Category Archives: Business

Review: Patrick Lencioni – The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team (S)

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The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team

Patrick Lencioni

“Lencioni reveals the five dysfunctions which go to the very heart of why teams even the best ones-often struggle. He outlines a powerful model and actionable steps that can be used to overcome these common hurdles and build a cohesive, effective team. Just as with his other books, Lencioni has written a compelling fable with a powerful yet deceptively simple message for all those who strive to be exceptional team leaders.”

I love this author to start with and couldn’t wait to read it! It lived up to expectations and was a great read. It’s a similar style to the author’s other novels. That is to say, most of the book is a fable and then it had the theory at the end. The fable makes it relatable to the reader. As the reader you can picture the characters in the fable and have likely been in the same situations as them. You get caught up and invested in the characters, also wanting them to succeed.

The fable is structured in a way of very short little chapters. This is great if you need to put it down and you can still remember where you are up to (I did not want to put it down though).

I love that the author didn’t try and put too many theories into the book. As per the title there are only 5 dysfunctions of a team. Really that’s all you need to discuss so it isn’t over complicated, and it is possible to fully explore each. In the theory section at the end, the author gives practical examples of how to test of each of the dysfunctions. This includes examples of a good or bad team and a team questionnaire so you have something to take away and are able to evaluate your own team.

Overall, I would read it again. I recommend this book for anyone that is in a team. The book goes through it with the executive team of a large organisation, however is can be applied to a small business team of 5 or so as well.

Review: Jamie Cunningham – Jumping off the Hamster Wheel (S)

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Jumping off the Hamster Wheel: How to run your business so you sleep at night

Jamie Cunningham

“Business owners need to know much more than a core skillset, but how do you figure out the right things to know? In Jumping Off the Hamster Wheel, award-winning business coach and CEO Jamie Cunningham provides a comprehensive and practical how-to guide for small business owners who want to build a profitable and sustainable business.”
This book was just average. I didn’t have any excitement from it or learn anything new. I guess the purpose of the book was to be a ‘only business book you need’ to learn most of what you need to successfully run a business. It’s basically all other business book theories in one. So I guess it did achieve this, and if you think about it like that, then this book is great.

If you have read many other business books like me, then you won’t really enjoy it. It’s nothing new to learn and wasn’t all that engaging or said in a different way. It started out promising for the first half, however after that didn’t seem to hold my attention. I kept putting off finishing it because I knew I would have to review it – and I just didn’t feel strongly enough about it to write much about it. 3 stars from me.

Review: Mike Southon & Chris West – The Beermat Entrepreneur (S)

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The Beermat Entrepreneur: What You Really Need to Know to Turn a Good Idea into a Great Business

Mike Southon & Chris West

“Every business starts with a bright idea, and many a bright idea has been hatched in a pub scribbled on a nearby discarded beermat. But how do you turn the moment of inspiration into a well oiled plan? who do you need to talk to? How do you find the cash to back the idea? How many people do you need to work with to get the idea off the ground? And how on earth do you find them?”

I picked this book up for something lighter to read. This was lighter in comparison to other leadership books where you are constantly learning new things and wanting to implement them. The Beermat Entrepreneur was perfect for this! As you can imagine, the book was in a relaxed style. I could relate and laughed to some of the typical business things that happen at each stage of the business life cycle.

The book takes you through a typical entrepreneur journey starting from the business idea in the pub with mates, through to implementing this business and growing it to the “mighty oak” phase. It obviously can’t cover everything you will come across along the way of building your business but it does cover quite a lot of the typical obstacles you may come across. However, the book doesn’t go into great detail of each item. If you have a particular business issue you want resolved, this isn’t the book for you.

Overall it was a really enjoyable read. Not for detailed insight but is a great overview of the entrepreneur. If you are thinking about becoming an entrepreneur or wondering what the life of an entrepreneur is like, then it’s a great read for you. 4 stars.

Review: Adam Ferrier – Stop Listening to the Customer (S)

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Stop Listening to the Customer: Try Hearing your Brand Instead
Adam Ferrier

“The customer is not always right. Far from it. What the customer wants is often at odds with what is best for the business or brand. Adam draws on his years of creative agency experience, the wisdom of other voices, as well as marketing science to outline the dangers of listening to the customer too much and reveals what you can do about it. This book will show you how to build a strong brand or business.”

Overall the concept of the book is that the customer is not always correct. The customer doesn’t always know what they want, and even if they do, it might not be the correct thing for your company. The premise of the book is to put your brand and what your company stands for above everything else, including the customer.

I do agree with this premise. However, the book didn’t execute this the best it could have been. The author seemed to jump around a lot and it didn’t have a focus of what each chapter was about. The author also jumped around with short stories, some of which were good but some which could have been removed.

A good half of the book was convincing the reader that the customer is not always right. As the reader I was convinced of this rather early on! I wanted to know more about the author’s point of why the business should be hearing the brand instead. There was hardly any of this section of the book.

The author didn’t seem to explain their point and their side enough. It kind of felt like it ended abruptly and I wanted to hear more of how to actually listen to your brand. At what stages of the business life cycle should you be listening to brand and how much? The author doesn’t actually answer this question.

Overall there was not enough actionable material to take away from the book.  Unless you are particularly interested in short stories or the author, I wouldn’t recommend reading this book. 2 stars from Suzanne.

Review: Miller, Davis & Roos-Olsson – Everyone Deserves a Great Manager (S)

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Everyone Deserves a Great Manager: The 6 Critical Practices for Leading a Team
Scott Jeffrey Miller, Todd Davis, Victoria Roos-Olsson

“A practical must-read, FranklinCovey’s Everyone Deserves a Great Manager is the essential guide for the millions of people all over the world making the challenging and rewarding leap to manager. Organized under four main roles every manager is expected to fill, Everyone Deserves a Great Manager focuses on how to lead yourself, people, teams, and change. Readers can start anywhere and go everywhere with this guide—depending on their current problem or time constraint. They can pick up a helpful tip in ten minutes or glean an entire skillset with deeper reading. With skill-based chapters that cover managerial skills like one-on-ones, giving feedback, delegating, hiring, building team culture, and leading remote teams, the book also includes more than thirty unique tools, such as a prep worksheets and a list of behavioral questions for your next interview.”

I picked up this book as I was after some actual practical ways to improve myself as a leader and manager. That was exactly what I got! I loved that it had practices to do including a chart of “common mindset” and “effective mindset” for you as a leader to compare yourself in the areas and see where you can improve.

The book was written by three authors and the writing flowed really well. Each of the authors added little bits here and there throughout, including short stories or examples which helped explain that given chapter. The book had practical exercises to do in each chapter, as well as an end of chapter notes section where you can write your personal action items.

These were not like other books where they provide general advice and no solid goal. This book included in the practical sections the exact wording of coaching questions and practices to use. That gave it a full 5 stars in my eyes.

This is the kind of book you can’t read all at once. Like I did, you need to read a single section or chapter. Then, go away and do the exercises and put your new learning in place. It’s a lot of doing and you definitely need to refer to the book again as reference or to re-read it. I would definitely recommend this book for anyone who has direct reports under them. I think it’s a must-read for the leadership team of any business, small or large.

Review: Cass R. Sunstein & Reid Hastie – Wiser

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Wiser
Getting Beyond Groupthink to Make Groups Smarter
Cass R. Sunstein & Reid Hastie

“Since the beginning of human history, people have made decisions in groups—first in families and villages, and now as part of companies, governments, school boards, religious organizations, or any one of countless other groups. And having more than one person to help decide is good because the group benefits from the collective knowledge of all of its members, and this results in better decisions. Right?”

This book was not for me. Although it’s in the “management” section of the library’s non-fiction, it’s all about theory and there is nothing practical or examples of what to do next. Not only is it theory, but it also doesn’t show “the right answer” at the conclusion of the theories. It basically says this can happen, and this can happen and this can also happen. It has no point or message that the book is conveying.

The message of the book is that group decisions are hard due to a number of reasons. These include: an individual’s bias, and how humans tend to agree with others – this causes a cascade of errors. Although the book is structured in chapters of “how groups fail” and then “how groups succeed”, the chapters didn’t really mean anything. The authorities continued to use examples of how groups fail in the succeeding section. Honestly I still don’t know the “solution” to this problem, and how to succeed.

The authors mentioned the same examples more than once, including writing that they would refer to it again in a later chapter. I don’t know why it couldn’t just be fully explained then and there? By the end of the Introduction I had already been convinced that groups fail in their logical thinking all the time, and I was ready for the solutions. I then fell asleep, lost interest and put the book down several times. The only semi-redeeming factors were the few story examples in the tournaments section and the fact that the authors used references for their work.

I did finish this book, but it’s only getting 2 stars. Don’t bother – there are better things out there. Anything is better than this.

Review: Harvard Business Review – Leading Virtual Teams (S)

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Leading Virtual Teams
HBR 20-Minute Manager Series
Harvard Business Review

“Leading any team involves managing people, technical oversight, and project administration, but leaders of virtual teams perform these functions from afar. Don’t have much time? Get up to speed fast on the most essential business skills with HBR’s 20-Minute Manager series. Whether you need a crash course or a brief refresher, each book in the series is a concise, practical primer that will help you brush up on a key management topic.”

This book is a small, short quick read. It’s a nice little pocket size read. Unfortunately, I don’t think I really got anything out of it. It has some nice tips, including exact questions for team surveys or improving in general. However I felt I have already implemented most, if not all, of the things mentioned in it. I guess it’s a nice little reminder that I’m on the right track.

This book was published a few years ago, but would be even more applicable today given COVID-19 and teams being forced to work from home. I think overall it’s a good little read and has a few helpful pointers if you are new to leading virtual teams. Borrow it from the library, don’t bother buying it. You probably won’t want to read it more than once.

Review: Sarah Liu – The World We See (S)

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The World We See
Leadership Lessons From Australia’s Iconic Change Makers
Sarah Liu

“The World We See is not just a compilation of leadership insights from 30 iconic Australian leaders, but a collective declaration that we will create a world where gender parity is not a dream, but a reality. In this book, female and male leaders share their life lessons and vision for a better tomorrow where every single one of us, regardless of gender, can rise up to get us one step closer to the world we envision.”

Suzi picked this book up from the library, so the following review is hers. I was after a book that wasn’t theory based for a change, and had more real life examples and stories to learn from. he title misled me, sadly. “Leadership lessons from Australia’s iconic change makers” – from this, I really expected actual lessons, stories and examples. However, what I received was 2-3 pages from each leader of wishy washy, meant to be inspiring and motivating, crap. This was the type of motivating crap that says “lighten up” or “the measure of success must be yours” or “failure isn’t falling down, it’s remaining where you’ve fallen”. This was paired with a quote on a coloured background page in between each leader’s lesson. If I wanted motivational sentences, I’d read ‘The Secret’!

To top it off, the whole book is also about gender inequality, and is aimed to be motivating to women in the workforce. I don’t have a problem with this being mentioned, but it felt like every leader had to say something empowering to women in their 3 page lesson, which was a waste and not necessary. This also included males saying they are open to women in the workforce – I bloody well hope so! I personally don’t feel that women need anymore empowering or motivating than men, and if they do they aren’t going to get it from this book. Everyone is equal, end of discussion. Gender diversity doesn’t need to be made into a big deal. Maybe it’s just my industry, but I work with more women than men, including women in high level roles, so I don’t see it as an issue.

Overall, what I got out of this book was nothing. It was a waste of my time. I felt that the leaders included could have used their few pages better to tell an actual story with a leadership lesson in it. Not fluff with coloured backgrounded quoted pages that can be found on the internet. I didn’t finish reading it. It might be non-fiction and I don’t have to rate it, but it’s hardly worth a single star.

Review: Patrick Lencioni – The Motive (S)

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The Motive
Why So Many Leaders Abdicate Their Most Important Responsibilities
Patrick M. Lencioni

“New York Times best-selling author Patrick Lencioni has written a dozen books that focus on how leaders can build teams and lead organizations. In The Motive, he shifts his attention toward helping them understand the importance of why they’re leading in the first place.”

I absolutely love Lencioni’s books and this one is no exception! Like most of his other books (except this notable exception), this is written as a leadership fable. The fable is used to explain his business concepts so that you can see them in action. He then also goes through the theories in the more traditional business book sense at the end.

The main character in the fable is the typical CEO leader who currently delegates out his leader responsibilities and is more involved in the areas he is comfortable in. I loved the plot twists and turns and couldn’t wait to keep reading it. I would have read it in one sitting if I didn’t have to go to work. I loved the ending and thought it suited well and was needed! The main point that the author makes is that leaders tend to fall into the trap of doing the things they enjoy or are good at. This means that they are too involved in the day to day operating tasks of the business and not focusing on the harder leadership tasks that can only be done by the leader, and are required for the business to grow.

It’s shorter than the average book, however it doesn’t necessarily need to be any longer. Nevertheless, similarly to Lencioni’s other books (eg. DEATH by Meeting), I would have liked a little more in the fast forward following the fable further into examples of how to actually do the correct things. If you can fit in and explain your point in a short book, then there is nothing wrong with it. I listened to this book as an audiobook. Although it’s not read by the author, it was still read with feeling.

If you lead other people or aspire to lead other people, this is a must-read. It’s not just for CEOs but also for small business directors, smaller team leaders and middle management. It reminds you of your ‘WHY’ you are a leader and reinforces that leaders must focus on big picture tasks rather than operations.

I want to say 5 stars as I love all of Lenconis books. In saying that for it to be a 5 stars it should be a re-read and I find it hard to re-read the fables after I’ve heard the story. I’d likely read the key take away points though. 4.5 stars?

Review: Patrick Lencioni – The Advantage (S)

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The Advantage:
Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business
Patrick Lencioni

“There is a competitive advantage out there, arguably more powerful than any other. Is it superior strategy? Faster innovation? Smarter employees? No, New York Times best-selling author, Patrick Lencioni, argues that the seminal difference between successful companies and mediocre ones has little to do with what they know and how smart they are and more to do with how healthy they are.”

This book is a bit of a disappointment from this author. The way it comes across is as a kind of summary of his 5 other books. His other 5 books are fables and go into each item in more detail. The idea of this book was to put each thing in context, however I felt that was lost. He said at the start that you didn’t have to have read his 5 other books first before this one.

I had read 3/5 at the time so I continued reading. He ended up providing a summary of each as he went, whereas it could have been better if he said read the 5 books first before reading this one, because he repeated parts of those books.

It had some good take away things, as in 6 questions that you go away and answer about your business.
1. Why do we exist?
2. How do we behave?
3. What do we do?
4. How will we succeed?
5. What is most important, now?
6. Who must do what?

Overall, it’s just not as good as his other books at all. There are some good parts, but disappointingly it’s written in the normal business type style book not in a fable sense like his others. The start was good as I was hooked early on, but I felt it went down hill at the end (and felt a bit rushed, honestly). It’s not a re-read, or a buy (I borrowed it through Scribd), but I still want to read the rest of his books.