How it started..! It was in the midst of COVID-19 pandemic during May 2020, like most of us, me too was working from home with many uncertainties around. Emotions running high regarding job, health, education for children, concerns about extended families and friends and a long Oops..!
I came across an interesting video clip (TED talk) on well known *Titanic disaster story, but with a different perspectives and relating with business scenario and personnel life too. The clip narrates in detail about various elements that lead to sinking of Titanic ship, e.g., icebergs, binoculars, life boats, tools and readiness to face emergencies, overconfidence on past successes in avoiding crashes, ignorance to external signals and competencies of ship crew and captain.
Above story seeded much more interest on topic of “Reinvention” and related topics that can positively impact our sustained business, even thriving during challenges. Nevertheless, reinvention is not just in business but in personnel life too in order to live and thrive in ever changing environment and varied icebergs that we encounter on life journey. While we underscore, “Reinvention” is very widely adoptable one since very low percentage of population could be innovative as statistics reveals, but Innovation topic is still the core in this book.
Reinvention: Enable enterprises fearing unknown or less known changes find it easy to navigate through elements of how to handle and absorb the weak signals of imminent changes, create a mind set and culture to respond rightly within the functions and across organization levels.
“Innovation” has been identified as one of major growth driver to survive and stay ahead of competition. In this book, very deeply understandable narrations have been made to Innovation principles, practical approach with success stories and actions to adopt within and around organizational functions.
Very well connected “Design Thinking” process for Innovation has been detailed with step by step approach to support even beginners, while it also offers simple guide to practitioners to look into customer centric Innovation Approach for their live projects. Having all said about “Innovation”, “Design Thinking” and “Reinvention”, I was of opinion that reference book would be in-complete without getting a detailed insights about “Creativity”.
Individuals driving their functions, organization and one-self for not just surviving today and to thrive for tomorrow find it necessary to kick-start the right actions. Not being able to see, prepare and respond to fast changing business environment may prove out to be death knell for the enterprises. Well prepared change management by planned intervention would prove extremely beneficial to keep business growing and thriving. With this book on your hand, my hearty congratulations to you for embarking interesting journey of “Creativity, Innovation or Reinvention”. This is a first step with an intention to leverage all levers of creativity, a different look towards things around, surrendering to universe and realize newness.
Books
“Books are best friends for life for humans’. In my native Kannada language there is a proverb: ಕೋಶ ಓದು, ದೇಶ ನೋಡು; Meaning is to “READ BOOKS, SEE COUNTRIES”, depicting importance of books as much hand-in-hand to visiting multiple countries. I grew up in a family where books and magazines were abundant with my father having huge collection of books and also a vivid reader. A discipline was in-place to pickup one book from cupboard during vacation, put back rightly and pick next one. I was inspired by variety of books to access and read even in the era where internet was not thought about. Some of most inspiring and informative books I recommend on Strategy, Execution. Innovation, Reinvention, Creativity, Leadership, Coaching, are mentioned below. COVID19 pandemic situation further strengthened my reading interest and rigor. I am sure, you will definitely admire the contents and flow in few of these BEST READS. A Book is a gift, you can open again and again… Garrison Keillor
Design Your life
This book brings new perspectives to building our career, it doesn't matter what stage of career you are in. Throws different ways of pursuing our life purpose, goals, aligning with profession, creating alternate plans, learning from fellow colleagues, Prototyping the job!, etc A good read with instruction sets at the end of each chapter to implement something. The book appears to be Design Thinking process, I loved narration.
Playing To Win
Book is Authored by successful P&G executive and another key Strategic Advisor. The story narration referred through how P&G navigated multiple strategic activities. However, approach can be adopted to multiple set of industries. The approach includes • What is our winning aspiration? • Where will we play? • How will we win? • What capabilities must we have in place to win? • What management systems are required to support our choices? Finally answers and deliberations to above set of questions leads to few solutions, how to stay ahead of the competition
Being Strategic
This was my first comprehensive book on very simplistic yet powerful approach to understand how to be strategic, creating strategic goals step by step. Every element of strategy is explained by way of a well narrated story of creating a beautiful castle. Every chapter has an action item to work on, creating our own personnel growth steps. All the steps may easily be adopted in creating a true milestone of activities for a strategic goal.
On Design Thinking
A good collection of Articles on Design Thinking, featuring a special one from Tim Brown, representing IDEO, pioneers in Design Thinking for Innovation. Many leading innovation and strategy authors share their opinions and experiences on innovation journey. Leaders looking for inspirations for innovation journey to accelerate their business growth, stay ahead of competition finds it useful. The focus in on customers, customer's experiences as centre of all activities and decisions
disciplines Of Execution
Most of the time organizations or individuals keep working on multiple goals and seldom achieve successes as desired. This book explains practical approach and steps to achieve widely important goals. Widely Important Goals means, balance everything we achieve is insignificant without achieving those set of widely important goals. Runs through examples and supported videos through links clearly conveying how these 4x Disciplined process can easily adopted to any industry, commercial establishment on a corner and personnel life too (e.g., reducing weight!)
Strategy Rules
Timeless lessons out from the life experiences of three contemporary leaders from three technological giants are well explained in this book. The Authors being from Faculty of Harvard and MIT, topped up with first hand encounters and experiences out from Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Andy Grove make reading an unique experience. Experiences are truly timeless one and shaped future of Information Technology that we see around today.