Friends,
I hope that all is well with you and yours, and that this e-mail finds you on a boat with shoddy connection, in the tropics, three months after I sent it.
Now accepting keynotes for 24Q1-24Q3
Every year, I create three main presentations. For 2024, they are:
What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do: How to thrive in an uncertain world.
Regression Toward the Meme: Why modern leadership falls into old traps - and what to do about it.
The Efficiency Illusion: Uncovering the hidden costs of digital commerce.
If you want to book me for your event, workshop, or corporate speaking slot, just send me an email. To make sure I am available, however, please do so at your earliest convenience; my schedule is filling up fast - and I will be raising my prices on January 1.
All presentations are adapted to fit the event. Entirely customized presentations, including topic, are available upon request at an additional cost. More information can be found here.
A couple of updates before we go-go
As the new year inches ever closer, most of us begin to wind down. The last twelve months have been, shall we say, interesting. I will give my full thoughts in the annual last-newsletter-wrap-up, but needless to say, did any of it match anyone’s plan?
I am now devoting 100% of my working hours (and a fair few outside of them) to the book and this newsletter. We are making excellent progress and nearing the finishing line, but I will be honest - I am starting to get blisters on my fingers. Metaphorically speaking, anyway.
Moving, therefore, swiftly on.
The (2023/2024) recommended reads
What I have been reading and enjoyed
Every year, for now three years, I have compiled a list of books that I have read since New Year’s Day prior. Obviously, I have this time too, though under slightly different circumstances; I have read so much while doing research for What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do that I barely remember what was particularly good.
Fortunately, a few did stand out. And so, given that it is tradition after all, we are going to have a look at them. Should you want additional recommendations, the previous lists may be found here.
(For those about to comment, yes, you are absolutely right; there are not enough by female authors on the list. Unfortunately, my reading list was very much dictated by my own book, and women are woefully underrepresented in the relevant discourse. Next year’s list will therefore exclusively feature female writers.)
Starting off, we have two books by David Colander. In Where Economics Went Wrong: Chicago’s Abandonment of Classical Liberalism, he joins forces with Craig Freedman to argue that economics was rendered significantly less effective the moment it began emphasizing calculations above all else and lost the “firewall” that separated scientific theorizing from policy making. Designed to be provocative, its purpose is to make you think. We like that. In The Complexity Vision and the Teaching of Economics, he edits a number of essays by contributors such as Brian Arthur that put discoveries in complexity science into the context of economics - with eye-opening results.
Next, we have Better Brand Health: Measures and Metrics for a How Brands Grow World by Jenni Romaniuk. For anyone looking to go from theory to marketing practice, the book links the seminal How Brands Grow with the everyday work that many marketers do. Although it still needs to be applied within particular contexts, it makes for a mandatory companion piece to Byron Sharp’s original book.
In Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, James C. Scott illustrates how attempts to control citizens through a modernist top-down model did not live up to their promises, which obviously rings true for many organizations as well. Although it leaves a bit to be desired in its methodology, it can (and should) be read as highlighting examples of paradigm shifts, and what can happen when we treat complex systems as if they were ordered.
Last on our book list, we have something completely different: Cinema Speculation by Quentin Tarantino. Unsurprisingly, I am partial to authors that are, in lack of better terms, rather nerdy. Not only entertaining, this book is filled to the proverbial brim with precisely what you would expect: film theory, film criticism, and personal anecdotes. A joy.
Before we conclude entirely, though, I do want to add one final item. Tom Kerwin is, for the sake of full transparency, a personal friend, but I would recommend Innovation Tactics regardless of whether I knew him or not. He has not asked me to write this, nor do I make anything from it.
Tom, as some may remember from previous interviews, is a product developer of awe. In this deck of cards, he has created an equally creative as helpful collection of techniques, frameworks, and practical exercises that you can use in innovation tomorrow. Many books are criticized for being too theoretical. This deck is all about the practice - and so I feel that it completes the above list rather nicely.
Next week, I will devote a section of the newsletter (which otherwise will discuss an organizational challenge that most of us face on an almost daily basis) to your favorite books. And so, if you have not yet done it, please send me an email with the title and a short description of why you found it particularly good.
Until then, have the loveliest of weekends.
Onwards and upwards,
JP
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