Reviews and Comments

Otto Rask

ojrask@kirja.casa

Joined 2 years ago

Politics, history, software, product, organizations, management. And randomness.

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Daniel Kahneman: Thinking, fast and slow (Hardcover, 2011, Farrar, Straus and Giroux) 4 stars

Kahneman introduces two modes of thought - system 1, fast and intuitive, and system 2, …

RIP Homo Economicus

4 stars

A good overview of how humans are, sadly, stupid dumbasses who assume too much, jump hastily into conclusions, and are blind to even simple logic errors when considering their actions and options.

Kahneman tries to make the read light and interesting, but I can say that unless you have some inherent interest in the topic of human behavior or brains or comparable, this will be a hard or boring read.

Daniel Coyle: The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups (2018) 4 stars

Culture Code: a good book about how culture shapes and is shaped by groups

4 stars

A good book based on the experiences of a dude who went observing and studying what constitutes a safe, strong, productive, and effective group. A group here might mean a company, a sports team, a classroom, or maybe a squad of SEALs.

The things Daniel finds out and how they laid out the book to describe how these things work at certain successful organizations is very helpful in terms of making concepts concrete such as building psychological safety, making people work as teams, measuring what matters, and making people aware of the environment they're working in and how it might effect results.

The book is very "leader-oriented", e.g. it mostly assumes that there is a strong and/or respected leader who has to make change happen. I somewhat disagree with this notion and I would suggest reading Humanocracy in addition to this book, while also taking the time to read up …

Melissa Perri: Escaping the Build Trap (2019) 4 stars

Escaping the Build Trap is a good primer for outcome-first thinking

4 stars

A good book on product management for anyone looking for ways to shift their organization away from manufacturing features to actually thinking about what features to build.

Contains ideas, guidance, and suggestions for all levels of problems: mindset, strategy, roadmapping, team level approaches, and concrete daily work tools or methods.

Perri uses language a normal person (though acquainted with the field) understands. The book is not super long either. Some folks might find the book a tad shallow, but this book is not aimed for already-outcome-driven product veterans anyway.