Summer book recommendations

Here are some book recommendations for your summer vacation. I have divided them into four categories: The must reads!, Great reads!, Lean & Leadership and finally Change  & Coaching

The must reads!

This is Lean by Niklas Modig, Pär Åhlström

Kanban by David J. Andersson

The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt

Toyota Kata by Mike Rother

The Toyota Way by Jeffrey Liker

Great reads! 

LESS!

I’m happy to announce that the collection of business transformation essays called LESS!, that I co-authored, is now published.

It is free and you can get it here.

When you have read it, please write a review at GoodReads.

This is a book of twelve essays written by me and my co-authors who all work in the trenches, building business, coaching leaders and shaping the future. This book contains the following main topics:

• Beyond Budgeting–Changing the way the organization is managed from command and control to an empowered, adaptive and agile model
• Radical Management–Rethink the fundamental assumptions about management
• Strategic Navigation–Use OODA Loops and the ancient Chinese 36 Stratagems to outthink the competition
• Lean–Do more with LESS! resources
• Agile–working software, no pain
• Systems Thinking–An easier, better way to think about organizations
• Complexity Thinking–Radical insights about organizations and management coming from the complexity sciences

The title of my essay is “Standard work in Software development”. In this essay I explore the application of the Lean tool called Standard work in software development. You can find my blog posts on the subject here.

I want to give a special thank you to Henrik Mårtensson for his tireless efforts of editing and making the book ready for publishing. Thank you!

Also a thank you to Vasco Duarte and the LESS 2011 conference organizers of making this happen.

 

The LESS! authors

Foreword by John Hagel III – @jhagel 

Dan Bergh Johnsson – @danbjson

Bjarte Bogsnes – @bbogsnes

Peter Bunce

Steve Denning – @stevedenning

Ola Ellnestam – @ellnestam

Håkan Forss – @hakanforss

Brian Hawkes

Maarit Laanti

Henrik Mårtensson – @Kallokain

Karl Scotland – @kjscotland

Ari-Pekka Skarp – @apskarp

James Sutton – @LeanSE

Audio books I highly recommend

I try to read a lot of books but I’m not a fast reader. I also spend some time more or less every day walking the dog, doing grocery shopping, commuting to and from work and so on. I have found that listening to audio books and podCast are a great way to learn. Here is a list of highly recommended audio books I have read.

James P. Womack

• Lean Thinking- Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation, Revised and Updated
• Lean Solutions- How Companies and Customers Can Create Value and Wealth Together

Stephen A. Ruffa

• Going Lean- How the Best Companies Apply Lean Manufacturing Principles

Jeffrey Liker

• The Toyota Way

Dan Ariely

• Predictably Irrational- The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
• The Upside of Irrationality- The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home

Eliyahu M. Goldratt

• The Goal- A Process of Ongoing Improvement- Revised Third Edition
• Beyond the Goal- Theory of Constraints

Dan & Chip Heath

• Switch- How to Change Things When Change Is Hard
• Made to Stick

John P. Kotter

• A Sense of Urgency
• The Heart of Change- Real-Life Stories of How People Change Their Organizations
• Our Iceberg is Melting- Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions
• Buy-In- Saving Your Good Idea from Getting Shot

Daniel H. Pink

• A Whole New Mind- Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future
• Drive- The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us

Emi Osono, Norihiko Shimizu, Hirotaka Takeuchi

• Extreme Toyota- Radical Contradictions That Drive Success at the World’s Best Manufacturer

Louis V. Gerstner

• Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance– Inside IBM’s Historic Turnaround

Peter M. Senge

• The Fifth Discipline- The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization

Patrick Lencioni

• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team- A Leadership Fable

Shawn Achor

• The Happiness Advantage- The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Perfo