Intrenion

Books as Frameworks: Collaboration & Organization

Table of Contents

Building Successful Communities of Practice (Emily Webber)

  1. Why You Need Communities of Practice in Your Organisation
  2. The Stages of a Community of Practice
  3. Creating the Right Environment
  4. The Leadership of a Community of Practice
  5. Identifying Who Is in the Community
  6. Becoming a Community
  7. Getting Value from Community Interactions
  8. Identifying Skills Gaps to Work On
  9. Growing the Community of Practice
  10. Self-Sustaining Communities of Practice
  11. Conclusion

Corporate Rebels (Joost Minnaar et al.)

  1. From Profit to Purpose & Values
  2. From Hierarchical Pyramid to Network of Teams
  3. From Directive to Supportive Leadership
  4. From Plan & Predict to Experiment & Adapt
  5. From Rules & Control to Freedom & Trust
  6. From Centralised to Distributed Authority
  7. From Secrecy to Radical Transparency
  8. From Job Descriptions to Talent & Mastery

Hack Your Bureaucracy (Marina Nitze et al.)

Define the Problem

  1. Talk to Real People
  2. Be Your Own Customer
  3. Look Between the Silos
  4. Play the Newbie Card
  5. Remember Employee Needs
  6. Beware of Red Teams and Problem Lists

Learn Your Org

  1. Figure Out the Real Org Chart
  2. Understand Incentives and Risks
  3. Know the Consequences
  4. Understand Why
  5. Try the Normal Way First
  6. Relax Fixed Constraints
  7. Beware the Obvious Answer

Pitch the Solution

  1. Write a One-Pager
  2. Think of the End at the Beginning
  3. Set Your North Star
  4. Use the Power of Visual Design
  5. Consult a Thesaurus
  6. Show the Hard Numbers
  7. Tailor Your Pitch
  8. Do the Work Outside the Meeting
  9. Sell, Baby, Sell

Start Small and Build Momentum

  1. Find Your Paperclip
  2. Act “As If”
  3. Delivery Is the Strategy
  4. Go Second
  5. Give Real Demos
  6. Pilot Is the Password
  7. Define Metrics Up Front
  8. Sweat the Small Stuff
  9. Make the Bureaucracy Work for You
  10. Strangle the Mainframe

Build Your Team

  1. Cultivate the Karass
  2. Give Credit Liberally
  3. Find the Doers
  4. Make It Easy for the Other Person
  5. Don’t Be a Tourist
  6. Make Your Job
  7. Create People Flow
  8. Give People a Choice, and a Chance
  9. Stab People in the Chest

Make It Stick

  1. Use the Bureaucracy Against Itself
  2. Pick Up the Pen
  3. Use Leadership Changes to Your Advantage
  4. Always Be Ready for Five Minutes with the Head Honcho
  5. Don’t Waste a Crisis
  6. Leverage the Big Bosses
  7. Work from the Outside In
  8. Get Public Commitments
  9. Pay the Box Guy
  10. Pick Your Battles
  11. Don’t Try to Make the Bureaucracy Care
  12. Play the Long Game
  13. Create a New Org
  14. Stay Calm and Carry On
  15. Leave Your Bureaucracy Better Off
  16. Conclusion

Mastering Collaboration (Gretchen Anderson)

Creating the Right Environment

  1. Enlist Everyone
  2. Give Everyone a Role
  3. Enable Trust and Respect
  4. Make Space

Setting Clear Direction

  1. Make a Plan
  2. Set Clear and Urgent Objectives

Exploring Solutions

  1. Explore Many Possibilities
  2. Make Sound Decisions
  3. Find Out What Others Think

Communicating Clearly

  1. Communicate Transparently
  2. Tell the Story
  3. Conclusion

No Rules Rules (Reed Hastings et al.)

First Steps to a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility

  1. First Build Up Talent Density: A Great Workplace Is Stunning Colleagues
  2. Then Increase Candor: Say What You Really Think (with Positive Intent)
  3. Now Begin Removing Controls: Remove Vacation Policy
  4. Remove Travel and Expense Approvals

Next Steps to a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility

  1. Fortify Talent Density: Pay Top of Personal Market
  2. Pump Up Candor: Open the Books
  3. Now Release More Controls: No Decision-making Approvals Needed

Techniques to Reinforce a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility

  1. Max Up Talent Density: The Keeper Test
  2. Max Up Candor: A Circle of Feedback
  3. And Eliminate Most Controls: Lead with Context, Not Control

Going Global

  1. Bring It All to the World

Organize for Complexity (Niels Pflaeging)

  1. Complexity: Why It Matters to Work and Organizations (Big Time)
  2. Humans at Work: The Secret Ingredient (How to Fulfill and Capture Human Potential)
  3. Self-Organizing Teams and the Networked Organization (From Old Design Principles to New and Better Ones)
  4. Organizations as Systems: Designing for Complexity (How Any Organization Can Become “Fit for Dynamics”)
  5. Dynamic-Robust Networks for All: This Is How You Pull It Off (How to Anchor the “Beta” Mindset Within Organizational Structure)
  6. Leadership in Complexity: What Remains of It, and What Is Needed (Practical Recommendations for Dynamic-Robust Leadership Work)
  7. Transform, or Remain Stuck: The Way Forward (How Deep Organizational Transformation Works. Really Works)

Powerful (Patty McCord)

  1. The Greatest Motivation Is Contributing to Success: Treat People Like Adults
  2. Every Single Employee Should Understand the Business: Communicate Constantly About the Challenge
  3. Humans Hate Being Lied To and Being Spun: Practice Radical Honesty
  4. Debate Vigorously: Cultivate Strong Opinions and Argue About Them Only on the Facts
  5. Build the Company Now That You Want to Be Then: Relentlessly Focus on the Future
  6. Someone Really Smart in Every Job: Have the Right Person in Every Single Position
  7. Pay People What They’re Worth to You: Compensation Is a Judgment Call
  8. The Art of Good Good-byes: Make Needed Changes Fast, and Be a Great Place to Be From

Remote (Jason Fried et al.)

The Time Is Right for Remote Work

  1. Why work doesn’t happen at work
  2. Stop commuting your life away
  3. It’s the technology, stupid
  4. Escaping 9am-5pm
  5. End of city monopoly
  6. The new luxury
  7. Talent isn’t bound by the hubs
  8. It’s not about the money
  9. But saving is always nice
  10. Not all or nothing
  11. Still a trade-off
  12. You’re probably already doing it

Dealing with Excuses

  1. Magic only happens when we’re all in a room
  2. If I can’t see them, how do I know they’re working?
  3. People’s homes are full of distractions
  4. Only the office can be secure
  5. Who will answer the phone?
  6. Big business doesn’t do it, so why should we?
  7. Others would get jealous
  8. What about culture?
  9. I need an answer now!
  10. But I’ll lose control
  11. We paid a lot of money for this office
  12. That wouldn’t work for our size or industry

How to Collaborate Remotely

  1. Thou shalt overlap
  2. Seeing is believing
  3. All out in the open
  4. The virtual water cooler
  5. Forward motion
  6. The work is what matters
  7. Not just for people who are out of town
  8. Disaster ready
  9. Easy on the M&Ms

Beware the Dragons

  1. Cabin fever
  2. Check-in, check-out
  3. Ergonomic basics
  4. Mind the gut
  5. The lone outpost
  6. Working with clients
  7. Taxes, accounting, laws, oh my!

Hiring and Keeping the Best

  1. It’s a big world
  2. Life moves on
  3. Keep the good times going
  4. Seeking a human
  5. No parlor tricks
  6. The cost of thriving
  7. Great remote workers are simply great workers
  8. On writing well
  9. Test project
  10. Meeting them in person
  11. Contractors know the drill

Managing Remote Workers

  1. When’s the right time to go remote?
  2. Stop managing the chairs
  3. Meetups and sprints
  4. Lessons from open source
  5. Level the playing field
  6. One-on-ones
  7. Remove the roadblocks
  8. Be on the lookout for overwork, not underwork
  9. Using scarcity to your advantage

Life as a Remote Worker

  1. Building a routine
  2. Morning remote, afternoon local
  3. Compute different
  4. Working alone in a crowd
  5. Staying motivated
  6. Nomadic freedom
  7. A change of scenery
  8. Family time
  9. No extra space at home
  10. Making sure you’re not ignored

Rework (Jason Fried et al.)

First

  1. The New Reality

Takedowns

  1. Ignore the Real World
  2. Learning from Mistakes Is Overrated
  3. Planning Is Guessing
  4. Why Grow?
  5. Workaholism
  6. Enough with “Entrepreneurs”

Go

  1. Make a Dent in the Universe
  2. Scratch Your Own Itch
  3. Start Making Something
  4. No Time Is No Excuse
  5. Draw a Line in the Sand
  6. Mission Statement Impossible
  7. Outside Money Is Plan Z
  8. You Need Less Than You Think
  9. Start a Business, Not a Startup
  10. Building to Flip Is Building to Flop
  11. Less Mass

Progress

  1. Embrace Constraints
  2. Build Half a Product, Not a Half-Assed Product
  3. Start at the Epicenter
  4. Ignore the Details Early On
  5. Making the Call Is Making Progress
  6. Be a Curator
  7. Throw Less at the Problem
  8. Focus on What Won’t Change
  9. Tone Is in Your Fingers
  10. Sell Your By-Products
  11. Launch Now

Productivity

  1. Illusions of Agreement
  2. Reasons to Quit
  3. Interruption Is the Enemy of Productivity
  4. Meetings Are Toxic
  5. Good Enough Is Fine
  6. Quick Wins
  7. Don’t Be a Hero
  8. Go to Sleep
  9. Your Estimates Suck
  10. Long Lists Don’t Get Done
  11. Make Tiny Decisions

Competitors

  1. Don’t Copy
  2. Decommoditize Your Product
  3. Pick a Fight
  4. Underdo Your Competition
  5. Who Cares What They’re Doing?

Evolution

  1. Say No by Default
  2. Let Your Customers Outgrow You
  3. Don’t Confuse Enthusiasm with Priority
  4. Be at-Home Good
  5. Don’t Write It Down

Promotion

  1. Welcome Obscurity
  2. Build an Audience
  3. Out-Teach Your Competition
  4. Emulate Chefs
  5. Go Behind the Scenes
  6. Nobody Likes Plastic Flowers
  7. Press Releases Are Spam
  8. Forget about the Wall Street Journal
  9. Drug Dealers Get It Right
  10. Marketing Is Not a Department
  11. The Myth of the Overnight Sensation

Hiring

  1. Do It Yourself First
  2. Hire When It Hurts
  3. Pass on Great People
  4. Strangers at a Cocktail Party
  5. Resumés Are Ridiculous
  6. Years of Irrelevance
  7. Forget about Formal Education
  8. Everybody Works
  9. Hire Managers of One
  10. Hire Great Writers
  11. The Best Are Everywhere
  12. Test-Drive Employees

Damage Control

  1. Own Your Bad News
  2. Speed Changes Everything
  3. How to Say You’re Sorry
  4. Put Everyone on the Front Lines
  5. Take a Deep Breath

Culture

  1. You Don’t Create a Culture
  2. Decisions Are Temporary
  3. Skip the Rock Stars
  4. They’re Not Thirteen
  5. Send People Home at 5
  6. Don’t Scar on the First Cut
  7. Sound Like You
  8. Four-Letter Words
  9. ASAP Is Poison

The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork (John C. Maxwell)

  1. The Law of Significance: One Is Too Small a Number to Achieve Greatness
  2. The Law of the Big Picture: The Goal Is More Important Than the Role
  3. The Law of the Niche: All Players Have a Place Where They Add the Most Value
  4. The Law of Mount Everest: As the Challenge Escalates, the Need for Teamwork Elevates
  5. The Law of the Chain: The Strength of the Team Is Impacted by Its Weakest Link
  6. The Law of the Catalyst: Winning Teams Have Players Who Make Things Happen
  7. The Law of the Compass: Vision Gives Team Members Direction and Confidence
  8. The Law of the Bad Apple: Rotten Attitudes Ruin a Team
  9. The Law of Countability: Teammates Must Be Able to Count on Each Other When It Counts
  10. The Law of the Price Tag: The Team Fails to Reach Its Potential When It Fails to Pay the Price
  11. The Law of the Scoreboard: The Team Can Make Adjustments When It Knows Where It Stands
  12. The Law of the Bench: Great Teams Have Great Depth
  13. The Law of Identity: Shared Values Define the Team
  14. The Law of Communication: Interaction Fuels Action
  15. The Law of the Edge: The Difference Between Two Equally Talented Teams Is Leadership
  16. The Law of High Morale: When You’re Winning, Nothing Hurts
  17. The Law of Dividends: Investing in the Team Compounds Over Time

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (Patrick M. Lencioni)

  1. Absence of Trust
  2. Fear of Conflict
  3. Lack of Commitment
  4. Avoidance of Accountability
  5. Inattention to Results