TOP 10 BOOKS OF 2020

Queue the recording… …2020 has been a crazy year. 2019 was fantastic. Finished 83 books about cybersecurity, leadership, psychology, finances, marriage, business, memoirs, fIctionary literature, project management, culture, and more. Started my MBA with Western Governors University in November 2019. Work, kids, marriage was going great. Bring on 2020.

2020 has been an incredible struggle for so many around the world. All of us have been affected in one way or another. However, as we end of 2020, I find myself grateful.

I’m grateful my wife is winning her fight with cancer and the medical industry is always improving their cancer treatment programs. Grateful to be employed by an innovative company that is maturing quickly. Grateful my kids and I can operate remotely for school and work, and I get to hug them multiple times throughout the day. Grateful I get to chat with my wife while I’m getting coffee refills throughout my workday. Grateful my brother retired safely from the Police force this year. Grateful my school is going well, and I’ve hit every class completion goal set. Grateful for the courage to begin blogging. Grateful to see passion and purpose within so many people during difficult times.

BUILDING 2020 

Since 2015 I’ve adopted a life of challenge and change. There is no way we are living our lives to our potential. First, setting a goal to live a life of integrity, whether I’m home, at work, or with friends. Being authentic is very important and the failures are very humbling.

Next, begin searching. Searching for digital mentors I can learn from. Podcasts, books, interviews, documentaries… myself. Understanding who you are is one of the most important challenges you can take on. Understanding myself lead to defining my personal values and setting boundaries based on those values.

PERSONAL VALUES
Transparency 🔎 Bravery 💪 Trust 💗

REFLECT 2020

2020 helped me understand the foundation of leadership and the importance leadership plays in any situation. This does not mean leaders do not make mistakes. They make as many mistakes, or more, as anyone else. But how do they respond to those mistakes. How do we respond to failure. How do we grow people around us in spite of lack of alignment, distrust, poor decision making, lack of communication, and lack of goals. Leadership can’t be the only thing powering our systems.  

Along with leadership, I’ve always felt culture drove results. But I never put together the importance of leadership’s impact on culture. Sure, I’ve read Good to Great many times and that’s exactly what Jim Collins is saying. Leadership * Culture = Results. Collins was more sophisticated in his description of needing great leaders and culture. Since we never really finished with our work or living we can’t have a final result, so I translated results to performance. I used the below equation to categorize the top 10 books.

Leadership * Culture = Performance

THE BOOKS

Below are my top 10 books as defined by the above equation. Actually there are 11 books but two of the books involve the same person. I’ve put the books in order I would suggest reading, but feel free to explore. You should review my blog post Edit Post ‹ Meet Jay Norton — WordPress prior to beginning these books. Change is not easy. It takes effort and commitment. It requires you to be brave.

In each book, I’ve given a key challenge and my favorite quote. A secondary challenge for you is to find your favorite quote and send it to me by replying at the end of this post. I would also love to hear about the results of your challenges.

— Book 1 —

The Power of the Other: The Startling effect other people have on you, from the boardroom to the bedroom and beyond-and what to do about it – by Henry Cloud

Type: Leadership

Our minds respond to the environment we’re part of. Dr. Henry Cloud helps us define what a healthy environment looks like. He also makes us accountable for our environment. The first step is to be aware of how we are impacting others. We can only control ourselves. You will go mad, and drive others insane trying to control them.

The connections we make, the other people in our lives, have an incredible impact on our situation. Your relationship, work environment, and personal mindset all play a role in the decisions you make, and emotions felt. Do you feel alone, are you a victim, or are you always trying to hide the bad and make everything wonderful? Are people around you using guilt, loneliness, or false happiness to create the environment you live in?

The Power of the Other describes the effect our mindset has on our decisions and how those decisions affect others. Change doesn’t happen to us. We decide when change occurs.

Challenge: Know yourself. What do you need to do to be in corner 4.

“getting better is not about just ‘willing’ better performance. It’s about becoming someone who performs better, and performs differently.”

Henry Cloud, The Power of the Other

— Book 2 —

Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life – by Susan David

Type: Leadership

Humans often communicate with simple ideas. We’ve adopted a norm to quickly define our experiences and emotions. When we’re sad, that’s a “bad” feeling. When we’re smiling that is “good”.

We see good and bad emotions as a result of an event that we really have no control over. Susan David asks us to look deeper into our thoughts and emotions. Our sadness may not be a “bad” emotion. The emotion is a mental guidepost helping us recognize we need to respond in thoughtful ways to effectively handle the situations. It doesn’t mean sadness goes away. It means we are no longer seeing our response as bad.

By reframing our thoughts, we learn to handle our emotions (sad, mad, anxious, etc…) with a thoughtful response. We are becoming emotionally agile. If we label our emotions as bad or good we are protecting our response and relieving ourselves of all responsibility. “I was so MAD, I couldn’t control myself.”

Challenge: Identify the first emotion you identified as a guidepost instead of good or bad?

“Life is full of diving boards and other precipices, but, as we’ve seen throughout this discussion of emotional agility, making the leap is not about ignoring, fixing, fighting, or controlling fear—or anything else you might be experiencing. Rather, it’s about accepting and noticing all your emotions and thoughts, viewing even the most powerful of them with compassion and curiosity, and then choosing courage over comfort in order to do whatever you’ve determined is most important to you. Courage, once again, is not the absence of fear.”

Susan David, Emotional Agility

— Book 3a —

Thinking, Fast, and Slow – by Daniel Kahneman

Type: Leadership

Too often, when someone accomplishes something great, we fail to notice that person, or their accomplishment until they are gone. Their greatness lives on far longer than they do and they are remembered for the genius they introduced to the world in history books.

Daniel Kahneman is one of those people. Fortunately, Mr. Kahneman is still alive at 86 years young. In 2002 Kahneman received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and is the leader in cognitive behavior studies.

What’s cognitive behavior and why does it matter? Every decision you and I make is based on our cognitive behavior. YES… every decision. Our emotional reaction that started a fight with our partner. The decision to move across the country or live with our parents until we’re thirty. Are we going to leave our abusive husband or seek counseling? Where do we go to school? Do we choose coke or Dr. Pepper, tacos or burrito, large or small, orange or blue, yes or no…

Mr. Kahneman introduces two ways our brains make decisions.

• System 1 is a quick system that reacts automatically with little or no sense of control.
  Examples: 1+1, eating while driving, thinking while drinking coffee, road rage, yelling at kids
• System 2 requires effortful mental activity. Concentration and structured mental habits are required to efficiently use system 2.
  Example: 233.432*789.561, saying a meaningful sorry, cognitive disfluency, responding instead of reacting, separating emotions from thought

Your use of the two systems is NOT the result of intelligence. They are the result of your effort. Some of the simple questions that are answered are why are introverts so exhausted after going to a party? Why did they… or YOU, react with irrational behavior? How should you respond to irrational behavior, anger, fear, or excitement? Why do we protect our thoughts and how do cognitive biases run our lives?

We all have cognitive biases that preload our brain on how we make decisions. Understanding cognitive biases will help you to navigate making complicated decisions. It may also prevent you from reacting to surprise information in negative ways. See my blog post HOW DO YOU SEE THE WORLD (meetjaynorton.com) for more information about cognitive disfluency.

Challenge: Describe when you defused a situation by understanding when someone else was responding with “system 1”.

“You are more likely to learn something by finding surprises in your own behavior than by hearing surprising facts about people in general”

Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast, and Slow

— Book 3b —

The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds – by Michael Lewis

Type: Leadership

The Undoing Project is an amazing story about two of the greatest minds in the past 70 years and how their research will forever affect the world. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky were best of friends and were nothing alike.

Michael Lewis goes into great detail telling the reader how Kahneman and Tversky built studies around cognitive behavior and how it’s affecting us today. Their discoveries will reframe your context and how you perceive life. Yes, it is that powerful.

Examples are… people don’t always know what they want. All of use tend to make decisions based on the path of least resistance and we don’t like the results. But we continue making the same decisions over and over again. Our lives are driven by confirmation bias. It takes real effort for most of us to look beyond what we “want” to see.

Challenge: Describe how you are or plan to, prevent yourself from acting on confirmation bias behavior.

“When you are a pessimist and the bad thing happens, you live it twice. Once when you worry about it, and the second time when it happens.”

Amos Tversky, The Undoing Project

— Book 4 —

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions – by Dan Ariely

Type: Leadership

Dan Ariely helps to explain how we live in a world of irrational people. Yes. You, me, everyone is irrational. Predictably Irrational, along with Thinking Fast and Slow, and The Undoing Project, is about cognitive understanding and decision making.

Why do we put such a heavy value on what we own? Why do we constantly compare? How do we fight against our systematic and predictable thoughts? Why do we procrastinate. How our reactive mind will doom us… and why we love it.

Challenge: Ownership includes your thoughts. Challenge at least one thought a week. Go deep. Challenge core thoughts that define existing confirmation bias thoughts.

“Ownership is not limited to material things. It can also apply to points of view. Once we take ownership of an idea — whether it’s about politics or sports — what do we do? We love it perhaps more than we should. We prize it more than it is worth. And most frequently, we have trouble letting go of it because we can’t stand the idea of its loss. What are we left with then? An ideology — rigid and unyielding.”

Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational

— Book 5 —

Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose – by Tony Hsieh (Shay)

Type: Culture

Whether we’re running a business, enjoying dinner with family, or taking part in a project at a local charity, culture drives our thoughts and actions. We make thousands of choices every day and most of these choices are driven subconsciously. We are a product of our environment.

Culture is the key to business and personal success. Whatever benefits your strategy or habits are giving you, improving your culture would massively improve the outcome.

If your primary culture is delivering happiness and your focus is based on transforming connections to positive collisions, your result will be greater than just going through the motion.

Tony Hsieh helped define my love for culture and the power culture provides. In his book Delivering Happiness, Mr. Hsieh explains how he discovered the benefits, and impact, a positive culture has on everyone you meet. So, whether you’re parenting kids, supporting an organization, or creating something new, Delivering Happiness will help guide you in creating the culture that leads to sparking something special.

Challenge: Introduce a new routine into your life that will affect others in a positive way. *Be ok to fail, and try again if needed.

“Under a hierarchical business structure, all it takes is one ‘no’ to kill an idea, whereas with a self-organized network system, all it takes is one ‘yes’ to move your idea forward.”

Tony Hsieh, Delivering Happiness

— Book 6 —

The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle

Type: Culture

Reed Hastings’ book, ‘No Rules, Rules’ inspired me to read ‘The Culture Code’. Many have rated the culture at Netflix as the best. Not just the best in Silicon Valley but the best… OVERALL! Mr. Coyle talks about three fundamental skills that need to be performed in order to have a great culture.

1. Build Psychological Safety
   Many people and businesses believe just because no one is being hung by the rafters and people aren’t screaming at each other safety isn’t a concern. Psychological safety requires work and a host of leaders who are willing to commit their time and effort to produce the safest environments. Safety means others feel ok speaking up and challenging others consistently.
2. Share Vulnerability
   Once safety has been established, we can share vulnerabilities. Rather than pretending, we have no weaknesses we build trust through transparency. It’s key everyone is open and honest, even when it comes to providing direct feedback. We will never improve if we sugar coat everything. Vulnerability improves connections, safety, and creates TRUST.
3. Establish Purpose
   Every business wants to establish engaged employees. Wait, not engaged… inspired! If you want to inspire your employees, provide a culture delivering a purpose. A purpose cannot be manufactured. It must be delivered by great leaders who are willing to accept ideas from every stakeholder from a matured and developed psychologically safe environment. In turn, the organization relies on trust to promote vulnerabilities and radical feedback to spur growth. The result is an environment where each employee has a purpose and passion that drives incredible results.

Building a culture does not happen overnight. It may even seem counter-intuitive to put time into something that doesn’t directly feed revenue. However, building a great culture within your organization or home is the greatest multiplier available.

Challenge: Make it a goal to drive psychological safety wherever you go. The leadership books in this list will help you grow and create safe environments. Hint: Starting using “yes and” instead of “but” when making decisions.

“While successful culture can look and feel like magic, the truth is that it’s not. Culture is a set of living relationships working toward a shared goal. It’s not something you are. It’s something you do.”

Daniel Coyle, The Culture Code

— Book 7 —

13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do: Take Back You Power, Embrace Change, Face Your Fears, and Train Your Brain for Happiness and Success – by Amy Morin

Type: Performance

Hopefully, you’ve read all or some of the cognitive behavior books (Thinking, Fast, and Slow – The Undoing Project – Predictably Irrational). Maybe you got impatient and believe you’re not getting anything from cognitive behavior studies and you believe behavior change is a waste of time. This list may not be for you, and that’s ok.

But the good news is, 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do is a great parachute ready to save you from falling into a cognitive abyss. Amy Morin is very direct in how you can improve your mental health. Sure, if you gained a lot from the cognitive behavior books, Moran’s book will be more impactful. But even if cognitive behavior wasn’t your favorite you’ll find some great actionable items.

This was my favorite book in 2020. And it requires us to have a great understanding of our mind to allow us to be mentally strong. I’ve spent the past 5 years getting to know who I am.

You understand what a healthy locus of control is. You don’t give away your power. You don’t feel sorry for yourself. But you need! to read! this book!

Challenge: How are you not giving away your power?

“Developing mental strength isn’t about having to be the best at everything. It also isn’t about earning the most money or achieving the biggest accomplishments. Instead, developing mental strength means knowing that you’ll be okay no matter what happens. Whether you’re facing serious personal problems, a financial crisis, or a family tragedy, you’ll be best prepared for whatever circumstances you encounter when you’re mentally strong. Not only will you be ready to deal with the realities of life, but you’ll be able to live according to your values no matter what life throws your way.”

Amy Moran, 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do

— Book 8 —

Brave, Not Perfect: Fear Less, Fail More, and Live Bolder – by Reshma Saujani

Type: Performance

Reshma Saujani wrote Brave, Not Perfect for Women. So what happens when a guy reads a book written for a woman that discusses natural insecurities, learned fear of failure, and promotes more risk-taking? Nothing. The first rule for insecurities is… do not let a book filled with female pronouns and adjectives prevent men from learning. I strongly recommend reading this book after the cognitive behavior group and 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do. If you’re a guy you may notice your cognitive biases going into effect due to the audience Saujani is writing to. It’s just insecurity, so move forward.

I see the lack of mental bravery in both men and women regularly. Unfortunately, our egos and unreal expectation are the norms. In my blog post, 5 Critical Steps for Growth (meetjaynorton.com) step 2 is KNOW YOURSELF. Part of making change includes not needing perfection. But without knowing yourself, change is much harder, or impossible.

As a husband, dad, and striving leader in the workplace we are haunted by the need to be perfect. Failure is seen as an evil world. Our cognitive biases, lack of emotional agility, and misguided locos of control will take over and prevent us from growing. Yes, it’s US that is preventing ourselves from growing. So be BRAVE.

Challenge: Risk failure. Try something new and outside your “wheelhouse.” But don’t quit! Keep moving towards growth and success. Fail again and again. Then, make sure you let others fail. No rescuing!

“In the workplace, we’re taught to worry about what happens if we don’t have full, complete knowledge of every detail. But if you create a culture and an environment that rewards people for taking risks, even if they don’t succeed, you can start changing behavior.”

Reshma Saujani, Brave Not Perfect

— Book 9 —

The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win – by Maria Konnikova

Type: Performance

Maria Konnikova never played poker prior to identifying her goal to write this book. She had no idea how many cards are in a deck. Yet she had a goal of learning Texas Holdem poker and enter the biggest poker event in the world. The World Series of Power, $10,000 main event, and be competitive. She gave herself about 9-months to accomplish this goal.

Konnikova’s goal… was to win! Not, just at poker, but mastering herself. To really know who she is. To accomplish her goal of succeeding in poker, Konnikova had to adjust her mindset and grow quickly.

We can’t go through life, experiencing unfavorable results, and expect things to improve without change. Too often we concentrate on our results and not what helped to create the results… our minds.

Challenge: Don’t accept passivity or aggression as who you are. Sure it’s easy to let “system 1” drive your decisions. This challenge is about growth. Stop always being “right or wrong.” What do you need to do to win life’s World Series of Poker?

“There’s a false sense of security in passivity. You think that you can’t get into too much trouble–but really, every passive decision leads to a slow but steady loss of chips…Who knows how many proverbial chips a default passivity has cost me throughout my life. How many times I’ve walked away from situations because of someone else’s show of strength, when I really shouldn’t have. How many times I’ve passively stayed in a situation, eventually letting it get the better of me, instead of actively taking control and turning things around. Hanging back only seems like an easy solution. In truth, it can be the seed of far bigger problems.”

Maria Konnikova, The Biggest Bluff

— Book 10 —

The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, George Spafford

Type: Performance

Have you ever seen someone get a leadership role because of their previous job success? They are great at selling so make them the sales manager. Often times we want the next position because of title or pay, not taking into account what it takes to be successful at the position.

Since most people are in jobs they aren’t qualified for we need mentors and development training to help us succeed. But the people we turn to for that direction are in the same spot we’re in. What I’m saying is, we’re all growing, learning, and changing.

We require good leadership with a focus on developing a strong positive culture to maximize our performance to accomplish the strategy built. The Phoenix Project is a book filled with models that will help us succeed. Remember, we usually go towards the path of least resistance, and often times it’s the wrong path.

The Phoenix Project is a fictional story with real life issues and results. Too many of us will fight the path they take because it’s not “our path” (see cognitive biases). You may say, we’re different, those solutions won’t work for us (see confirmation bias). Or you may say we work in a much more simple or complicated environment, there is no way this will help me (see Emotional Agility and Brave not Perfect).

To learn from this book we must have 3 strengths.

1. Know Yourself
   Like I said earlier. To make change occur efficiently you need to know yourself. I’m not talking about you admitting you procrastinate or get distracted easily. Knowing yourself means you know exactly why you procrastinate and what distracts you. You know how to combat and prevent yourself from procrastinating or being distracted. You’ve also been able to rationally answer questions from others around you asking why you’ve decided to do things differently. You also learn that you have so much more to learn about yourself.
2. Perspective
   Once you’ve accomplished the first strength and you’re working out that muscle, perspective will almost occur naturally. This is similar to the Matrix. Once you realize how your mind operates you will begin to see things differently. You’ll understand why others make irrational decisions and it won’t make you so upset when you don’t agree with their decision. You’ll begin to create plans from your vision. Sure, you’ll still need to think about how you plan to influence change with others but you’re actually beginning to understand how teamwork can make the dream work.
3. Default to Action
   This is why you read all the previous books first. So you can make it happen. And when you run into a roadblock, you don’t stop. You pivot, and most importantly you bring others into support a vision.  You can be a parent, individual contributor, manager, or giving your time to a charity. Action needs to happen to move forward.

The Phoenix Project is a fictional story about the maturing of a failing company. It was written for IT DevOps groups, but the book goes through situations that challenge our cognitive thinking which can relate to real-life decisions. The writers actually do a great job of removing IT from many of the solutions and replacing ideas with cognitive support behavior methods.

Examples include how the IT group transitions away from a complex (unusable) change management system to a simple change management process to supporting results. Or how the business simplified cybersecurity (never simple) by aligning the business with security teams. Too often we forget people are part of the process and we need to align to create incredible results. The keyword is align. How are you aligning to make a positive impact?

During a turning point in the book the CEO leans on a book by Patrick Lencioni, The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team. The CEO does this because he recognizes TRUST is the most important value for a company.

Challenge: Earn TRUST. That means you are driving psychological safety, leading by being vulnerable, going outside your comfort zone, failing, and not responding to irrational emotions with anger or fear.

“A great team doesn’t mean that they had the smartest people. What made those teams great is that everyone trusted one another. It can be a powerful thing when that magic dynamic exists”

Gene Kim, The Phoenix Project

Leave a comment below and let me know if this post is helpful.

BOOKS THAT BARELY MISSED THE LIST

• Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption – by Bryan Stevenson
• The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom – by Miguel Ruiz
• Rebel Talent: Why It Pays to Break the Rules at Work and in Life – by Francesca Gino
• Unfu*k Yourself: Get Out of Your Head and Into Your Life – by Gary John Biship
• In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom – by Yeonmi Park
• The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine – by Michael Lewis
• No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention – by Reed Hastings