Take a look at my favorite books. The good, the long, the short—it’s all here
| The Elephant Catchers: Key Lessons for Breakthrough Growth by Subroto Bagchi Category: Strategy |
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| "Journey of a mid-size IT company. Good analogy of winning one-off projects (rabbit catching) vs. enterprise deals (elephant catching). Walked out of GE deal as staff augmentation can cripple the core business model of services companies"
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| 4 Seconds: All The Time You Need to Stop Counter-Productive Habits and Get the Results You Want by Peter Bregman Category: Self-Help |
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| "I've no time to think - Are scariest words from a leader. Pause/reflect for 4 seconds and act. Resist the impulse to write-off people. No power-point rule has the greatest impact because it keeps the energy where it should be: solving problems together"
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| Winning by Jack Welch Category: Strategy |
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| "Winning leaders invest where payback is higher (differentiation at all levels). Avoid dead man walking effect (Fire early with dignity). Every job has its ups and downs. Avoid bosses to use their political capital to keep you afloat. Avoid NIH (not-invented-here) syndrome"
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| Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson Category: Self-Help |
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| "They keep moving the cheese. If you do not change, you become extinct"
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| Measure What Matters by John Doerr Category: Strategy |
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| "Highlights the discipline and importance of establishing and tracking Objectives and Key Results (OKR) at every (sub) function within the organization. OKRs alone do not make a successful business. It acts as a vital catalyst"
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| Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy, Ram Charan, Charles Burck Category: Leadership |
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| "As a hands-on manager, find the right balance between micro-managing and staying on top of things. Need to have courage to confront poor performance and take swift decisions. Many strategies fall apart because the critical issues are not discussed in the right manner
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| The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman Category: Globalization |
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| "The more the country (company) has been deprived of natural resources (capital), the more it will be transparent to its tax payers(stakeholders) and more it will participate in flattening the world"
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| The On-Time, On-Target Manager: How a "Last-Minute Manager" Conquered Procastination by Kenneth H. Blanchard Category: Self-Help |
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| "Hasty/Hurry managers who always rush to complete urgent tasks in last minute cannot succeed consistently. Have clear priorities (triage) and filter with Bill of Rights (do right things for right results"
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Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High by Kerry Patterson Category: Business Communication |
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| "In a crucial conversation (high stakes, emotional, varied opinion) find pool of shared meaning. Work on self before expecting other to change. Strike a balance between silent and violent zone"
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| Failing to Succeed: The Story of India's First E-Commerce Company by K. Vaitheeswaran Category: Entrepreneurship |
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| "Roller coster ride of India's first eCom (Indiaplaza). Online to Offline stores. Ethical issues faced in handling PII data sans regulation. Highlights erratic behavior of investors in wrongly tracking GMV (Gross Merchandise Value) without factoring deep discounts and returns"
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| The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz Category: Entrepreneurship |
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| "Roller coaster in life of CEO of Opsware - Improving penny stock, avoiding divorce from single largest customer, overnight acquisitions to save company. Focus on what is needed to get right and stop worrying about what might go wrong"
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| I Bought the Monk's Ferrari by Ravi Subramanian Category: Self-Help |
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| "Aspire for your own Ferrari (NOT JUST A CAR - Could be status, role, money whatever). Have focus and if you wish for a Ferrari, develop AUDACIOUS GOALS"
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| Catalyst by Chandramouli Venkatesan Category: Self-Help |
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| "Time spent at work <> Experience. The second half of career is where success is truly created. Introduces TMRR (Target-Measure-Review-Reflection) for every aspect at work"
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| The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen R. Covey Category: Self-Help |
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| "Private victory is essential before aiming for public victory. Avoid self-pity. Solution to poor results lie in redefining the goals (and may not be in training). Seek first to understand, then to be understood."
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| Who's in the Room?: How Great Leaders Structure and Manage the Teams Around Them by Bob Frisch Category: Strategy |
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| "Candid revelation to a known secret for decades in the corporate worlds' Kitchen Cabinets. It offers insights to 'When does the decision happen and with whom'. Contrary to perception that this is match fixing, this informal way expedites decision making from the tyranny of the organization chart"
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| The Three-Box Solution: A Strategy for Leading Innovation by Vijay Govindarajan Category: Strategy |
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| "Balance the past (forget old ways of working), the present (optimize run), the future (new business model - change) to get out of success trap. Need to selectively forget your core competency in order to invent\deliver the new business model"
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Lakshmanan Ramanathan Ph.D.
Intrapreneur | Automation & Purposeful AI