10 Management Books Every CIO Should Read
On the rare occasions when you do have time to read, these hand-picked titles will give you a return on your investment.
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CIOs only have so much time in a day. You've got to keep the "lights on," as the saying goes, while also serving the business, hopefully transforming it when possible. CIOs also need to keep up with the latest technologies, the latest business news, the inner workings (and politics) of their own company, and, occasionally, even see family and friends.
So, when do you have time to read, and what should you read?
Fear not, we've got you covered. Throughout the year, we'll be assembling lists of books that you can count on being worth your time. Sometimes they'll be new. Sometimes they'll be classics you don't want to miss. Whenever they were written, you can count on the fact that our hand-picked titles will give you a return on your investment of time and money.
With this list, I've picked mostly classics. For the most part, they're what I'd call "new classics," books written in the last five years. CIOs, more than anyone else in the C-Suite, need to stay current. If you browsed the CIO literature from just a few short years ago, it would feature tips on running the data center with the fewest costs possible. The myth of IT as a cost sink is long gone, replaced by the need to transform the business. So some older classics, while great for the time, are dated.
When I do reach for older books, you can bet there's a reason. That's because they still deliver useful and thought-provoking content all these years later.
On the following pages you'll see my 10 favorite "classic" CIO books. Tell us which ones you like best in the comments section below. And let us know what you're reading right now.
Title: The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't
Author: Robert I. Sutton
My apologies if you are squeamish about the profanity in the title. Might I suggest that if you are, the audiobook would not be a great option for you.
Language aside, this is the most important business book I've ever read. It pinpoints, as succinctly as possible, that most enterprises have behavioral problems. Too many managers are bullies. Too many people are disrespectful. Incivility is rampant.
If you don't see this in your enterprise, you are either the luckiest CIO on earth, or you are a person whose behavior fits the above descriptions.
Read this, and you'll learn how to identify the behavior that is causing the worst troubles in your organization, and how to deal with it. If you don't have time to read the whole book (or you want a teaser), this article offers an overview.
You'll be surprised to learn how much energy your bully managers are sapping from your organization.
Title: The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
Author: Ben Horowitz
This is a shockingly honest book in an era of management books that are watered down and safe. If you've never read Horowitz's blog, you're missing out. Here's his most recent post, and it exemplifies the counter-intuitive, honest, and useful writing you can expect from him. The Hard Things talks about the trials of startups but it applies to any leader.
Here's the one hard thing about the book though: Either you like his style, or it is going to make you crazy. Horowitz writes his personal thoughts in a personal way. (They include some rather curious hip-hop quotes.) Essentially, it is the best of his blog. So, do yourself a favor and test-drive this book before you buy it.
Title: Burning the Ships: Transforming Your Company's Culture Through Intellectual Property Strategy
Authors: Marshall Phelps and David Kline
You have probably heard of David Kline because of his far more famous Rembrandts in the Attic, which shed light on the value of intellectual property. While that book is a classic, its basic concept is accepted now.
Burning the Ships, on the other hand, tells a fascinating story of Microsoft's relationship with the OpenSource community. It presents a tale of intellectual change inside a company that had previously sought to basically destroy all comers and was looking to change its ways and become a better partner. The book gets more interesting with age (it is now six years old) because we can see the long-term successes and failures in Microsoft's transformation and change in strategy.
Microsoft's Windows 10 strategy is clearly influenced, at least in part, by these experiences. Some of the biggest players (Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, of course) are no longer at Microsoft, but you can still see the aftermath of this story rippling through one of the biggest tech companies in the world.
Title: The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done
Author: Peter F. Drucker
This is the only book you will find on this list that was written before I was born. In fact, I have socks older than nearly all the books on this list. But you can't talk about the books every business person should read without talking about this book.
Drucker provides five things every effective executive needs to do that will never go out of style:
1. Managing time.
2. Choosing what to contribute to the organization.
3. Knowing where and how to mobilize strengths for best effect.
4. Setting the right priorities.
5. Knitting all of these together with effective decision-making.
Nearly all the people who write leadership books learned to be leaders from Drucker. Why read the rehashed versions of their experiences when you can learn from the original?
Title: The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win
Authors: Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford
This is the only novel on the list. And it is a strange bird.
Most tech management book authors accumulate the experiences of multiple IT companies, conduct extensive interviews, and quote those interviews to draw out lessons.
This book, instead, creates a fictionalized company. The hero is a CIO embattled by the CEO to transform the IT department. Most IT pros will see the essence of truth in this novel, and learn lessons from it as they would from a nonfiction management book.
The only issue is that, like any novel, it needs to ring true for the reader. Some readers may find moments in this book that don't ring true. When this happens, and you try to pull management lessons from the book, it might feel more like a straw man argument than an educational opportunity.
Other readers may feel this hits too close to home to be entertaining: It might make you feel like a traumatized war veteran reading war stories.
Title:: The Un-Bossy Boss: 12 Powerful Questions to Make You a Great Manager
Author: Gary Magenta
This is the book for people who have read The No Asshole Rule and see themselves in the book's title. This book will reform anyone who may have started off his or her management career on the wrong foot.
It is especially useful in the IT world, where many people get promoted for their technical skills, but lack the people skills to succeed in management. Like many books, the Un-Bossy Boss combines anecdotes and easy formulas for improving yourself as a manager. The devil is in the details here. This book gets the details right more than many other books of its ilk.
Title: The CIO Paradox: Battling The Contradictions of IT Leadership
Author: Martha Heller
If you understand the pressures you face better than Martha Heller, you have already written your own book. The CIO Paradox has sparked conversation around the CIO role for the past several years by pointing out some of the oddities of the position.
For example, Heller says this about the role of the CIO: "You were hired to be strategic, but spend most of your time on operational issues. You are the steward of risk mitigation and cost containment, yet you are expected to innovate. You are seen as a service provider, yet you are expected to be a business driver."
If you feel that pain, this book is for you.
Title: The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail
Author: Clayton Christensen
This is another oldie but goodie. People were just getting over grunge and putting away their flannel when Clayton Christensen told us about disruption. There's been a lot more to say on the topic since then. And we have a more nuanced understanding of it now.
But there's nothing like the original to establish a foundation for how you can think about technology, cause your own disruption, and prevent your enterprise from falling victim to it. If you've passed over this title because its concepts seem so familiar by now, do yourself a favor and take the time to read this classic of the digital economy.
Title: The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, And Prosperity In A Time of Brilliant Technologies
Authors: Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee
Speaking of classics of the digital economy, this is the modern day classic. Not so much a management book as a blueprint for navigating the Second Machine Age (the first being the Industrial Revolution) this book is for IT what Guns, Germs and Steel was for anthropology.
It paints in broad strokes the history and the future of technology, the ways in which many of our institutions will have to change, and the impact to our society that technology is likely to bring. What comes out of it is a solid vision of the future, and a roadmap for thinking about the decades to come.
Not everything predicted in the book will come to pass, but it helps shape the way we think about the future. As a CIO, you're shaping the future, and a book like this might help you hone your broader vision.
Title: Makers: The New Industrial Revolution
Author: Chris Anderson
If The Second Machine Age paints with broad strokes, Makers paints with detail about digital manufacturing and the maker movement.
The basic premise is that the prices of 3-D printing and other tools are making it possible for invention to return to the garage. After decades in which prototyping and fabrication required expensive, industrial-sized budgets and tools, the pendulum is swinging back. An entirely new generation of home inventors will be able to foster another revolution in manufacturing.
This isn't the kind of book you can immediately apply to your everyday job as a CIO, but you can use it to get a sense of the future, and refine your own vision and strategy. Taken together with The Second Machine Age, Makers should help you grasp the near-horizon changes that are pending for the digital economy.
How many of these have you read? Which are your favorites? Which ones are you looking forward to reading? What books would you recommend? Comment on the list, read your favorites, and come back to us to tell which ones changed your view of your job (or your life).
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