Book Summary Archives

14Sep 2020 by Steve Musica No Comments

Solve Problems Before They Happen

This is a summary of the 2020 Dan Heath book, Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen. Dan and his brother Chip have previously written several bestsellers we have summarized, Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard and Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work. Upstream covers a key Lean continuous Improvement topic: problem solving to root cause. Often the most effective (and least expensive) way to fix a problem is by preventing it from ever occurring. “So often we find ourselves reacting to problems, putting out fires, dealing with emergencies. We should shift our attention to preventing them.” 3 Barriers to Overcome Heath begins by sharing some common thinking barriers we need to overcome as we move upstream. Problem Blindness:…

10Jul 2020 by Steve Musica 2 Comments

7 Habits for Highly Effective People

Summary

The current (July, 2020) racial tension in the United States has led me to recall one of my favorite productivity lessons: “seek first to understand, then to be understood.” This is Habit 5 from Stephen R. Covey’s bestseller The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Since Covey’s book is now 30 years old, I wonder how many millennials have never read the book or learned its timeless lessons? Here is a brief summary of the key lessons from the 7 Habits. Stephen R. Covey – R.I.P. Habit 1: Be Proactive Whenever something impacts you, YOU are in control of the response. Effective people choose to take the initiative and act back. The key lesson in Habit 1 is understanding whether you control, influence, or only have concern about an…

18May 2020 by Steve Musica No Comments

Ten Lessons from Built to Last

Summary

Authors Jim Collins (author of the best-seller Good to Great) and Jerry Porras compared 18 sets of long-running and successful companies to learn what differentiated the visionary company from the comparison company. Their research identified key traits and habits prevalent in the more successful companies and formed the basis of their book, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies. This post summarizes ten lessons of visionary companies from the book and, as a bonus, offers six suggestions for leaders to better align an organization. You don’t need a great idea to start a great company. Few of the visionary companies in the book began with even any specific idea. Visionary companies often get off to a slow start, but set BHAGs (below) and continue to experiment with ideas…

17Mar 2020 by Steve Musica No Comments

The Infinite Game

Summary

This month we summarize the 2019 book The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek. This is Sinek’s third book and follows the 2014 bestseller, Leaders Eat Last. There are two kinds of games. Finite games have known players and fixed rules. As I write this sentence, I am watching the finite game of football. The game has two known teams pitted against one another with referees enforcing the rules. One team will win the game by having scored more points as the time expires. Infinite games are played by known and unknown players. There are no agreed-upon rules, and no finish line or clock signaling the end of the contest. There is, therefore, no way to “win” an infinite game; the best you can do is keep playing. Sinek notes that…

25Jan 2020 by Steve Musica No Comments

Leadership Lessons from Extreme Ownership

Summary

This post shares the lessons from the 2015 book Extreme Ownership: How US Navy SEALs Lead and Win by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. Willink and Babin were Navy SEALs who led the most highly decorated special operations unit of the Iraq war. The book demonstrates how SEAL leadership principles apply to business. Each chapter describes a situation from the war in Iraq in the insurgent occupied Ramadi where Babin led a unit that reported to Willink. Stories from the battlefield demonstrate each principle, then the authors define the principle and share an example from a business situation that further demonstrates the principle. Many of the principles are well covered in other leadership books, but several are lesser-known. This post will describe the leadership principles themselves. If you enjoy reading…

18Nov 2019 by Steve Musica No Comments

Traction/Entrepreneurial Operating System

Summary

Several clients and trusted partners we work with have recently implemented some of the ideas discussed in the 2011 book, Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business by Gino Wickman. The book introduces an Entrepreneurial Operating System® (EOS) that small and medium-sized enterprises can use to simplify how they grow their business. EOS® simplifies the many aspects of an organization into six core components as shown below. We will explain these six components and how they work together in a powerful system. EOS contains good tools for a small business if you don't already have a management system. None of the six components in EOS are novel, but the overall system uses the KISS method (Keep it Simple, Stupid) to help a business owner focus. VISION A…

16Sep 2019 by Steve Musica No Comments

The Checklist Manifesto

Summary

This post summarizes a wonderful book that is celebrating its ten-year anniversary. Atul Gawande wrote the best-seller The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right in 2009. It was the third book by the author and has become influential in healthcare and beyond. Gawande is a general surgeon at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, a staff writer for The New Yorker, and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health. In June of 2018 he was named CEO of the recently formed healthcare venture Haven, owned by Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JP Morgan Chase. I’ll let Gawande summarize the core idea from his book: “Avoidable failures are common and persistent, not to mention demoralizing and frustrating, across many fields –…

28Jun 2019 by Steve Musica 1 Comment

Lean Startup Thinking

Summary

This blog post is a continuation of last month's 'The Need for Lean Innovation' where we introduce the concept of Lean innovation and make the case for why businesses and organizations need to prioritize learning through experimentation. One recent book that captures many principles of Lean Innovation is The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. Ries applies several concepts of Lean thinking to the realm of startups, where there is huge uncertainty about the success of the innovation and business model. A few of the key ideas are: Working smarter, not harder: the key question is not “can this product be built?” but rather “should this product be built?” and “will this result in a sustainable business?” Developing a Minimal Viable Product (MVP): the MVP should be easy to build and…

22Mar 2019 by Steve Musica No Comments

Ideas for Action from The Culture Code

Summary

Daniel Coyle wrote the bestselling book The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups in 2018 as a follow-up to his bestselling book The Talent Code. Both books are well researched and highly recommended reads by Lean East. This post summarizes several of the “ideas for action” from the book into a basic leadership action plan. Culture is not something you are, it is something you do. Coyle focuses on three keys to building a cohesive, motivated culture – build safety, share vulnerability and establish purpose. The book shares his research on each of these areas and each section has ideas any leader can implement to improve their organization’s culture. Below are 20 ideas you can begin implementing today. Please share with others and leave a comment below if…

30Dec 2018 by Steve Musica 6 Comments

7 Lessons from Good to Great

Lesson

Influential management professor Jim Collins released the popular Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...and Others Don’t in 2001. The book is really a research project led by Collins as a follow-up to his book Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies. He researched hundreds of companies to identify sets of “good” companies where one became “great” while a close competitor failed. Collins and his team tried to discover what the “great” companies did differently from the comparison companies and the general market. The book is a bestseller that has become a management strategy classic on how to grow a successful company and our team has given the book as a gift to numerous organizational leaders. Key points can be summarized by the image below – this…