What we’re reading

by Pamela J. Gordon

Our clients generously call us thought leaders–in an industry where rules, like budgets, frequently change and competitive stakes are high. I thought you might like to know which books have influenced us. This is our first annotated book list, with picks by 6 of the 20 TFI and TFI Environment consultants.

From Chief Economist Matt Chanoff is Predictably Irrational, by Dan Ariely. Ariely is an economics professor at MIT, but reading him isn’t like reading any other economist. His insights into how people place value on goods are well researched, quirky, entertaining, and often mind bending. Each chapter offers the entrepreneurial reader a whole new business model.

TFI Environment Consultant Dr. Kim Allen points to The Ecology of Commerce, by Paul Hawken. Because he refused to accept that business and the environment were a tradeoff, Hawken was a radical among environmentalists 20 years ago. And yet his ideas also push into the realm of truly creative and disruptive business. The Ecology of Commerce offers a daring vision of 21st century business, full of both challenge and hope.

Senior Supply-Chain Consultant Douglas Kent admires how Supply Chain Excellence, by Peter Bolstorff, delivers a 17-week process for diagnosing the health of a company’s supply chain. The handbook is easy to follow and has served as a reference tool for companies in numerous industries.

I recommend Agenda for a New Economy, by David C. Korten. Korten wrote this book, with the cooperation of my book publisher Berrett-Koehler, immediately following the Wall Street implosion in 2008 and the failure of the subsequent bailout effort. The book proposes sane alternatives to the same-old USA market structure, and after having lived in EMEA for a year (back in the USA August 2009) I am more open to these smart departures from the norm.

Logistics Consultant Jon Gilbert chose Collapse, by Jarod Diamond. It’s an eye-opening book about what happens when societies lose track of sustainability. Diamond writes about the end of well-known past societies and the root causes behind their downfalls– the over consumption of scarce resources and lack of attention to environmental degradation. Collapse can spark discussion amongst executives and green teams about business sustainability as well.

Senior Consultant Mike Kirschner not only recommends but also was quoted in Exposed, by Mark Schapiro. The subtitle says it all: “The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What’s at Stake for American Power.”

Finally, with his second contribution to this list, Matt makes a case for why electronics industry executives would benefit from reading a biography of a Medieval tribal leader. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, by Jack Weatherford, entertains us while showing how Genghis conquered more land, people, nations, and wealth in his lifetime than did the Romans in four centuries of expansion. His secret to building an empire that endured for centuries was to combine fair mindedness and cold-eyed pragmatism. Rather than imposing his own primitive culture on the nations he conquered, Genghis took the best from each and incorporated it into a nearly global empire, with freedom of religion, rule of law that even he was subject to, better security, freer trade, more prosperity than that part of the world had ever seen, and transportation, communications, and logistics systems that operated over vast distances and trumped every foe. Matt says to read this book for insight into a guy who might well have been the greatest leader humankind has yet produced.

What books have you read that you predict will benefit today’s electronics-industry executives? (If you buy a lot of books, do as many of our clients and I have done: invest in an Amazon Kindle, for convenient, and lower-carbon-footprint reading.)

Posted by Pamela J. Gordon, May 8th, 2009