Books for a young leader

I work for a media company that produces video content for the international market. He joined the company more than three years ago as a screenwriter-creative. Offices are located in several countries. A year and a half ago, I was appointed head of the youngest branch. It’s time to study.

The company has a knowledge base and a mini-library. I want to share a few findings that helped me shape the views and management style.

1. Deploy your ship. David Marquet

This is exactly the book with which you need to start a young leader, so they think in our company.

The author of the book is a submarine captain who changed the archaic and maximally vertical army command system as part of his team. (and who will forbid him, because he is on a submarine). As a result, the crew of outsiders turned into winners.

What was useful. For most of my working life, I have worked in archaic management systems, where there is coordination of every step, bureaucracy and fear of making a mistake.

Once in another system, I began to get great job satisfaction as an employee. And through the prism of this book, I saw how the leaders who create such conditions think. Plus, the book is very well written and highly recommended.

2. From good to great. Jim Collins

The author of the book has a descriptive theory, he divides managers into 5 levels. Level 5 leaders are the leaders of truly great companies, or led them at their peak.

What was useful. As a rule, odious leaders or leaders of world brands become widely known. It also describes managers who are not known in wide circles, but their management style and attitude, allowed their companies to become market leaders.

In parallel, I watched a series about the leaders of Uber and WeWork. Works very well in contrast to the book. If you also watched, you will understand what I was talking about.

3.Scrum: A revolutionary project management method. Jeff Sutherland

Briefly. A simple and clear introductory material on what SCRUM is and how it works.

What was useful. More details here. I work for a media company whose leaders have decided to implement SCRUM and Agile. In different offices, this process took place with varying degrees of success.
The first reason, for our processes, SCRUM is not ideal, it needs to be strongly adapted:
A. Our sprints are much shorter (1-2 weeks),
B. 80% of the company – film crews, cameramen, lighting workers, directors, decorators. People who are used to working in completely different ways.
C. Again, 80% of employees don’t work in the office but travel around the site. Which is also not very convenient.

Not all SCRUM masters have coped with this task. SCRUM, which came to us, did a really bad job. (in our region, a specialist who was not very experienced at that time was available). I had to leave and postpone the transition to new rails.
And I decided to independently figure out what SCRUM is, at a basic level. And this book was enough for me. And already, when a more experienced specialist came to us, I could speak the same language with him.

Bonus: Don’t work with bad people. Robert Sutton

A book to take on a short vacation. Reminding yourself once again about who it is better not to work with is always useful. What turned out to be useful: I sometimes had a dilemma: there is an employee who performs the task coolly, best of all. But others can’t stand it. What to do, fire such an employee. So, the book gives a good example, which turned out to be useful to me.

There is an elite men’s clothing store, a very cool salesman worked there, his check was much higher than that of his colleagues. At the same time, he acted like a bad person. He took clients away from colleagues, was rude and rude to colleagues in every way in his spare time. At some point, management decided to fire him. And do you know what happened? Each seller began to sell more, but not by much. No one came close to that bad man’s sales level. But the general cash register of the store grew, the atmosphere in the working team became more comfortable, which led to an increase in sales of the entire team.

I will be glad if something is useful. And share your recommendations in the comments.

And this is my telegram channel, where I will talk about my second activity – coaching. Classical, I don’t teach you to increase your income by X times, etc. https://t.me/+4VoOzVvT8EhlMzBi