j e s r u s h . c o m

After using his super PMP study guide some time back, I picked up Andy Crowe’s other book, an obscure little text, ‘Alpha Project Managers,’ published in 2006.

This has to be one of the most under produced books I’ve ever seen.  Crowe essentially self-published on his own Velociteach label.  It shows.  The graphics are third rate and the cover is pretty bad. 

But no matter.  The information inside is fascinating. Crowe surveyed over 3,000 project managers and their co-workers/supervisors in order to identify the “top 2%” of project managers (”alpha project managers”). He tried to identify PMs who were consistently rated as excellent by the people they worked with and their customers. Once he found them, he zeroed in on their work habits and PM techniques.

Some of the interesting findings:

Career mentor extraordinaire Patty Azzarello recently made a suggestion to me that I take the ‘StrengthsFinder 2.0‘ assessment. This is a 175 question online timed test which asks questions like, “Which describes you more strongly: You get things done on time or You get things done correctly”. Painful! You want to choose both, but have to favor one or the other. The assessment was designed by Gallup and supposedly incorporates data from millions of people.

I’m notoriously skeptical of these kinds of things, especially after the Myers Briggs told me I was an introvert (my wife enjoyed a good laugh over that one). But I took the dive on Patty’s recommendation and have to say I’m really impressed. Out of the 34 “strengths”, the assessment tells you your five most prominent and this thing was spot on.

It said my strengths were that I’m:

Reading the descriptions of these was pretty amazing. They fit me to a “T”.

Why is this useful? Because so much of success both in your career and in your personal life depends on the extent to which you position yourself to take advantage of your strengths and minimize your weaknesses.

If you’re interested in taking the test yourself, you have to buy the accompanying book, which gives you an “access code” for the online test.

I’ve been on a bit of a business book binge lately, and my most recent conquest was ‘Love is the Killer App: How to win Business and Influence Friends‘ by Tim Sanders.  ‘Love’ is pretty original, it’s a book about re-humanizing the workplace from the cold, isolated, transitory state that its usually in, to a warm, caring environment.

It walks a fine line between unconventional wisdom (connect your network with your network — and do it all for free) and downright sillyness (the ridiculous discussion of ‘hugging’ for example), occasionally lapsing into the latter.

But mostly, it makes three good points:

1)  You need to be reading books all the time so that you have fodder for innovative ideas (”Reading is a source of potency”).

2)  You have a network of contacts, instead of thinking about how they can help you — start thinking about how you can help them, especially by connecting them to other people within your network.

3)  The modern workplace is far too cold and sterile.  It’s important to genuinely care about people and tell them — explicitly — why you appreciate them.

All good advice and all things which we tend to forget when we’re caught up in the race.

Lightly recommended.

Outliers is quite unlike anything I’ve ever read before. Most books which storyboard successful people concentrate on the little “tells” of genius: The quirks, habits, and beliefs which seemed to have propelled their meteoric rise to the top.

With Warren Buffet its always his “aw shucks” humbleness — he still lives in the same little house he bought 50+ years ago. With Bill Belichick its always his dedication to breaking down film, hours and hours toiling in the film room. Steve Jobs had his obsession with simple design. The list goes on and on.

Outliers on the other hand, takes a completely different approach. Instead of focusing on the quirks of successful people, Gladwell says success isn’t so much about the people — as it is the culture and legacy from which they came. Gladwell concedes that that smarts and hard work are key ingredients in success, but insists that opportunities are far more important.

Exhibit A is Chris Langan, the world’s smartest man, and someone mired in mediocrity. Langan — because of his poor rural upbringing — never had many opportunities. He dropped out of college because of a financial aid mixup and couldn’t summon his mother to help him sort it out. Meanwhile Gladwell chronicles a series of lesser lights who had better opportunities, better families, better backgrounds, and made something of them.

It’s a fascinating read which turns everything we know about success on its head. It’s a paradigm shift, the kind of book that comes along only once every few years.

If there is a weakness to Outliers, its that Gladwell is a better storyteller than he is researcher. Occasionally he substitutes a good story for data, and things teeter on the anecdotal.

But no matter, Gladwell is clearly on to something and marshalls more than enough examples to prove it.

Required Reading for All Audiences \ Insanely Recommended.

I finally got around to reading another one of Patrick Lencioni’s business “fables”:   The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.  This one involves an elaborate fictional scenario in which a new CEO rescues a splintering senior leadership team.  Presumably, the lessons are just as applicable down the org chart.  The format gives Five Dysfunctions two major advantages over like-minded ‘team building’ texts:  It makes it eminently readable (no dry theory here) and it makes it memorable.  No doubt readers will be able to recall the umm — confrontation — with Mikey for years to come.

After Lencioni has you hook, line, and sinker on the story, he spends the last portion of the book breaking down what happened according to the five dysfunctions, and explaining how to avoid and/or fix these pitfalls.

Dysfunction 1:  Absence of Trust

Dysfuntion 2:  Fear of Conflict

Dysfunction 3:  Lack of Commitment

Dysfunction 4:  Avoidance of Accountability

Dysfunction 5:  Inattention to Results

This is a winner.  Yes it occasionally steps into pop-business-psychology territory, but most of the time it is on point as a basic team building primer.  There is nothing groundbreaking here, but there never is with Lencioni.  He has built a nice little niche gathering assorted insights on some business subject and embedding them into something which is actually readable.  He succeeds once again here and you’ll learn a few tricks in the process.

Recommended.

I was on construx’s website the other day (Construx does software development best practices, seminars, consulting, etc.) and stumbled on a real nugget: Their career progression ladder for software project managers. For the life of me, I can’t re-find the page (perhaps it was pulled?), but fortunately I had saved the info to google notebook.

The ladder describes three “levels” of career progression and each level has three components: experiences (such as estimating a project), reading material, and training (mostly Construx seminars–which sound really good).

Given how much I love reading, it was (surprise!) the reading lists which really interested me:

Level 10

• Code Complete, Steve McConnell
• Rapid Development, Steve McConnell
• Software Project Survival Guide, Steve McConnell
• UML Distilled, Martin Fowler et all
• Mastering the Requirements Process, Robertson and Robertson
• Software Requirements, Karl Wiegers
• “Manager’s Handbook for Software Development”, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Level 11

• Principles of Software Engineering Management, Tom Gilb
• Mythical Man-Month, Fred Brooks
• Peopleware, Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister
• Measures for Excellence, Lawrence Putnam and Ware Myers
• The Art of Software Testing, Glenford Myers
• “Software Measurement Guidebook”, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Level 12

• Programming Pearls 2nd Ed, Jon Bentley
• Applying UML & Patterns 2nd Ed, Craig Larman
• Conceptual Blockbusting, James Adams
• Software Creativity, Robert Class
• Quality is Free, Philip Crosby
• The Deming Management Model, Mary Walton
• Managing the Software Process, Watts Humphrey
• Writing Effective Use Cases, Cockburn
• Exploring Requirements: Quality before Design, Gause and Weinberg
• Requirements Engineering, A Good Practice Guide, Sommerville and Sawyer

This is a killer list. The only thing missing is more coverage of risk management (!). But that omission aside, I’ve tackled about half of these and can attest to their value. Good stuff!

It’s been said that 70-90% of project management is communication. So I was very interested when Patty Azzarello turned me on to a little book about communicating ideas called, ‘Made to Stick,’ by Chip and Dan Heath. The interest was justified.

This is one of the five best business books I’ve ever read. The Heath brothers take you on a wild romp through urban legends, advertising, and the mind’s jungle to tease out why some ideas “stick” with you and others don’t. Why is it that we remember the bathtub-ice-kidney-heist after hearing it one time, but can’t name the auto manufacturer in that TV commercial we’ve seen four times?

Because, Chip and Dan argue, the kidney heist is simple, unexpected, concrete, and emotional… They spend about 200 pages exploring these and other aspects of “sticky” messages while tying in some some remarkable research from academia.

Most importantly, they step you through the process of making your own messages more sticky. If this sounds like a marketing book, don’t be fooled: You will quickly find yourself applying this concepts to all kinds of communications… with your team… with your superiors… with everyone.

I was stunned by how dramatically ‘Made to Stick‘ “stuck” with me and actually improved by ability to communicate. Insanely recommended.

Someone pinged me for book recommendations on learning Java the other day. I’m no programmer, but two books have given me enough know-how to work with programmers.

Absolute Java by Walter Savitch is what we used back in school (albeit an earlier edition). This is a solid book and kids have been learning Java from Savitch for years and years now. Besides it has a jaguar on the cover. You can’t go wrong with that.  The only problem with this book is that it squeezes in too much material.  For example, chapter 2 (two!!!) has a discussion on mantissas! NOTE TO TECHNICAL WRITERS:  Just because its in the API or covered in a reference book, doesn’t mean it has to be in your instructional book!

Head First Java by Kathy Sierra is this completely ridiculous–but completely effective book which employs the latest in “cognitive research” to help you learn. Translation: It’s CRAZY. Think handwritten comments, scribbly arrows, crossword puzzles, mix & match, etc. This didn’t exist when I learned Java but I’ve since purchased a copy to refresh.