.
Although I’m an early adopter in almost everything else, it’s just that “experience” that has kept me from moving into the eBook world all the way. I’ve been dabbling in eBooks for several years, mostly on my laptop. During the past year, I decided it was time to move ahead with a Kindle, and I’m glad I did. Having a library at my disposal in one volume has been very rewarding – but I will always be a “book” guy at heart.
So in wrapping up 2011 and looking forward to 2012, you’ll find me with a Kindle in my backpack – and several volumes of traditional books as well!
Tomorrow: my favorite books of 2011.
