I've noticed when I recommend books during presentations to creative team leads that few have heard of the books or their authors I'm suggesting they read. To be fair to my tome-agnostic colleagues, based on my own challenges managing my work/life balance, I know that devoting personal and even work time to reading material germane to our roles as leaders of our in-house teams is pretty low on our list of priorities.
That being said, if you can carve out even a sliver of time to read or even more efficiently listen to audio books during your commute (a favorite practice of mine), you'll be setting yourself up to break out of worn-out practices and mindsets and embrace new ideas and modes of thought that can have a significant impact on your effectiveness in your job. Here's my short list of books relevant to our profession--the lucky seven...
1. Switch
Chip and Dan Heath basically analyze the art of the sell (of ideas, that is) from an organizational perspective and provide guidance with real-world anecdotes on how to affect powerful change within a company. This is required reading for any creative team lead who is trying to roll that innovation boulder up the bureaucratic hill.
2. Multipliers
Even before finishing the first chapter, I was bookmarking pages of great advice on how to inspire my team to new heights of performance and personal and professional satisfaction. Liz Wiseman's take on this topic range from strategic insights to tactical to-do's and forces the reader to hold a mirror up to his or her leadership style--an experience I found to be quite humbling.
3. Blink
Blink is Malcolm Gladwell's amazing follow-up to The Tipping Point, another great read. This book first digs deep into the phenomenon and value of instinctive thought but then weaves a cautionary tale about the dangers of making snap judgments. It validated my belief in the practice of intuitive decision making while providing guidance and caveats on how and when to use it.
4. The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team
This old school team management book is not only still relevant in today's matrixed organizational world--it is THE foundational resource for understanding and taming team dynamics. Written as a fictitious business case study and reading more like a novel than a management treatise, it's engaging, insightful and ultimately required reading for anyone tasked with managing a team.
5. Click
This isn't one of the top tier books with a single word title (which seems to be the required naming convention for hip management and thought leadership books nowadays), but it is a nice complement to "The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team." The authors, Ori and Rom Brafman, deconstruct that seemingly magical circumstance when two individuals just click and then apply their learnings on how to set up teams that are collaborative and supportive--a requirement for creative teams that's often hard to achieve.
6. Design Thinking
Design thinking is the new C-suite buzzword for innovation and is being sold by business thought leaders as the Holy Grail for attaining the elusive corporate competitive edge. If your boss' boss' boss' boss is jumping on this bandwagon and you end up getting a seat at the strategic table because your leading a design/creative team, you'd damn well better be well-versed in what it is that all the hub-bub's about. IDEO principal, Tim Brown, is THE definitive resource on this topic.
7. A Whole New Mind
This is Dan Pink trying to school up our left-brain peers on what we already know: right-brain thinking and associated non-linear innovative methodologies are as important to organizational success as linear, analytical business practices. This book will validate the way you think and behave in your job and provide you with well thought-out and articulated talking points when you need to sell the creative culture to your less-enlightened business colleagues and managers.
