My MBA friends often poke fun at business books having one simple concept. The author then pads the content with several hundred pages. I don’t think my friends are wrong about those books. Feels like the old days in college when I had to complete a 2 page essay by midnight and I was always tempted to double space with a font increase to 18.
I would encourage a different attitude and here’s my approach to reading.
I use books primarily to self-reflect.
I try to read a book whenever I’m commuting to work. Traffic gets crazy around the financial district before 9 AM so I could have anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour. Whether or not others consider a book ‘good’, I’m looking for an idea or something actionable. I’m not looking to learn something insightful in every chapter. Even if the book repeats itself with 10 examples, what’s important is if a sentence triggers a memory to replay scenarios in my head. I can think about my decisions and how I could alter them in the future. I’ll have my phone out and jot down notes about what I recalled.
As I’m writing this, I grab a random book on my table and the title is “Draw to Win” by Dan Roam. [1] I flip to a page and there’s a drawing of the Southwest triangle “Dallas, Houston, San Antonio.” I had forgotten Southwest started with that business concept.
The point of the chapter was to reassure readers they don’t need to be artists to communicate an idea. Southwest was a good example because the drawing was simple yet powerful enough to explain the initial vision of the company.
I could stop right there and dismiss the book – I don’t need the author to tell me it’s okay I can’t draw.
In the middle of a Google search for Southwest’s history, I remembered a story my previous CEO told me when he sold a security company with a simple drawing. I don’t think he had any artistic training. He emphasized the ability to communicate his product on the whiteboard in a few strokes of a dry-erase marker. His drawing looked like an increasing slope of spam with a sudden cliff once you used his anti-spam product.
He drew a right triangle. (Southwest is equilateral.)
The lesson he was passing on to me was to find a way to describe our business with a simple picture. We need to summarize our vision to investors, customers, or potential hires.
I’ll stop right here and not give you another ten examples. I hope after you read this, you’ll have a different outlook when reading books.
[1] I did this on 9:45 PM on Nov 25th 2017 for record keeping.
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