123. Books of Wisdom

Hi Gerard,

Can you email me the research you mentioned on the effects of bonuses? I’m very curious. Early this year, a consultant told me the same thing, i.e. that people mainly seek recognition, would rather work in a company with vision and that team spirit is more important than bonuses, i.e. exactly what you wrote to me. I must say I do wonder whether people are truly honest with the researcher, it is of course very vulgar to say that you only work for money. The example comes to mind of a footballer playing for a top club in the Netherlands leaving for a mediocre foreign club, saying he is interested in playing in a different league. Everyone knows that the level of competition there is low that the coach is fired every six months and you only go there for the money.

Anyway, I find it inspiring to read the books you talked about, I get a lot of ideas, particularly from biographies and true stories and management books. After I have read a book usually I retain just one key topic, you might consider it a meagre result after three hundred pages, but I guess this is a way for me to simplify things.

In the book we talked about earlier ‘Exponential Organisations’, I remember the theme of openness. We also have goals and KPIs for the company and staff. The goals of the employees are just not shared, but I’m going to think about introducing this idea at our company. In the book ‘Turn the ship around’ by David Marquet the main idea is that you must give responsibility where the expertise is and from a Simon Sinek book I learnt leaders, owners, directors or however you want to call them, should focus on serving and facilitating and giving everyone space to meet their targets. But there is one management book that I found to be comprehensive – Rockefeller Habits by Verne Harnish. This book provides a clear framework as regards strategy, cash, people and operations in businesses. The author states he investigated many growth companies and distilled the good points to achieve a format that you can follow if you want to grow your business.

I get inspiration as I said from true stories. There is a book called ‘Too Big Too Fail’ which meticulously describes the events of the rescue of the CEOs, politicians and central bankers in 2008 during the credit crisis. This book shows how incredibly hard these people worked and how resourceful they were. Now, they are often vilified, but this was a group of people who accepted their responsibility and did not stop before there were solutions and insight and light at the end of the tunnel.

I always like to get good recommendations for books. Can you tell me what books you find inspiring?

Regards,

Erik