Thanks to the fine folks at O’Reilly Media, both of my books are now available on Kindle:

Making Things happen (Kindle)

The Myths of Innovation (Kindle)

I think it’s silly that the customer reviews for the regular editions don’t migrate to these kindle pages, but then again I’m still bummed all the reviews for The art of project management didn’t get migrated over to Making Things Happen, as it’s the 2nd edition of the same book.

Posted in Making things happen, Myths of Innovation, books | 7 Comments »

I have this pet interest in books that people, myself included, refer to when making a point, even though they haven’t read them. Thoreau’s Walden is on that list. I read it last month and here’s my review.

It’s a curious book. It’s well known in our environmentally aware age, to be about a person who spent years living off the land, in harmony with nature. But that’s not quite right. Early in the book Thoreau makes clear his spot in the Walden woods, donated by a friend (Emerson), is just a few miles from town. He was not a hard core hermit or back to nature zealot, as one might assume. His ambitions were more philosophical than tied to a specific set of rules for what nature is, or how often he could talk to people or have them over for dinner. It was an inquiry, a thought experiment, and arguably an American pioneer in self-discovery and taking responsibility for learning how to live. This idea is popular today, perhaps in slicker form, in books where people spend a year following the bible or traveling by bicycle to see what happens.

I was surprised by the three distinct themes I found in the book.

One is an attempt to provide a do it yourself guide. There are several lists of things purchased with prices and sources. Thoreau is thrifty and proud. He refers to how inexpensive his life is often, and there are long stretches where he describes, on a line item basis, how much it cost to build, supply and maintain his house. It seems he had some interest in providing a how to manual of sorts, but he gets lost in his ideas. Kind of like a lonely shop clerk who keeps telling personal stories instead of getting you the ham sandwich, sitting in front of him on the counter, you came into the store for. And the details don’t age well as a practical guide as the prices for nails have gone up, and home depot puts a new spin on what it means to do it yourself. There are frequent journal style mentions of hunts, food procured from his garden, and other daily facts of his existence.

The second theme is transcendent prose. This was what I hoped for. He was a student of Emerson and it shows, with page long riffs on the strange nature of man, the potential for greatness, the limits of our cities and times, and on they go. Some of these totally rock:

“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root”

“As for the pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them as much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile and then given his body to the dogs.”

“The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I look him in the face?”

These are moving, potent, memorable words. If Thoreau achieved his goal of transcending normal existence through a return to nature, and sharing that experience with the reader, it comes through in these passages.

But the third theme of the book is thick, meandering, writing. He runs with the same rambling narrative for pages at a time, beating his own point into the ground or losing it altogether. Anne Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek captures the experience of being alone in the woods with a completeness well beyond Thoreau’s, simply because she provides a consistent, reliable and intensely fascinating narrative. Thoreau seems like the kind of fellow who spent too much time on his own, and his wandering mind, unaware of the confusion he creates in the minds of others, rambles around on its own selfish whims. He was a true recluse and I think it shows. Emerson, though long-winded, keeps his points in straight lines. Thoreau writes like strings of thread, thrilling when they lead somewhere interesting, but often they just get tangled up so tightly you wish he’d take more frequent care to tie them up into neat, memorable bows.

For a short book it is not tightly written and although it has great themes, I find it hard to call it a great read. And Emerson, for all his own verbosity, should have suggested more edits in Thoreau’s work than it seems he did (I understand Emerson played a key role in getting the book published at all, but I can’t find the reference). Perhaps I came to Walden too late, having read many books clearly influenced by Thoreau’s work. And although I respect the fact the book was written more than a hundred years before I was born, I can read Emerson’s collected essays with fewer complaints.

Check it out for yourself: Walden, by Thoreau. This is an online, and annotated edition.

I tend to avoid annotated editions on first reads, so here’s the edition I used: Walden, by Thoreau (amazon)

Posted in Book reviews, books, philosophy | 2 Comments »

I’m a big fan of essay collections and when I came across this one, The New kings of Nonfiction, edited by Ira Glass of This American Life fame I had high expectations.

The book is good. Three of Five stars. If you’ve never gone out of your way to pick up a book filled with non-fiction essays, this is a decent place to start. I’m a bigger fan of the Best American Essays series, which has never failed me. I enjoy being able to abandon authors or essays I don’t like, and try another in the next chapter. It’s like a writing sample pack: great way to discover new voices and different kinds of writing.

In Glass’s compilation you have Michael Lewis (Moneyball, Liar’s Poker) reporting on a teenage day trader arrested by the SEC, A Malcolm Gladwell essay that appears in The tipping point, and other essays by Dan Savage, Michael Pollan and more.

But by far my two favorite essays were from two writers I’d never heard of before. Losing The War (full essay online), by Lee Sandlin and Toxic Dreams: A California Town Finds Meaning In An Acid Pit, by Jack Hitt. The $10 you’ll pay for this book is worth it for these two superior pieces of funny, clever, tightly written, truly thought provoking works. “Losing the War” explores a truer history of heroes and WWII than most of us know, while “Toxic Dreams” is the story of one of the first toxic waste dumps, and how the imact on the town nearby slowly unraveled over more than a decade.

Posted in Book reviews, Recommended, books | No Comments »

The Personal MBA folks have released a update to their reading list, the core of their program for people who want an MBA style education without the formal program and bank-breaking costs.

I’ve asked the question, Was your MBA worth it over on Harvard Business. If you have an MBA or have thought about one, I’m curious to know what you think - head over a check it out.

Posted in Management, Teaching/Training, books | 1 Comment »

I love wandering used bookstores, as there is always a magic tome back there, lying in waiting under layers of dust, that when found will blow my mind. There is a lack of pretension in old books that amps up their power in ways no NYTimes bestseller can ever match.

Nearly a decade ago I found a copy of Loren Eisley’s The Night Country: Reflections of a bone-hunting man, in a $1 stack. I had no idea who he was or what he was writing about, but the strange title and stranger cover drew me in. He’s an amazing writer. And he was one of the first to put my faith in writers who can transcend topics and genres and simply blow my mind with thoughts and words. You could have put Eisley in a cardboard box for an hour, and he’d have an essay that would change your mind about something important you’ve never even thought about before.

Another great find in the dark back used book racks was the Encyclopedia of Ignorance (EOI). Finally a tome about the infinity of things we do not know, that are never represented in books! A piece of my sanity was restored in this book, as I realized I wasn’t alone in feeling that we know much less about the universe and everything than we pretend we do.

Over on Kottke today, is mention of Wikipedia’s version of the EOI: The list of unsolved problems. This is great, except…it’s tiny! Ridiculously small! I’m hoping wikipedians will pick up the slack, but right now the EOI is my go to resource for things I don’t know.

Posted in books, philosophy | No Comments »

Since my book the art of project management went out of print, I bet your world has been gray. You’ve been unable to sleep. You’ve been nervous at work. You’ve lost interest in food. Your spirits have been so low, at times it’s even been hard to breathe. “When will it end!” you’ve cried. But still, the book has stayed out of print.

Well… your deepest, most secret wish has been granted: it’s here! The universe will be saved! All project management challenges will flee at the sight of this mighty tome in your hand!

Oh, the joys of authorial sarcasm - anyway, I’m proud to say the book is now available and looks great.

Now titled Making things happen: mastering project management it has all the good stuff from the original edition, plus:

• A cover than doesn’t suck
• 120+ brand new exercises
• carefully re-edited and revised chapters.
• improved footnotes (actually on the same page as the text! amazing!)
• A discussion guide for using the book with reading groups
• Tons of suggested improvements from pmclinic rock stars

It’s the definitive edition of the bestselling book. I hope you’ll check it out and spread the word: buying my books helps fund free stuff like the essays and the pmclinic.

Available now on amazon.com.

Posted in Making things happen, art of project management, books | 5 Comments »

I didn’t read much as a kid, but one book I read cover to cover dozens of times was the Advanced dungeon’s and dragons handbook. In elementary school my friends and I played that game several times a week, and despite our ridiculous abuse of the rules and complete disregard for fair play (think Lord of the Flies mixed with the Soprano’s) the effect the game had on us was transformative.

Without knowing it we did a kind of improvised, collaborative theater, and used our imaginations to create worlds, instead of using the passive, pre-fab ones found in video games or television shows. Sure, the games gave us a structure we didn’t make, but what a bunch of 11 year old kids did with it - wow.

I never knew much about who he was, or what he did: my D&D phase ended well before I though much about authors and creators. But that that name, that crazy name that seemed like it belong in the game and not in the real world, Gary Gygax, matched with that wild image of thieves and demons on the cover, was etched in my mind mind forever.

Thanks Gary & Dave.

Posted in books, creative thinking | 3 Comments »

Stumbled upon this excellent NYTimes article about major book publishers and their poor abilities to predict bestsellers. It’s refreshing how honest these editors are about the limits of their predictive powers. Much like the history of tech innovations discussed in The myths of Innovation, there are too many factors for anyone to claim high rates of success.

“It’s guesswork,” says Bill Thomas, editor in chief of Doubleday Broadway. “The whole thing is educated guesswork, but guesswork nonetheless. You just try to make sure your upside mistakes make up for your downside mistakes.”

Hmmm. Is he calling an unexpected bestseller an upside mistake? It’s also interesting to hear them mention slow bestsellers, books that don’t have great sales on any one year, but over several years outsell other noted bestsellers:

There are two ways for a book to become a best seller. One is to make it on to a best-seller list by selling many copies in a week. Other books sell steadily over months and years, eventually outselling many official best sellers. “Unanswered Cries,” a true-crime book by Tom French, was acquired in 1989 by St. Martin’s for $30,000. It now has 400,000 copies in print in paperback and sold at least 31,000 copies last year alone.

Also notable is the acknowledgment that book publishers are in the dark ages when it comes to understanding readers.

The Newspaper Association of America has a staggering amount of data on people who read newspapers. The book business has, basically, nothing,” said Professor Greco. “They’re not going into the marketplace and doing mall intercepts and asking people, as they leave the bookstore, ‘What did you buy? Did you find what you’re looking for? What motivated you to choose that book?’

Read the whole thing here -
The Greatest Mystery: Making a Best Seller.

Posted in On writing, books | 2 Comments »

Awhile ago a wrote an essay on how to give and receive criticism. Writing about it is one thing, but doing is another. Recently I saw someone handle a tough situation in public quite well - here’s the story:.

Sun engineer Bryan Cantrill gave an offhand review, at a videotaped talk at google, of Rosenberg’s recent book, Dreaming in code (A book I reviewed last year). Rosenberg, instead of doing what many bloggers do, and either a) ignore the issue or b) escalate things into a juvenile flamewar, he looked carefully for the intent, instead of the sizzle, of Cantrill’s statements and offered a well reasoned response.

The result was an intelligent, respectful, and illuminating discussion than spanned across both blogs. Kudos!

Anyone know of other recent examples of maturity handling of criticism? This should awards for this kind of thing.

Posted in books | No Comments »

I’m nuts about books. I finish a book a week, and abandon many more. Looking back on the year, picking a favorite, #1 book to recommend is easy - that’s how much I enjoyed this book. It’s Over the edge of the world, by Laurence Bergreen.

The book tells the wild, nearly unbelievably difficult tale of Magellan’s expedition to circumnavigate the world. In short, everything goes wrong. Mutiny, starvation, politics, bad project management, and on it goes. There’s also what has to be one of the greatest idea pitches ever (”Yes, I will go all the way around the world, requiring several routes no one has discovered yet, and you will pay for it”). And it’s all told with the perfect balance of tight, thrilling storytelling and historic detail.

I love books like this for their power to humble: they put all of the challenges and complaints people have today in relief. Nothing any entrepreneur or middle manager faces today even approximates the risks, suffering, and significance of what these historic figures did. Finishing this book I felt inspired by the realities of what Magellan and his crew did, rather than the false, simple tale I’d learned as a kid.

It’s a great gift choice for anyone interested in innovation, how progress happens, how myths compare to realities, project management, people management of all kinds, and well told true adventure tales.

Over the edge of the world: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe, by Laurence Bergreen.

Posted in Book reviews, Recommended, books | 6 Comments »

If you write about innovation or creativity there are certain books people will continually tell you to read - they’re not necessarily the best books, just popular ones. I’ve kept track, and the top # of mentions have gone to: Malcolm Gladwell, Connections by James Burke, and A Whole new mind, by Daniel Pink. I’d already read Gladwell and much of Burke, and this week finally read A whole new mind.

Short review:

It’s a light, positive, inspiring read. It makes strong claims about the value of right-brain, or creative, thinking, and how the economic conditions in the world have created big opportunities for creative people. However the arguments are often one-sided with claims that verge on pollyanna (creative thinkers will rule the world!). If you or people you work with are logic centric thinkers, this book will help you understand the value of a holistic view of what our minds do, and give you ammunition for debates, as well as resources for how to grow the intuitive parts of your brain. But while I’m a fan of the theme, and anyone that defends left-handed people (we are the only people in our right minds, ha ha) I struggled with his arguments despite my agreement with some of his conclusions.

Long review:

I had major criticisms of both the assumptions he makes, and how he makes them, primarily ignorance of history, unnecessary polarization, and lack of devil’s advocacy. If you don’t care about my gripes, stop reading: I’d generally recommend the book. And since what follows is long, I have to say the book was thought provoking, though not necessarily in the way the author intended.

If you haven’t read it, and don’t want spoilers, go read it before continuing. Ok, you’ve been warned.

Ignorance: Right brains have been dominant at other times: namely, the European Renaissance. What happened? Why didn’t the world change in the ways he describes ours will if we can get better at Right brain thinking? He doesn’t say. The rise of Impressionism, Cubism, Rock music, Surrealism, Punk rock, Free Love, Video Games, Movies, Music videos, the birth of Greek philosophy and drama, and other huge cultural/political contributions driven by R-dominant (his term) behavior aren’t mentioned either. R-dominant thinking is old: it may be so old it’s new again, but to frame the argument as a Whole New Mind, without any hat tip to things pre-1950 is glaring, or as Tom Standage might say, overly chronocentric. The shifts between L to R dominance at the culture level, across time, has been discussed by other authors, from Leonard Shlain’s excellent Art & Physics and to some extent, Daniel Boorstin, but no reference from this line of thought is mentioned.

Polarization: Isn’t the best possible world one where we use all of our talents, as appropriate, to the problems at hand? Wouldn’t it be just as dangerous to have an R-dominant world as it is to have a logic, or L-dominant one? The tag line for the book is Why right-brainers will rule the future. Rule? Is that for the best? I bet he’d agree our rulers should be people who recognize the value of both kinds of thought, and that he’s fighting for a return to some kind of balance, but the book doesn’t say so (If I does, I missed it, despite a careful read). Perhaps I should have read the book as a manifesto, but I found that hard given the attempts at logical arguments and statistics he uses in his arguments.

Devil’s Advocacy (DA) : Every book makes a bet on a core theme and then tries to live up to it. But what should a writer do in chapter 6, when they realize a good point that disagrees with the title? Or several major points? Ideally at least one of them is discussed ( however briefly), hopefully they’re mentioned, and minimally they’re referenced. I didn’t find any kind of refutation or questioning of the core thesis in the text or in the notes. If I’m guilty of this in my books, fine, I’m a hypocrite and I’ll do better next time. But that said, my DA questions included:

• The book states MFAs are the new MBAs. What? Pages 54-56 discusses the rise of design in business, which is true and good. But if MFA’s are infiltrating the management ranks of GM, GE and McKinsey, it’s to complement the L-Dominant people they have in abundance, not to replace them all. I’m all for R-dominant people, but I doubt they’d be great at doing corporate taxes, remotely managing 1000s of employees (remotely in Asia), or the other dozens of core business functions that will always be core business functions. Or put another way How many R-Dominant people does a company really need? (And footnote: he mentions the low acceptance rates in MFA programs as an indicator of how hot MFAs are in the business world, but likely makes the wrong conclusion. First, there are likely fewer MFA programs than MBA programs, and the class size accepted are generally much smaller (often 20-30) - I bet this has always been true, so it’s not a trend, and likely has more to do with how MFA programs work than anything going on in the rest of the world).
• The environment. Pages 74-86 explore the increasing value of design, a point I agree with. But the emphasis here is heavy on consumerism, not designing things better for the world. Pink writes “The forces of Abundance… turn goods and services into commodities so quickly that the only way to survive is by constantly developing new innovations, inventing new categories, and… giving the world something it didn’t know it was missing” (pg. 81). Victor Papanek, one of the fathers of Product design, would call this a horribly selfish distortion of the power of design. How is it good for the planet, and our grand-children, if our only solution to problems is to keep making new stuff for people to buy, only to throw them away, despite their perfectly good conditions, replaced by more stuff people really don’t need? How is this sustainable in any way? Not mentioned.
• Are there tests or skills for helping a person have a balanced mind? Is it possible for a person to not be L-Dominant nor R-Dominant? I kept wondering if this binary kind of thinking is useful, other than as a polemic. I mean, doesn’t the book rely more on L-Dominant thinking in most of it’s arguments? Sure, that’s a side effect of written language, but then doesn’t anyone who works via e-mail, or the web, face the same challenge? Namely, that R-dominant talents are, almost by necessity of how modern communication happens, filtered through L-dominant skills?
• Do some cultures, perhaps in Europe, Africa or Asia, have more balanced views of the mind (e.g. Yin/Yang)? The United States has a poor view of art and architecture relative to Europe, if not other parts of the world. So is this an American problem? If so, why did we become so L-Dominant when other cultures did not? One argument is the Enlightenment of the 18th century sent Europe, and America, on a logic dominant world view, with Descartes’s “I think therefore I am” (ab)used to overstate the importance of rationality over other modes of mind. Pink doesn’t ask these questions or hint at their possible significance (If these themes are embedded in our history, culture and government, how do we remove/modify them?).

Posted in Book reviews, books, creative thinking | No Comments »

Between teaching a course on creative thinking at UW, and writing a book on innovation, I’ve read dozens of books on creative thinking, from handbooks, to games, to psychology literature. Here are the four books I’d recommend as a starter library: they range in focus from handbooks to theory to history.

1. Sparks of Genius: the 13 thinking tools of the worlds greatest creators, Root-Bernstein. This book examines how some of the great creators did what they did. Each chapter takes a tool, such as playing, modeling, imaging or empathizing, and explains how that approach was used by different masters. Provides inspirational historical context and insight to the techniques many of us creators use.
2. Applied Imagination, Alex Osborn. This is the grandfather of all business creativity books. This is by the man who coined the term brainstorming, and it’s an easy read on how to do it right. There are theory, technique and exercises here, it’s well written, and although there isn’t much supporting research I bet you’ll buy the common sense he offers.
3. 101 Creative problem solving techniques, James M. Higgins. Many creativity authors annoy by focusing on their own views, rather than the techniques. This book doesn’t. It’s a flat listing of over 100 creativity games and techniques, each covered in a page or less with instructions for how to use the technique. It’s an ugly, 70s style book (even the recent 2nd edition) but it’s a better reference than almost any of the creativity games/technique books I’ve seen.
4. Creativity: Flow and the psychology of discovery, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Mihaly has several books with Flow in the title, but this is my favorite hands down. It’s based on his interviews with creators in many fields and their own perceptions of how/why they do what they do.

The Myths of Innovation book has an extended set of bibliographies that goes beyond this, but if you asked me to pick four books for the creative person, these would be the set.

Posted in Innovation, Myths of Innovation, books, creative thinking | 3 Comments »