10 Books from My Reading List

I have spent the last couple of months reading--reading and reflecting, scribbling random ideas in my tattered moleskine but not really blogging. My thoughts felt more scattered than usual...and I wondered if it had to do with the books I was reading. A couple of months back I made a conscious decision to move away from pure L&D, Instructional Design and Performance Consulting stuff to those which would challenge my thinking and perhaps force me to question myself and the choices I am making. I picked up some of those mentioned in the list below after reading reviews, receiving recommendations or just browsing. I haven't regretted a single choice.

I am putting up the list here to share with my friends and communities. These books have moved and challenged me, made me feel guilty and exhilarated--all at the same time, provided insights, changed how I think and have often left me feeling confused--at many levels. I am profoundly grateful to the authors for penning these...for opening up doors and windows for the likes of us.

The list for you to pursue...

1. How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton M. Christensen
2. Dumbing us Down by John Gatto
3. The Art of Choosing by Sheena Iyenger
4. The Social Conquest of Earth by Edward Wilson
5. On Violence by Hannah Arendt
6. Alone Together by Sherry Turkle
7. Poor Economics by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo
8. The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown
9. Quiet: The Power of Introverts by Susan Cain
10. Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz

17 Books for L&D Folks...

My bookshelf...

More than 6 months back, in the September of 2010, I wrote the post: 27 Books for L&D Folks... It's time for part 2 of the post. Since then, I have acquired a Kindle and, very recently, an iPad. Kindle has reshaped my reading dramatically--making it social and part of a larger whole, connecting me to a set of folks similarly impassioned. Reading moved from being solitary to social. I became a part of a worldwide reading club. Somehow, and social psychologists will understand this--the ability to share and connect motivated me to read more, taking me beyond my domain, making me exploratory. I thought I would share my reading list of the last 6 months here...It's a random assortment but each one has expanded my thought-process in some way. Not all are related to learning or the workplace...This time, I came up with a list of 17.

1. The New Learning Architect by Clive Shepherd 
2. The 2020 Workplace: How Innovative Companies Attract, Develop, and Keep Tomorrow's Employees Today by Jeanner Meister
3. Pragmatic Thinking and Learning by Andy Hunt 
4. The Art of Community: Building the New Age of Participation (Theory in Practice) by Jono Bacon 
5. The Agile Samurai: How Agile Masters Deliver Great Software by Jonathan Rasmusson 
6. The Knowledge Evolution: Expanding Organizational Intelligence by Verna Allee  
7. Community: The Structure of Belonging by Peter Block 
8. If You Want To Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit by Brenda Ueland 
9. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott
10. The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies by Scott Page
11. Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman  
12. Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used by Peter Block
13. Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire  
14. Crucial Confrontations by Kerry Patterson 
15. Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich 
16. The Medium is the Message by Marshall McLuhan  
17. Building Expertise: Cognitive Methods for Training and Performance Improvement by Ruth Clark

Books I Wanted to Read in 2010: Reality Check

Update: I have highlighted the books from the list below that I did manage to read in 2010.

Some of the books I am planning to read in 2010...this is not a definitive list and is likely to expand. I am putting up the names here. If you have ready any of the books, do share your comments/reviews/key learning.

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink

Five Minds for the Future by Howard Gardner

Winning E-Learning Proposals: The Art of Development and Delivery by Karl M. Kapp

Non-Designer's Design Book by Robin Williams

ASTD Handbook for Workplace Learning Professionals by Elaine Biech

Delivering E-Learning: A Complete Strategy for Design, Application and Assessment by Kenneth Fee

Creating Messages That Motivate by Bert Decker

Turning Training into Learning: How to Design and Deliver Programs that Get Results by Furjanic & Trotman

The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything by Ken Robinson

The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature by Steven Pinker

A Fine Line: How Design Strategies Are Shaping the Future of Business by Hartmut Esslinger

Envisioning Information by Edward Tufte

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte

2010 in Retrospect: Top Few Blogs and Books

This post should have made its appearance a few days back—at least a day back—but procrastination sometimes overtakes me. This time, it was compounded by the lure of spending more time with my daughter (since I am in Mumbai after quite a few months) and the writing of the post just never got done. But I have promised myself that this year I will turn more ideas into actions and will not let procrastination rule. In that spirit, I am aiming to get this post out.

This is a quick recap and a list of the posts, articles, and books that have shaped my thinking, provided me with insights and supported or challenged my assumptions. To make it slightly easy for myself, I have divided the list into two parts—1) posts and articles and 2) books.

Posts and Articles

1.       Corporate Learning’s focus by Harold Jarche

2.       Where Social Learning Thrives by Marcia Conner

3.       Designing Training for Organization 2.0 by Gautam Ghosh

4.       21st Century L&D Skills by Charles Jennings

5.       2010 Shift Index - Passion and Performance by John Hagel

6.       Why we need to kill "social media" by Rob Key

7.       Nuts and Bolts: Useful Interactions and Meaningful Feedback by Jane Bozarth

8.       Generations, Social and Enterprise: adopt vs adapt by Martijn Linssen

9.       The Evolving Social Organization by Harold Jarche

10.   Seven Strategies for Supporting Personal Learning Environments at Work by Michele Martin

11.   The Wolf Pack and Learning by Dan Pontefract

12.   No silver bullet in KM by Nick Milton

13.   Rendering knowledge from Cognitive Edge

14.   Work is learning, learning work by Harold Jarche

15.   The Power of Meaning by Thierry de Baillon

16.   Wicked Problems 

17.   The “New” Social Learning isn’t a New Thing by Sumeet Moghe

18.   Enterprise 2.0 - Community Spaces can lead to Walled Gardens by Sumeet Moghe

19.   Success depends on who we work with by Harold Jarche

20.   2010 in Review Part 3: My year in reflective blogging by Jane Hart

21.   Enterprise 2.0 and Social Software should be opt-in by Gautam Ghosh

22.   Doing Things Right vs. Doing the Right Things by Rainer Falle

23.   How to Build a Social Learning Culture by Lars Hyland

24.   Marcia Conner on Transforming Organizations through Social Media and Social Learning

25.   Humantics, Hypergogues, Collaboration, Cognitive Loads from Bunchberry & Fern

Books

1. The Power of Pull by John Seely Brown
2. The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Create Better Groups, Firms, Schools and Societies by Scott E. Page
3. The Drive by Daniel Pink
4. The Adventures of Johnny Bunko by Daniel Pink
5. Beyond E-Learning: Approaches and Technologies to Enhance Organizational Knowledge, Learning, and Performance by Marc J. Rosenberg
6. The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande
7. The Future of Management by Gary Hamel
8. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky
9. Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Create Unity, and Reap Big Results by Morten Hansen
10. Getting Things Done by David Allen
11. Building Expertise: Cognitive Methods for Training and Performance Improvement by Ruth Colvin Clark
12. Pragmatic Thinking and Learning by Andy Hunt
13. Social Media for Trainers by Jane Bozarth
14. The New Social Learning by Marcia Conner and Tony Bingham
15. The Non-Designer’s Design Book by Robin Williams
16. Crucial Confrontations by Kerry Patterson
17. Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
18. Working Smarter Fieldbook

Project Management for Trainers: Key Concepts and Learning

I have just finished reading the book, Project Management for Trainers by Lou Russell. At the outset, let me admit that this is a somewhat unusual book for me to read. I am more into books about learning and performance, training, design, creative thinking, innovation and management, writing, and the like.

However, increasingly in my role as an Instructional Designer (ID), I have run up against the necessity to not only multi-task but also to think beyond training solution, learning needs and design. I have also realized that to be an effective ID, there are certain aspects of a Project I would need to understand better and get a handle on.

With this thought in mind, I took some time out to sit down and take stock of the tasks I have found myself doing in the last three months (in varying proportions). I have listed the broad categories of the tasks below (each task has many and varied sub-tasks that I will take up in subsequent posts):

1. Business Needs Analysis
2. Performance Consulting 
3. Learning Solutions Design and Development
4. Project Management (PM)
5. Communication (both internal and client facing)
   

Having arrived at the list above, I did the next level of analysis to find out my weakest area. Project Management jumped out at me in a font size 10 times larger. I admitted to myself that I sucked at PM...no, not sucked...had no clue about PM.

This self-analysis became the stepping stone for my research into the kind of books I need to be reading and the resources I should be referencing.

And I picked up the book I have mentioned above. This engagingly written, practical, interactivity-filled, slim book is a wonderful introduction to the basics of Project Management. It covers all the fundamentals in a manner that is easy to understand and does not overwhelm with details. It gives you enough space and opportunity to think over what you have read and apply that practically. The book also provides a list of references and resources and is a must have on the shelf if you want to learn how training projects need to be managed and executed.

Some of the key concepts explained in the book that I have found particularly useful are:

1. Differences between project and process
   
2. Project Management Activity vs. Project Development Activity
3. The Dare Approach (Define, Plan, Manage, Review)
4. Arriving at Business Objectives mapping to IRACIS (Increase Revenue, Avoid Cost, Improve Services)
5. Creating a visual scope document/project charter as baseline
6. Risks and constraints analysis (measurable methods)
   
7. Risk-scenario planning (extremely useful, especially for high-risk project with changing busienss needs)
8. Building the project plan--step-by-step (creating the Work Breakdown Structure [WBS])
   
9. Creating the schedule using the Critical Path anlaysis
   
10. Difference between and measurement of Project Duration and Project Elapsed Time (Two Types of Time in Project Schedules)
11. The Learner First Approach for accelerated learning 
12. Managing change and change request (everybody's bug-bear and a must know)
13. Time, Cost, Quality: what's the most important?
14. Post-project review process--using Systems Thinking 
15. Using the PACT model to carry out Performance Consulting 
16. Differences between Learning Event Development and Performance Consulting
17. Managing external suppliers and vendors

I am planning separate posts on each of the topics above--mainly for my clarity and depth of understanding.

One self-discovery I had post reading the book: I immensely enjoyed reading it. And I can see how if one truly gets involved in managing a project, it can be a challenging, innovative, analytical and highly satisfying task. There are a multitude of variables one can play around with, and these keep changing from point to point within the same project. I have seen it happen and now reading about the levers that can be used to control these make the task so much fun...I also feel it could be addictive...

Some of the resource and reference links from the book:

1. The International Project Management Association 
2. International Society for Performance Improvement
3. Project Management Forum
4. Project Management Institute
5. The Training Professional's Gateway

Books I Want to Read in 2010: Life Lessons

I was following a conversation started by Eric Garner on LinkedIn. The topic question: On a recent TV programme, Warren Buffet said that the book that had most changed his life was Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People". It certainly shows as Warren Buffet is great at influencing people to feel good about themselves. I was wondering. What books have changed your life?

I collated the list below from all the responses. These are books I am going to read in 2010. To see the discussion, click here.

Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson

Thriving on Chaos by Tom Peters

Synchronicity : The Inner Path of Leadership by Joseph Jaworski

Nonviolent Communication by Marshall B. Rosenberg

The Freedom to Live- The Robert Hartman Story

Coaching with the Brain in Mmind by David Rock and Linda Page

Breakthrough: The art of Conscience Conversation by William Mills

Difficult Conversations, How to Discuss What Matters Most - Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, Sheila Heen