VOICES is about listening. It is easy to hear but difficult to acknowledge the voices around us. We can experience the sounds but not always the meanings. This blog hopes to adjust our collective filters, stimulating questions and promoting conversation about ideas both professional and personal.
A Whole New Mind
A Whole New Mind
by Daniel H Pink
Daniel Pink’s book A Whole New Mind, Why Right-Brainers will Rule the Future is worth your time. Left-brain skills (logical, analytical, sequential), while still necessary, are becoming a commodity, Pink argues, while right-brain talents (artistic, empathic, more about context than content) will be at a premium in the future. Pink writes with charm and humor about subjects that heretofore were rarely, if ever, charming or funny.
Blue Ocean Strategy
Blue Ocean Strategy
by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne
Blue Ocean Strategy presents a systematic approach to making the competition irrelevant by redefining what you do in ways that separate you from your competitors. While the concepts are sound, knowing the rules doesn’t make you a player. Long-term success is never that easy or more people would be successful.
Freakonomics
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
Most books that have anything to do with economics are either dumbed-down or so full of jargon they read like a text message. This book makes the theoretical tangible by connecting its concepts with real-life events and real people. While there is great deal to question in this book there is also a great deal to consider.
Human Dynamics: A New Framework for Understanding People and Realizing the Potential in Our Organizations
Human Dynamics: A New Framework for Understanding People and Realizing the Potential in Our Organizations
by Dr. Sandra Seagal and David Horne
A fascinating overview of how we function and interact with one another. The work of Dr. Sandra Seagal and David Horne, Human Dynamics offers a “systemic approach to the complexities and wonders of how we process information, learn, communicate, maintain well-being, respond to stress and develop as human beings, both individually and collectively.” These ideas represent the next generation of understanding how relationships of all kinds act and interact with each other. You can’t help but come away with insight. Available at humandynamics.com.
The Tao of Physics
The Tao of Physics
by Fritjof Capra
The Tao of Physics, first published in 1975, explores the parallels between modern physics and Eastern philosophy. This is not the “blocked box” intersection that it might first appear to be. The arguments are well-grounded and support complex, even seemingly conflicting concepts. The real value of this read is the permission it provides to think about familiar subjects in new ways with new and more effective tools for understanding and interpretation.
Unstuck
Unstuck: A Tool for Yourself, Your Team, and Your World
by Keith Yamashita and Sandra Spataro
Unstuck is a quick, interesting read for anyone who wants to motivate themselves or their team through a difficult time, task or transition. Written by Keith Yamashita and Sandra Spataro, Unstuck is full of diagrams and tools that help a reader not only to understand the process but to implement it as well.
Money Ball, The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
by Michael Lewis
All evidence to the contrary this book is not about baseball. The book illustrates the futility of attempting to improve the quality of performance of any closed system without the willingness to reexamine how success is measured. Additionally, Lewis contends that by redefining success using new goals with the same data, innovation is inevitable. Money Ball demonstrates that applied creativity can change the whole game.
A Book of Five Rings
A Book Of Five Rings
by Miyamoto Musashi
This book of martial arts tactics and practices was written in 1645 by a master Japanese swordsman, successful in over 60 combats. But the real value of the book today is when its philosophy is applied to business. Musashi’s wisdom and experience seen through a 21st century lens can make clear the decision making process, the identification of goals and the methods for achieving them as well as the ability to recognize success and satisfaction in all of its forms.
Missives
Perception has much more to do with accepting reality than appreciating potential. Knowing where we are before starting a journey is paramount if we ever expect to get to where we’re going. Some opportunities are so attractive it is often difficult to separate the idea from the objective. By carefully affirming or disproving the perceived limitations of each opportunity, serious disappointments can be avoided. Success is a given when opportunities match your goals.
Noted & Notable
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
By Daniel Pink
Daniel Pink, the working man’s Malcolm Gladwell, has written a new book called DRIVE: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. Like his first book A Whole New Mind, Pink points out connections between the obscure and the obvious. His book pits the latest scientific discoveries about the mind against the outmoded wisdom that claims people can only be motivated by the hope of gain and the fear of loss. Pink packages ideas into applications providing employers and employees with the methods and the means to get more of what they want, the way they want it. Don’t let the cover design scare you off. This is career-changing stuff.
Have a New Kid by Friday: How to Change Your Child’s Attitude, Behavior & Character in 5 Days
By Dr. Kevin Leman
In Dr. Kevin Leman’s book Have a New Kid by Friday: How to Change Your Child’s Attitude, Behavior & Character in 5 Days, he insists that the only way to correct bad behavior in children is to change your reactions to their behavior. Anyone who has dealt with a strong-willed child knows that it is no easy task to turn bad behavior around. Bestselling author and psychologist Dr. Kevin Leman can help to make a difference. With his signature wit and encouragement, Dr. Leman offers hope and real, practical, doable strategies for regaining control and becoming the parents our children need. Not to say that badly behaved adults are like children but the application of Dr. Leman’s ideas to adult relationships with similar issues is a bonus.
Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy
By Jane Leavy
You don’t need to be a fan of professional baseball to appreciate to a true professional. Jane Leavy’s book Sandy Koufax, A Lefty’s Legacy has more to do with the man and his choices that any game. Professional sports are all about the numbers. In his last four seasons Sandy Koufax’s numbers were the best ever. With a career half as long as the average pitcher, Koufax set a standard for performance that was twice as successful as any pitcher of his era. However, Koufax the person transcends the player by keeping the game he loved in perspective with who he was.
One example: In 1965, Sandy Koufax refused to pitch in Game One of the World Series because it was Yom Kippur, a Jewish holy day. Koufax’s decision and his pitching brilliance remain a source of pride among devout American Jews, even those who aren’t baseball fans. Unable to sustain that same level of performance for health reasons, Sandy retired one year later at the peak of his career. He became the youngest player ever to be inducted into baseball’s Hall of Fame. Sandy Koufax defined success on his own terms, using is own standards.
Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won
By Tobias Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim
Much of what goes on in sports can be explained by incentives, fears and a desire for approval. You just have to know where to look. Scorecasting is the sports equivalent of Freakonomics. Tobias J. Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim have written the most important and fascinating sports book in years. Athletes and coaches are encouraged to challenge conventional strategies with calculated risks, producing unconventional results. Just like in life, a little risk is usually a very worthwhile thing.
The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
By Jeffrey Toobin
Jeffrey Toobin’s book, The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, explains for the novice and explores for the devotee the mysteries behind the black robes. It articulates the rise of the conservative movement through the legal world and its acceleration in 2005 with the death of Justice Rehnquist and resignation of Justice O’Connor within a few months of each other. This is a fascinating story about complex and brilliant jurists who are equally spoiled and elevated by the human condition.
All Facts Considered: The Essential Library of Inessential Knowledge
By Kee Malesky
What is plastic soup? How long is a New York minute? What building did Elvis leave last? Who were the Olmecs, and the Eight Immortals? Get the answers to these and many other vexing questions in NPR librarian Kee Malesky’s compendium of fascinating facts on subjects ranging from history to science to the arts. It’s the ideal gift for every inquiring mind that wants to know.
The Art of the Idea: And How it Can Change Your Life.
By John Hunt
John Hunt’s unassuming book is all about how to see, the art of observation and what we gain by taking the time to experience the everyday in new and unexpected ways. This is not a “feel good” book, something left over from the 60s, but a beautifully written and illustrated owner’s manual for our own senses. Instructive? Yes. Inventive and imaginative? For sure. Chapters like Lemmings Have Plans Too and Expediency is Not an Idea are but a few subjects worthy of your time.
A Fine Line: How design strategies are shaping the future of business
By Hartmut Esslinger / founder of Frog Design
After getting past Hartmut Esslinger's (Frog Design) sometimes condescending-sounding manner, he has a great deal to say worth hearing. Filled with process-driven strategies that are almost clairvoyant, reading the book is like hanging on to a bucking bronco. Sony, Apple and Lufthansa did and gained financially and culturally.
Outliers
By Malcolm Gladwell
The latest book from Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and Blink is the best of the three. Outliers focuses on identifying success and failure in all of their forms and conditions. His book is smart, fun and disturbing. Readers will discover that the distance between winners and losers is about 10,000 hours of work plus the luck of circumstances and your birthday. There are several Aha! moments that if applied might change your life.
A Whole New Mind
by Daniel H Pink
Daniel Pink’s book A Whole New Mind, Why Right-Brainers will Rule the Future is worth your time. Left-brain skills (logical, analytical, sequential), while still necessary, are becoming a commodity, Pink argues, while right-brain talents (artistic, empathic, more about context than content) will be at a premium in the future. Pink writes with charm and humor about subjects that heretofore were rarely, if ever, charming or funny.