BOOKS  
I highly recommend

The Geek Way In his book, The Geek Way: The Radical Mindset that Drives Extraordinary Results, author Andrew McAfee offers a set of cultural solutions for thriving in a faster-moving business world. He argues that success is driven by four key behavioral norms that group members expect of each other:

• Speed: A preference for achieving results by iterating rapidly instead of planning extensively.

• Ownership: Higher levels of personal autonomy, empowerment, and responsibility, which leads to fewer cross-functional processes and less need for coordination.

• Science: A focus on conducting experiments, generating data, and debating how to interpret evidence to make decisions.

• Openness: A commitment to sharing information and being receptive to arguments, re-evaluations, and changes in direction.

Wiring the Winning Organization  In their book, award-winning authors Gene Kim and Steven J. Spear reveal why some organizations consistently outperform their peers. Based on 150 years of research, they present a powerful new theory that explains how the best companies solve problems better, faster, and more easily than the competition.

The authors provide a guide for any struggling organization to achieve sustained greatness by closing the gap between their goals and real-world results. This groundbreaking approach is built on three core components:

• Simplification

• Slowification

• Amplification

Together, these principles create coherence across even the most complex organizations, empowering them to build and maintain incredible success in the market.

The High-Velocity Edge (Second Edition)
Steven Spear's book, The High-Velocity Edge, reveals how the best organizations consistently outperform competitors in cost, speed, innovation, and service. It provides a practical framework for systemizing innovation, turning it from an occasional "stroke of genius" into a reliable, everyday capability.

The book teaches leaders how to build a culture of structured, continuous improvement by focusing on four key capabilities:

• Build "Dynamic Discovery": Create systems that are designed to reveal operational problems and weaknesses as they happen.

• Attack Problems On-Site: Solve issues immediately when and where they occur, effectively converting weaknesses into organizational strengths.

• Disseminate Knowledge: Share the lessons gained from solving local problems throughout the entire company to expand collective expertise.

• Develop Your People: Cultivate managers who are deeply invested in developing everyone's capacity to continually innovate and improve.

Unbundling the Enterprise : In Unbundling the Enterprise: APIs, Optionality, and the Science of Happy Accidents, authors Stephen Fishman and Matt McLarty offer a strategy for businesses to thrive in turbulent times by engineering "happy accidents."  

The core idea is to unbundle a company's functions into reusable digital assets. These "building blocks" can then be rapidly combined in new ways to capitalize on emerging opportunities and innovations.  

The book provides an actionable methodology for leaders, built on key techniques like:

• Using APIs to create widespread optionality and flexibility.  

• Designing digital business models that are focused on value exchange.  

• Optimizing outcomes through tight feedback loops.  

Ultimately, the authors argue that sustainable success requires a deeper mindset shift—one that prepares an organization to continually capitalize on the unanticipated opportunities created by rapid technology innovation.

Flow Engineering: From Value Stream Mapping to Effective Action In Flow Engineering, Value Stream Mapping experts Steve Pereira and Andrew Davis provide a step-by-step guide to improving collaboration and workflow. Drawing on foundations from the Toyota Production System, their book offers a lightweight and iterative approach to building shared understanding within teams.

The core of their method is running fast-paced mapping workshops that use five key maps to facilitate collaborative “flow conversations.” This process is designed to surface and resolve the tangled dependencies, conflicting priorities, and unspoken assumptions that often grind progress to a halt.

The result is a clear roadmap, owned by the people doing the work, which leads to:

• Accelerated innovation cycles

• Optimized critical workflows

• More effective team coordination

Instead of a rigid, one-size-fits-all framework, Flow Engineering provides a flexible approach to meet your organization where it is and improve how work gets done.

Accelerate: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations
Based on four years of groundbreaking research, Accelerate proves that the performance of software delivery teams is a key differentiator for any business. Authors Dr. Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim use rigorous statistical methods to show how technology can drive business value.

The book presents both the findings and the science behind their research, giving leaders a practical guide to:

• Measure the performance of their teams using clear, objective metrics.

• Identify the specific capabilities to invest in for driving higher performance.

• Apply these principles to accelerate their organization and win in the marketplace.

Ideal for management at every level, Accelerate provides a scientific approach to building and scaling high-performing technology organizations.

Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow
In Team Topologies, authors Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais offer a practical, step-by-step guide to organizational design for software teams. They address the essential question of how to build the right team structures for your organization's specific goals and culture.

The book introduces an adaptive model based on two core concepts:

• Four fundamental team types

• Three team interaction patterns

This approach treats teams as the fundamental means of delivery, allowing their structure and communication pathways to evolve over time. By applying these patterns, organizations can create clearer software architecture, optimize the flow of value, and turn inter-team problems into valuable signals for continuous improvement.

The Whole Brain Business Book, Second Edition Unlocking the Power of Whole Brain Thinking in Organizations, Teams, and Individuals

IDENTIFY how you and others prefer to think
IMPROVE your communication skills
INSPIRE creative thinking in yourself and others
INNOVATE faster and work more efficiently
IMPLEMENT changes throughout your organization
INCREASE productivity and beat the competition

Whole Brain Business Management uses the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument® (HBDI®) to understand that individuals and teams have different cognitive preferences for thinking, problem-solving, and communication across four brain quadrants (Analytical, Practical, Relational, and Experimental). By recognizing and leveraging these diverse thinking styles, organizations can foster innovation, enhance productivity, eliminate blind spots, and improve overall team performance and decision-making in a complex, fast-changing business environment.  .

Project Zero Trust: A Story About a Strategy for Aligning Security and the Business
George Finney, chief security officer at Southern Methodist University, delivers an insightful and practical discussion of Zero Trust implementation. Presented in the form of a fictional narrative involving a breach at a company, the book tracks the actions of the company's new IT security director.
Listeners will learn John Kindervag's 5-Step methodology for implementing Zero Trust, the four Zero Trust design principles, and how to limit the impact of a breach. They'll also find:
Concrete strategies for aligning your security practices with the business
Common myths and pitfalls when implementing Zero Trust and how to implement it in a cloud environment
Strategies for preventing breaches that encourage efficiency and cost reduction in your company's security practices. Project Zero Trust is an ideal resource for aspiring technology professionals, as well as experienced IT leaders, network engineers, system admins, and project managers who are interested in or expected to implement zero trust initiatives.

A Seat at the Table: IT Leadership in the Age of Agility, In A Seat at the Table, CIO Mark Schwartz explores the role of IT leadership as it is now and opens the door to reveal IT leadership as it should be - an integral part of the value creation engine. With wit and easy style, Schwartz reveals that the only way to become an Agile IT leader is to be courageous - to throw off the attitude and assumptions that have kept CIOs from taking their rightful seat at the table.  

The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement - 30th Anniversary Edition: "The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement" is a business novel by Eliyahu Goldratt that uses a fictional story to teach the principles of the Theory of Constraints (TOC). The book follows Alex Rogo, a plant manager who has 90 days to turn around his failing factory.

Through the guidance of his former physics professor, Jonah, Alex learns to identify and manage bottlenecks in his production process. The central idea is that a system's output is limited by its constraints, and by focusing on improving these bottlenecks, the entire system can be improved. The book emphasizes three key metrics: throughput (the rate at which the system generates money through sales), inventory (the money invested in things it intends to sell), and operational expense (the money the system spends to turn inventory into throughput). The ultimate goal, as the title suggests, is a process of ongoing improvement, not just a one-time fix.

Learning Agile: Understanding Scrum, XP, Lean, and Kanban
Agile has revolutionized the way teams approach software development, but with dozens of agile methodologies to choose from, the decision to "go agile" can be tricky. This practical book helps you sort it out, first by grounding you in agile's underlying principles, then by describing four specific - and well-used - agile methods: Scrum, extreme programming (XP), Lean, and Kanban.

Each method focuses on a different area of development, but they all aim to change your team's mindset - from individuals who simply follow a plan to a cohesive group that makes decisions together. Whether you're considering agile for the first time, or trying it again, you'll learn how to choose a method that best fits your team and your company.

Understand the purpose behind agile's core values and principles
Learn Scrum's emphasis on project management, self-organization, and collective commitment
Focus on software design and architecture with XP practices such as test-first and pair programming
Use Lean thinking to empower your team, eliminate waste, and deliver software fast
Learn how Kanban's practices help you deliver great software by managing flow
Adopt agile practices and principles with an agile coach


The DevOps Handbook, Second Edition
This handbook is a practical guide for technology leaders and engineers that provides a framework for implementing DevOps principles. It builds on the concepts introduced in the novel The Phoenix Project and aims to break down the traditional barriers between software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops).

The core of the book is structured around three key principles known as "The Three Ways":

• The First Way: The Principles of Flow. This focuses on optimizing the entire workflow from development to the customer. The goal is to increase the speed and smoothness of delivering value by making work visible, reducing batch sizes, and eliminating bottlenecks.

• The Second Way: The Principles of Feedback. This emphasizes creating rapid and constant feedback loops at every stage of the process. By amplifying feedback, teams can identify and fix problems faster, leading to higher quality and safer systems.

• The Third Way: The Principles of Continual Learning and Experimentation. This fosters a high-trust culture that encourages continuous learning, risk-taking, and experimentation. The idea is to learn from both successes and failures to drive organizational improvement.

The second edition is expanded with new case studies from companies like Adidas and Target, and includes updated research to provide a comprehensive roadmap for organizations looking to achieve world-class agility, reliability, and security in their technology processes.

The Unicorn Project  The Coalition of the Willing
A follow-up to The Phoenix Project, "The Unicorn Project" by Gene Kim tells the story from the perspective of a senior software architect and developer named Maxine. After being blamed for a major outage, she is exiled to the troubled Phoenix Project.

Feeling isolated and overwhelmed by technical debt and bureaucratic processes, Maxine discovers a group of rebels known as "The Coalition of the Willing." Together, they work to overcome the dysfunctional systems and create a culture of innovation and collaboration.

The novel introduces "The Five Ideals" as a framework for better ways of working:

1. Locality and Simplicity: The ability for teams to work independently and simply, without being bogged down by complex dependencies.

2. Focus, Flow, and Joy: Creating an environment where developers can achieve a state of deep work, find fulfillment, and be productive.

3. Improvement of Daily Work: Making continuous improvement a part of everyone's daily routine, not an afterthought.

4. Psychological Safety: Fostering a high-trust culture where team members feel safe to take risks, experiment, and speak up without fear of blame.

5. Customer Focus: Ensuring that all work is directly linked to delivering value to the customer.

The Phoenix Project The book that started the movement
The Phoenix Project is a business novel that tells the story of Bill Palmer, an IT manager at a company called Parts Unlimited. He is unexpectedly promoted to VP of IT Operations and is tasked with saving a critical, but massively delayed and over-budget initiative known as the Phoenix Project.

The company's IT department is in chaos, characterized by a constant state of firefighting, blame games between Development and Operations, and an inability to complete planned work. Through the guidance of a mysterious and eccentric board member named Erik, Bill learns to see IT work as a manufacturing plant.

Erik introduces him to the core principles of DevOps and the Theory of Constraints, framed as "The Three Ways":

1. The First Way: The Principles of Flow. Focuses on optimizing the flow of work from Development to Operations to the customer. This involves making work visible, reducing batch sizes, and eliminating bottlenecks to increase throughput.

2. The Second Way: The Principles of Feedback. Emphasizes creating fast and continuous feedback loops from right to left (from Operations back to Development) to catch problems early and improve quality.

3. The Third Way: The Principles of Continual Learning and Experimentation. Fosters a high-trust culture that encourages taking risks, learning from failures, and dedicating time to improve daily work.

By applying these principles, Bill and his team transform their dysfunctional department, break down the silos between Dev and Ops, and successfully turn the Phoenix Project around, ultimately aligning IT with the overall goals of the business.

Yuval Noah Harari
Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI  2024
21 Lessons for the 21st Century  2018
Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow  2017
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind  2015

While Yuval Noah Harari does not explicitly use the French term "folie à millions" in his new book, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI, the core concept of mass delusion is a central and recurring theme throughout his work, including this latest release. "Folie à millions," which translates to "madness of millions," refers to an extreme event of collective delusion affecting a vast number of people.
Harari's central thesis, consistently woven throughout his books Sapiens, Homo Deus, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, and now Nexus, is that the unique ability of Homo sapiens to cooperate in large numbers is founded upon shared fictions, myths, and imagined realities. These are, in essence, forms of collective belief that, while not objectively true, are essential for building and maintaining social order, from religions and nations to money and corporations.
The synopsis for Nexus directly states, "Humanity gains power by building large networks of cooperation, but the easiest way to build and maintain these networks is by spreading fictions, fantasies, and mass delusions." This indicates that the idea of "folie à millions" is not only present but is a fundamental pillar of the book's argument.
In his previous works, Harari has extensively explored how these shared beliefs can lead to both remarkable achievements and horrific atrocities. For instance, in Sapiens, he argues that the cognitive revolution allowed humans to create and believe in "imagined orders," which enabled the formation of cities, kingdoms, and empires. However, these same shared beliefs have also fueled wars, persecution, and inequality.
Therefore, while Harari may not use the specific psychiatric term, his analysis of human history and society is deeply engaged with the phenomenon of millions of people collectively adhering to beliefs that could be described as a form of mass delusion. He posits that this very "madness" is the bedrock of human civilization.

Future
Quantum Supremacy: The Quantum Computer Revolution Will Change Everything
The Coming Wave: AI, Power, and Our Future
The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI
A World Without Work: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond
Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War
Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control
AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future
Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Age of Invisible Machines: A Practical Guide to a Hyper Automated Ecosystem

Psychology and Management
Thinking, Fast and Slow Two systems drive the way we think and make choices, Kahneman explains: System One is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System Two is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Examining how both systems function within the mind, Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities as well as the biases of fast thinking and the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and our choices. Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, he shows where we can trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking, contrasting the two-system view of the mind with the standard model of the rational economic agent.

Kahneman's singularly influential work has transformed cognitive psychology and launched the new fields of behavioral economics and happiness studies. In this path-breaking book, Kahneman shows how the mind works, and offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and personal lives - and how we can guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble.

Highlights from Thinking Fast and Slow

On Character: Choices That Define a Life
Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World
Psycho-Cybernetics: Updated and Expanded

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