7 ms·

High Performance Organizations Reading List

229 points by bfoks 5y ago

question002 5y ago
Oh self-help books written by corporations?! Surely this can help me. I really need the Internet to point me to this. HN is such a not dead site.
mu_killnine 5y ago
As someone who is literally starting an IT department from scratch, this is a really exciting list for me to dig into. There are old favorites like 'mythical man month' that I'm generally aware of, though never actually read personally, and whole new blogs and videos to sift through. Thanks for this.
- mwint 5y ago
  How’d you get the opportunity to start an IT department from scratch? Small growing company?
- sodality2 5y ago
  How would you even begin to begin with that task? What resources would you consult?
  - mhh__ 5y ago
    > What resources would you consult? Experience
- mlac 5y ago
  That sounds like a great opportunity
aluciani 5y ago
Great resource thanks for sharing. Lots of titles and resources that I have never considered. Super useful :)
harshreality 5y ago
Everyday Astronaut's walk and talk with Elon Musk where he attempts to explain his management process, starts at 13:30 of part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t705r8ICkRw&t=13m30s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t705r8ICkRw&t=13m30s Here's a rough summary: 1. Make requirements less dumb. 2. Delete part or process steps. If you're not occasionally adding things back (he says 10%) (ideally in improved versions), you're not removing things often enough. 3. Simplify, optimize, solve. Everyone's trained to jump to this because the educational process requires you to answer a question as posed, when often the question is dumb and shouldn't be dealt with as-stated. 4. Accelerate process 5. Automate Those tend to blur together at the edges. I'm sure if he formalized this and wrote it down for mass consumption it'd be presented differently, but it's his current mental model. Process testing - remove unnecessary in-process testing after production line debugging is done. Obviously there are nuances, he's not saying to do no in-process testing, but rather to remove testing which was intended to reveal information once that's already been collected and addressed. He cautions about false positives from in-process testing, and notes most testing can be done end of line with acceptable results. Finally, it's important to understand the context. The part about part/step deletion in particular, when things get added back 10% of the time, is not appropriate for all development processes. That would have to be adjusted a the specific product and market objective.
- adolph 5y ago
  That was so good I transcribed/transliterated it for my team: Elon Musk’s Five Steps to Optimize: - Question the Requirements - Delete Parts or Processes - Simplify - Accelerate - Automate Quotes: You want everyone to be a chief engineer. So, “everyone is a chief engineer” means that people need to understand the system at a high level to know when they are making a bad optimization. Like when we put immense effort into reducing engine mass but hardly any effort into reducing propellant residuals. All designs are wrong, it’s just a matter of how wrong. Transcript of Five Steps description: What I’m trying to have us all implement rigorously is the five step process. First, make your requirements less dumb. Your requirements are definitely dumb. It does not matter who gave them to you. It’s particularly dangerous if a smart person gave you the requirements because you might not question them enough. Then, try very hard to delete a part or process. This is actually very important. If you’re not occasionally adding things back in, you’re not deleting enough. The bias tends to be very strongly towards “Let’s add this part or process step in case we need it.” But you can basically make “in case” arguments for so many things. And for a rocket that’s trying to achieve, trying to be the first fully reusable rocket…you have to run at tight margins because if you don’t run tight margins you get nothing to orbit. Whatever requirement or constraint you have must come with a name, not a department. Because you can’t ask the department, you have to ask a person. And that person who it putting forward the requirement or constraint must take responsibility for that requirement. Otherwise you can have a requirement that basically an intern two years ago randomly came up with off the cuff and they aren’t even at the company any more . . . these things are way more silly than you’d think. If you’re not adding things back in at least ten percent of the time you’re clearly not deleting enough. Only at the third step you simplify or optimize. The third step, not the first step. The reason it’s the third step is because its very common, its possibly the most common error of a smart engineer is to optimize something that should not exist. And you say why would people do that? Well, everyone’s been trained in high school and college that you’ve got to answer the question, convergent logic. So you can’t tell a professor “your question is dumb.” You will get a bad grade. You have to answer the question. So everyones basically without knowing it they’ve got a mental straightjacket on. They will work on optimizing the thing that should simply not exist. Finally you get to step four which is accelerate cycle time. You are moving too slowly, go faster. But don’t go faster until you’ve worked on the other three things first. If you’re digging your grave, don’t dig it faster, stop digging your grave. The final step is automate.
aktuel 5y ago
What a BS parade. You don't become a real person by reading on how to become a real person.
- auslegung 5y ago
  And how do you propose people learn how to become better? One way is to read. This is such an accepted thing that your response is so far below intelligible I can’t even try to engage with you in good faith.
- richardthered 5y ago
  "Intelligent individuals learn from every thing and every one; average people, from their experiences. The stupid already have all the answers." https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7834133-intelligent-individuals-learn-from-every-thing-and-every-one-average https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7834133-intelligent-individ... - Socrates
  - ajb 5y ago
    I agree, but would be very surprised if the attribution was correct.
physicsgraph 5y ago
Similar pages: [0,1,2] and my own list, [3] [0] https://github.com/LappleApple/awesome-leading-and-managing https://github.com/LappleApple/awesome-leading-and-managing [1] https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-engineering-team-management https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-engineering-team-manage... [2] https://github.com/ankitjaininfo/awesome-managers https://github.com/ankitjaininfo/awesome-managers [3] https://graphthinking.blogspot.com/2021/04/reading-list-for-professional.html https://graphthinking.blogspot.com/2021/04/reading-list-for-...
Aeolun 5y ago
My problem with reading all of these tomes (and by now I’ve read a few), is that while I appear to be aware of what works for a software team, my management does not, hasn’t read these, or just plain doesn’t care. I need a guide on how to teach people that have a vested interest in not acknowledging that there might have been a problem in the first place.
- mathattack 5y ago
  You can’t change a boss or organization. You can choose a boss or organization. And you can become a boss or start an organization.
  - josephg 5y ago
    Yep. As Simon Sinek puts it, leadership doesn’t have to start from the top. Leadership starts when you take care of the person to the left of you and the person to the right of you.
    - rytill 5y ago
      The person you replied to basically saying the opposite of you.
- vasco 5y ago
  > while I appear to be aware of what works for a software team I think the problem might be here. You don't know what works because nobody does. These books offer frameworks and mental models to work through problems but every organisation is different. Approaching it as "I have the solution and I just can't do it because you don't let me" is not great and I'm not surprised it hasn't worked. If you cannot get the rest of leadership or your boss on the same boat as you, you don't have any solution. The best of solutions is worthless if it can't even be put into practice. This is assuming everyone has good faith and is trying to improve things. If not, switch jobs.
- KronisLV 5y ago
  I've heard a rather interesting take on the issue: > Your choices usually are to either change the company, or to change company. (edited for clarity) So essentially if the people around you fail to see your point, there's probably little that you can do to educate or convince them, short of looking for a new company to become a part of yourself. I guess people "jumping ship" is just a sign of the times and the environment that we work in - in most western cultures it's a bit more fluid than in, say, Japan.
fungiblecog 5y ago
The trouble with all of these great ideas is that while the management/leadership/whatever may claim they want to solve these problems - they actually don’t want these kinds of solutions. What they want is to maintain the power structure that got them where they are - and want to remain - at all costs. It’s like asking politicians who got elected using the current system to reform it. It ain’t gonna happen.
- nickff 5y ago
  Some leaders are insecure and guard their power jealously, but others truly are level-five leaders who want their organizations to thrive.
  - willcipriano 5y ago
    In my experience the distribution of the former tends to increase exponentially with the size of the company.
    - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
      Yeah, good people are rare in most professions. Additionally, humans tend to resist work to become more self-aware, and such self-awareness is critical for good leaders/managers (and yes I know those two things are different).
    - cutemonster 5y ago
      > increase exponentially with the size of the company Most large countries are run by psychopaths incl the US recently
sandworm101 5y ago
Yup. These are exactly the sort of exec speak that I expect up-and-coming managers read. They aren't exactly fads but nor are they longstanding respected works. Most will probably still be read in a couple years, but very few will survive twenty. Where are the great works that will improve a person's written language? Where are the seminal works on market theory? Where are the histories? My kingdom for an executive who can string together a cohesive paragraph.
- noddingham 5y ago
  Your comment makes it sound like you're aware of those works that you wish executives would read. Would you mind sharing some?
  - loughnane 5y ago
    Not OP but I share their sentiment. In my estimation such a reading list should include: - high output management, grove - managing oneself, drucker - tech revolutions and financial capital, perez - measure what matters, doerr (maybe… as an addendum to high output management)
- Daishiman 5y ago
  Peopleware has been around for a while by now and continues to get as much praise as it did.
lincpa 5y ago
Software and hardware are factories that manufacture data, so they have the same "warehouse/workshop model" and management methods as the manufacturing industry. so, Software and hardware are a unified architecture: "warehouse/workshop model". the "Warehouse/Workshop Model" will surely replace the "von Neumann architecture" and become the No. 1 architecture in the computer field, and it is the first architecture to achieve a unified software and hardware. Follower: Apple M1 chip. [The Grand Unified Programming Theory: The Pure Function Pipeline Data Flow with Principle-based Warehouse/Workshop Model](https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow) [10 principles of the system design](https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow#Principles-of-the-model https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow...) [Why my "warehouse/workshop model" can achieve high performance and low power consumption (take cloudcomputing, supercomptuing, HPC, Apple M1 chip, Intel AVX-512, Qualcomm as examples)](https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow/blob/master/doc/why_wwmodel_fast_en.md https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow...) [The difference between "the Principle-based Warehouse/Workshop Model" and "Microsoft Azure DataFactory/DataPipelines Architecture"](https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow#The-difference-between-it-and-Microsoft-Azure-DataFactory-DataPipelines-Architecture https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow...)
CalChris 5y ago
I'm surprised Andy Grove's High Output Management wasn't on the list.
loughnane 5y ago
I had a suspicion that there was a significant recency bias, so I clicked on the first 19 amazon links and looked at the published dates. - 1988 - 1 - 1999 - 1 - 2000 - 1 - 2002 - 1 - 2005 - 1 - 2007 - 2 - 2008 - 1 - 2012 - 1 - 2013 - 1 - 2014 - 2 - 2015 - 3 - 2016 - 3 - 2017 - 1 I'm also reminded of the the recent post on The Creative World's Bullshit Industrial Complex [0]. There are some gems in here but I can't help but feel like a lot of them are just uninspired remixes of what came before. The list I want to see is of the "great management books". Ones that: - had an effect on firms both in the time the book was published and in subsequent business "generations" - influenced subsequent works of note. - remain relevant to business today Where is that list? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28459533 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28459533
- f_allwein 5y ago
  Try "The 100 Best Business Books of All Time: What They Say, Why They Matter, and How They Can Help You": https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4274735-the-100-best-business-books-of-all-time https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4274735-the-100-best-bus... . I found it useful as it has summaries of the books as well.
  - loughnane 5y ago
    thanks. will check it out.

229 points by bfoks 5y ago

Oh self-help books written by corporations?! Surely this can help me. I really need the Internet to point me to this. HN is such a not dead site.

mu_killnine 5y ago

As someone who is literally starting an IT department from scratch, this is a really exciting list for me to dig into. There are old favorites like 'mythical man month' that I'm generally aware of, though never actually read personally, and whole new blogs and videos to sift through. Thanks for this.

mwint 5y ago
How’d you get the opportunity to start an IT department from scratch? Small growing company?
sodality2 5y ago
How would you even begin to begin with that task? What resources would you consult?
- mhh__ 5y ago
  > What resources would you consult? Experience
mlac 5y ago
That sounds like a great opportunity

aluciani 5y ago

Great resource thanks for sharing. Lots of titles and resources that I have never considered. Super useful :)

harshreality 5y ago

Everyday Astronaut's walk and talk with Elon Musk where he attempts to explain his management process, starts at 13:30 of part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t705r8ICkRw&t=13m30s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t705r8ICkRw&t=13m30s Here's a rough summary: 1. Make requirements less dumb. 2. Delete part or process steps. If you're not occasionally adding things back (he says 10%) (ideally in improved versions), you're not removing things often enough. 3. Simplify, optimize, solve. Everyone's trained to jump to this because the educational process requires you to answer a question as posed, when often the question is dumb and shouldn't be dealt with as-stated. 4. Accelerate process 5. Automate Those tend to blur together at the edges. I'm sure if he formalized this and wrote it down for mass consumption it'd be presented differently, but it's his current mental model. Process testing - remove unnecessary in-process testing after production line debugging is done. Obviously there are nuances, he's not saying to do no in-process testing, but rather to remove testing which was intended to reveal information once that's already been collected and addressed. He cautions about false positives from in-process testing, and notes most testing can be done end of line with acceptable results. Finally, it's important to understand the context. The part about part/step deletion in particular, when things get added back 10% of the time, is not appropriate for all development processes. That would have to be adjusted a the specific product and market objective.

adolph 5y ago
That was so good I transcribed/transliterated it for my team: Elon Musk’s Five Steps to Optimize: - Question the Requirements - Delete Parts or Processes - Simplify - Accelerate - Automate Quotes: You want everyone to be a chief engineer. So, “everyone is a chief engineer” means that people need to understand the system at a high level to know when they are making a bad optimization. Like when we put immense effort into reducing engine mass but hardly any effort into reducing propellant residuals. All designs are wrong, it’s just a matter of how wrong. Transcript of Five Steps description: What I’m trying to have us all implement rigorously is the five step process. First, make your requirements less dumb. Your requirements are definitely dumb. It does not matter who gave them to you. It’s particularly dangerous if a smart person gave you the requirements because you might not question them enough. Then, try very hard to delete a part or process. This is actually very important. If you’re not occasionally adding things back in, you’re not deleting enough. The bias tends to be very strongly towards “Let’s add this part or process step in case we need it.” But you can basically make “in case” arguments for so many things. And for a rocket that’s trying to achieve, trying to be the first fully reusable rocket…you have to run at tight margins because if you don’t run tight margins you get nothing to orbit. Whatever requirement or constraint you have must come with a name, not a department. Because you can’t ask the department, you have to ask a person. And that person who it putting forward the requirement or constraint must take responsibility for that requirement. Otherwise you can have a requirement that basically an intern two years ago randomly came up with off the cuff and they aren’t even at the company any more . . . these things are way more silly than you’d think. If you’re not adding things back in at least ten percent of the time you’re clearly not deleting enough. Only at the third step you simplify or optimize. The third step, not the first step. The reason it’s the third step is because its very common, its possibly the most common error of a smart engineer is to optimize something that should not exist. And you say why would people do that? Well, everyone’s been trained in high school and college that you’ve got to answer the question, convergent logic. So you can’t tell a professor “your question is dumb.” You will get a bad grade. You have to answer the question. So everyones basically without knowing it they’ve got a mental straightjacket on. They will work on optimizing the thing that should simply not exist. Finally you get to step four which is accelerate cycle time. You are moving too slowly, go faster. But don’t go faster until you’ve worked on the other three things first. If you’re digging your grave, don’t dig it faster, stop digging your grave. The final step is automate.

aktuel 5y ago

What a BS parade. You don't become a real person by reading on how to become a real person.

auslegung 5y ago
And how do you propose people learn how to become better? One way is to read. This is such an accepted thing that your response is so far below intelligible I can’t even try to engage with you in good faith.
richardthered 5y ago
"Intelligent individuals learn from every thing and every one; average people, from their experiences. The stupid already have all the answers." https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7834133-intelligent-individuals-learn-from-every-thing-and-every-one-average https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7834133-intelligent-individ... - Socrates
- ajb 5y ago
  I agree, but would be very surprised if the attribution was correct.

physicsgraph 5y ago

Similar pages: [0,1,2] and my own list, [3] [0] https://github.com/LappleApple/awesome-leading-and-managing https://github.com/LappleApple/awesome-leading-and-managing [1] https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-engineering-team-management https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-engineering-team-manage... [2] https://github.com/ankitjaininfo/awesome-managers https://github.com/ankitjaininfo/awesome-managers [3] https://graphthinking.blogspot.com/2021/04/reading-list-for-professional.html https://graphthinking.blogspot.com/2021/04/reading-list-for-...

Aeolun 5y ago

My problem with reading all of these tomes (and by now I’ve read a few), is that while I appear to be aware of what works for a software team, my management does not, hasn’t read these, or just plain doesn’t care. I need a guide on how to teach people that have a vested interest in not acknowledging that there might have been a problem in the first place.

mathattack 5y ago
You can’t change a boss or organization. You can choose a boss or organization. And you can become a boss or start an organization.
- josephg 5y ago
  Yep. As Simon Sinek puts it, leadership doesn’t have to start from the top. Leadership starts when you take care of the person to the left of you and the person to the right of you.
  - rytill 5y ago
    The person you replied to basically saying the opposite of you.
vasco 5y ago
> while I appear to be aware of what works for a software team I think the problem might be here. You don't know what works because nobody does. These books offer frameworks and mental models to work through problems but every organisation is different. Approaching it as "I have the solution and I just can't do it because you don't let me" is not great and I'm not surprised it hasn't worked. If you cannot get the rest of leadership or your boss on the same boat as you, you don't have any solution. The best of solutions is worthless if it can't even be put into practice. This is assuming everyone has good faith and is trying to improve things. If not, switch jobs.
KronisLV 5y ago
I've heard a rather interesting take on the issue: > Your choices usually are to either change the company, or to change company. (edited for clarity) So essentially if the people around you fail to see your point, there's probably little that you can do to educate or convince them, short of looking for a new company to become a part of yourself. I guess people "jumping ship" is just a sign of the times and the environment that we work in - in most western cultures it's a bit more fluid than in, say, Japan.

fungiblecog 5y ago

The trouble with all of these great ideas is that while the management/leadership/whatever may claim they want to solve these problems - they actually don’t want these kinds of solutions. What they want is to maintain the power structure that got them where they are - and want to remain - at all costs. It’s like asking politicians who got elected using the current system to reform it. It ain’t gonna happen.

nickff 5y ago
Some leaders are insecure and guard their power jealously, but others truly are level-five leaders who want their organizations to thrive.
- willcipriano 5y ago
  In my experience the distribution of the former tends to increase exponentially with the size of the company.
  - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
    Yeah, good people are rare in most professions. Additionally, humans tend to resist work to become more self-aware, and such self-awareness is critical for good leaders/managers (and yes I know those two things are different).
  - cutemonster 5y ago
    > increase exponentially with the size of the company Most large countries are run by psychopaths incl the US recently

sandworm101 5y ago

Yup. These are exactly the sort of exec speak that I expect up-and-coming managers read. They aren't exactly fads but nor are they longstanding respected works. Most will probably still be read in a couple years, but very few will survive twenty. Where are the great works that will improve a person's written language? Where are the seminal works on market theory? Where are the histories? My kingdom for an executive who can string together a cohesive paragraph.

noddingham 5y ago
Your comment makes it sound like you're aware of those works that you wish executives would read. Would you mind sharing some?
- loughnane 5y ago
  Not OP but I share their sentiment. In my estimation such a reading list should include: - high output management, grove - managing oneself, drucker - tech revolutions and financial capital, perez - measure what matters, doerr (maybe… as an addendum to high output management)
Daishiman 5y ago
Peopleware has been around for a while by now and continues to get as much praise as it did.

lincpa 5y ago

Software and hardware are factories that manufacture data, so they have the same "warehouse/workshop model" and management methods as the manufacturing industry. so, Software and hardware are a unified architecture: "warehouse/workshop model". the "Warehouse/Workshop Model" will surely replace the "von Neumann architecture" and become the No. 1 architecture in the computer field, and it is the first architecture to achieve a unified software and hardware. Follower: Apple M1 chip. [The Grand Unified Programming Theory: The Pure Function Pipeline Data Flow with Principle-based Warehouse/Workshop Model](https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow) [10 principles of the system design](https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow#Principles-of-the-model https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow...) [Why my "warehouse/workshop model" can achieve high performance and low power consumption (take cloudcomputing, supercomptuing, HPC, Apple M1 chip, Intel AVX-512, Qualcomm as examples)](https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow/blob/master/doc/why_wwmodel_fast_en.md https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow...) [The difference between "the Principle-based Warehouse/Workshop Model" and "Microsoft Azure DataFactory/DataPipelines Architecture"](https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow#The-difference-between-it-and-Microsoft-Azure-DataFactory-DataPipelines-Architecture https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow...)

CalChris 5y ago

I'm surprised Andy Grove's High Output Management wasn't on the list.

loughnane 5y ago

I had a suspicion that there was a significant recency bias, so I clicked on the first 19 amazon links and looked at the published dates. - 1988 - 1 - 1999 - 1 - 2000 - 1 - 2002 - 1 - 2005 - 1 - 2007 - 2 - 2008 - 1 - 2012 - 1 - 2013 - 1 - 2014 - 2 - 2015 - 3 - 2016 - 3 - 2017 - 1 I'm also reminded of the the recent post on The Creative World's Bullshit Industrial Complex [0]. There are some gems in here but I can't help but feel like a lot of them are just uninspired remixes of what came before. The list I want to see is of the "great management books". Ones that: - had an effect on firms both in the time the book was published and in subsequent business "generations" - influenced subsequent works of note. - remain relevant to business today Where is that list? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28459533 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28459533

f_allwein 5y ago
Try "The 100 Best Business Books of All Time: What They Say, Why They Matter, and How They Can Help You": https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4274735-the-100-best-business-books-of-all-time https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4274735-the-100-best-bus... . I found it useful as it has summaries of the books as well.
- loughnane 5y ago
  thanks. will check it out.