Do you struggle to organise your work, because it seems everybody wants something from you? Of do you often wonder whether you’re doing the right things? This post helps you to answer those questions. Here are the six basic responsibilities you have as a professional in the modern workplace. Follow these and you are on the right path. I wrote these down as a reminder to myself and to pass… Read More »Working 101
I saw this tweet yesterday, and If you know me, you know I will not pass on an opportunity for a free book! But more seriously, I have known Jason Fried and DHH for some time now. From their blog, their Twitter and multiple different podcasts. They have built their company around very clear and levelheaded thinking. So I wanted to read this anyway, and not just because it was… Read More »Remote – Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
Gung Ho! is a management book written by well-know author Ken Blanchard. It was somehow never on my radar, so because of the strange title and my unfamiliarity I wasn’t expecting too much, and I only picked it up because I know Blanchard’s other famous theory. But it turned out to be a delightful, short read. This book can help any starting, aspiring or even seasoned manager to get their… Read More »Gung Ho! Turn On the People in Any Organization – Ken Blanchard & Sheldon Bowles
When I read The Phoenix Project last year, I was smitten. I loved the combination of using fiction to describe how to apply — management and DevOps — theory to true to life situations. So when the publisher asked if I wanted to review the follow-up, I didn’t hesitate. And I can safely say The Unicorn Project is just as much fun as its predecessor. This fiction book takes place… Read More »The Unicorn Project – Gene Kim
When I started college in 1998 this was literally one of the first books I had to buy. It was part of a — cheaply thrown together — five-pack of paperback management book ‘classics’. And my particular copy is printed on recycled paper, with boring frugal typesetting, and even has a Dutch translation error on the back. Not normally a book you would hold on to for 21 years. Management… Read More »The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Stephen Covey
Pick up any good management book and chances are that Peter Drucker will be mentioned. He is the godfather of management theory. I encountered Drucker many times before in other books and quotes, but I had never read anything directly by him. I have now, and I can only wish I had done so sooner. The sublime classic The Effective Executive from 1967 was a good place to start. After… Read More »The Effective Executive – Peter Drucker
For some reason I had never read the David Allen classic Getting Things Done. But I found out that 18 years after its release it’s still a good introduction to time and action management. David Allen tries to make the natural, systematic. He does so by introducing a 5 step workflow: capture, clarify, organize, reflect, and engage. Allen does a great job of explaining these steps with real world examples… Read More »Getting Things Done – David Allen
Blauwe Bananen (Blue Bananas) is a management book that was number one for 38 days on managementboek.nl. It is aimed at people who generally don’t read management books. So it sometimes tries to be unnecessarily funny, seemingly afraid to alienate the reader with otherwise dry concepts. Nonetheless the message itself is pretty solid. The theme being: how to become a blue banana. A blue banana is a business with a… Read More »Blue Bananas – Wouter de Vries jr. & Thiemo van Rossum
This classic management book started off with two confusing and underwhelming chapters, but ended up being one of the best three management books I have ever read. And I would highly recommend it to any manager. If you run into a book recommendation thread on Hacker News or someplace else where tech savvy people congregate, chances are, High Output Management will be mentioned. Published in 1983, updated in 1995 and… Read More »High Output Management – Andrew S. Grove
When a co-worker handed me a copy of The Phoenix Project, the 8-bit art on the cover looked fun. But the tagline — ‘A Novel About IT, DevOps and Helping your Business Win’ — sounded a bit like the usual buzzword management lingo. But I was clearly wrong, I loved this book! It is unlike anything I’ve read before and it really spoke to me because the situations were so… Read More »The Phoenix Project
The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder is one of those books that always seems to pop up when ‘computer-people’ share book recommendations. Exhibit A, exhibit B, exhibit C and so on — you get the picture. It is supposedly about computers, and I like computers! So I had to read it. And the “Winner of the Pulitzer Price” notion on the cover also seemed promising! I had assumed it… Read More »The Soul of a New Machine – Tracy Kidder
This book by Ashlee Vance sat on my wish-list since it came out two years ago. So, long overdue, last week I finally got to it and boy, what a ‘fantastic‘ read it is. There is lot to say about the man, his ideas and the ways he goes about bringing those ideas to life. Whether you like stories about next-level entrepreneurship or bold boyish imagination about where we are moving… Read More »Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future