Ken White
From the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is Leadership & Business. The weekly podcast that brings you the latest and best thinking from today's business leaders from across the world. We share the strategies, tactics, and information that can make you a more effective leader, communicator, and professional. I'm your host Ken White. Thanks for listening. Well, summer is flying by, but there's still time to get to the beach, escape to the mountains, or take a road trip. Whatever you plan to do in the remaining weeks of the summer of 2017, you might want to take a book along to listen to or read during your travels. So this week on the podcast, we asked some of the faculty and staff here at William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business what books they recommend to professionals.
Ken White
Our first recommendation comes from Professor Graham Henshaw, the Executive Director of the school's Alan B. Miller Entrepreneurship Center. Henshaw recommends a book he uses in his renaissance manager class in our online MBA program. Little Bets by Peter Sims.
Graham Henshaw
What I like most is actually that it dispels the myth about breakthrough ideas. I think that there is this myth that breakthrough ideas or performances or businesses are the result of these masterfully executed linear plans, and what the book shows is that that's rarely the case. That more often than not, those great outcomes are the result of a series of methodical little bets per the name of the book. These little experiments where the founders or the people involved learn from the failures along the way and the small wins along the way. So this idea of little bets and small wins go hand in hand. It also positions failure in a different light. It positions failure as something that is actually essential to get to that breakthrough idea. So rather than try to do everything you can to avoid failure, get started and expect that your first iteration may not win.
Ken White
That's Professor Graham Henshaw, who recommends Little Bets by Peter Sims. Next up, Kim Mallory, Director of MBA programs for Working Professionals, recommends a book that helps you become a better leader.
Kim Mallory
My book is A Leader's Legacy, and it's Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner, and they're best known for writing the leadership challenge, which is not a new book. It's old, but it's kind of a classic definitely classic in business schools, and even a lot of businesses use their leadership practices inventory, so in 2006 they wrote a book called A Leader's Legacy, and it's focused on critical questions that leaders should ask themselves in order to make a lasting impact. And so the way I look at it is they get you to think about and decide what kind of leader you want to be remembered as at the end of your career. And then once you lock in what that leader is, then they ask you, okay, what he can do now to make sure that you get there, and it's very powerful. It's not a very long book. It's a good read, and it's one of my favorites.
Ken White
Kim Mallory's recommendation is a Leader's Legacy by Kouzes and Posner. Phil Heavilin is Executive Director of the Graduate Career Management Center here at William & Mary. It's no surprise he suggests a book about you and your career. Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well Lived Joyful Life by Burnett and Evans takes a unique look at career design.
Phil Heavilin
So what Bill and Dave have done is they've applied design thinking concepts to designing life to your career search. And so, you know, for example, they've taken the concept of prototyping, and rather than jumping into a big idea without trying it on first, they suggest, why don't you prototype it, and they give this great example of an executive who just loves Tuscan culture, and so she decided to quit her job and open up a Tuscan café just full on, and she loved it. But then, after a while, she realized that running a restaurant was not as glamorous as she thought. And so they said, well, perhaps you could have prototyped it by maybe catering a friend's wedding Tuscan style or open up a small catering company or maybe just job shadowing someone who's doing it maybe not the Tuscan theme but runs a restaurant, so you can try it on first before diving in headlong.
Ken White
Phil Heavilin's recommendation is Designing Your Life. So far, we have Little Bets, A Leader's Legacy, and Designing Your Life. We'll have more books for your summer reading list in just a minute.
Ken White
Our podcast is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. The Center for Corporate Education is once again offering its popular certificate in business management program in October. The five-day program is designed for the working professional who wants a cross-functional understanding of business. Each day is devoted to one business-related topic, including communication, operational effectiveness, strategy, managerial accounting, and leadership. The five core topics taught in our highly ranked MBA program. To learn more about the certificate in business management, visit wmleadership.com. Now back to our recommendations for your summer book list.
Ken White
Rhonda Barton is Executive Director of Business Development for our Center for Corporate Education. She recommends a book that contains good advice for individuals and organizations. It's Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience and Finding Joy by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and co-author Adam Grant.
Rhonda Barton
Well, when I first picked up the book, I picked it up with a very dear friend in mind who had just lost a spouse, and I had heard Sheryl's story about losing a spouse at a very early age and quite unexpectedly so I picked it up based on that knowledge and thinking that it may help the friend but quickly reading into the book. It became something that I looked at more from the perspective of an organization on a company perspective versus just a personal how do I move through grief and those sorts of things. Cause at the same time, another friend had lost a job, and it was a job that she had had for a number of years. It was a job that was her life, and due to an acquisition, she went through something different, and she found herself 12 years later in, a mid-level age, looking for a job and trying to figure out what next. What is next for her? And so that's the reason that I look at it for more of an organizational perspective then I think just dealing with grief, and when I think about it from a company perspective, if you can take the lessons of the book and think about the building resilience in hard times, that's very true for organizations as well. And we don't always know what's going to be coming down the next pike.
Ken White
Sure.
Rhonda Barton
It could be another financial crisis. And if companies and organizations are not prepared for that in many different ways, then I think that can provide some very hard roads that they will have to go down from that.
Ken White
Option B is Rhonda Barton's recommendation. A book written by a William & Mary alumnus is at the top of the list for Dean Larry Pulley. The Dean recommends Flight Capital. The alarming exodus of America's best and brightest. It's one of several books written by David Heenan, who has twice been a guest on our podcast and who also teaches in our MBA program. Dean Pulley says the book written in 2005 is more relevant than ever in 2017.
Larry Pulley
The theme of this book is fairly straightforward and simple. For decades the best and the brightest have been coming to the United States from around the world to study in our great universities, and they stayed here, and they contributed. They've built new companies. They contributed to the prosperity and the culture of this company. But recently, and this is Dave's focus in this book. Recently the best and the brightest have continued to come here and study, but they've gone back home, and they've gone back home for two reasons. One is the burgeoning growth of economies in India and China. The opportunities for entrepreneurs there and other parts of Asia, Latin America, Europe, the Eastern Europe and but the other reason is tightening of restrictions of VISA policies. VISAs in the United States, which I think started coming out of the dot com bubble around 2000 and then went through another tightening after the Great Recession and around 2008, and Dave has testified about this on Capitol Hill. I like also that another prominent William & Mary alumnus and our current Chancellor, Bob Gates, Former Secretary of Defense. While he was President of Texas A&M was a tireless advocate for relaxing some of the VISA policies and being more inviting. And as you know, we have a large group of wonderful international students in our MBA and other programs, and whenever I talk to them or hear about their stories or why they are here, what they want to do, this book comes to mind.
Ken White
Dean Larry Pulley recommends Flight Capital. Finally, Professor Rex Holmlin shares two books with us worth putting on your summer list. The first is Fighting Talk 40 Maxims on War, Peace, and Strategy.
Rex Holmlin
Fighting Talk is a short book. It's less than 200 pages, but literally, it's a bunch of mini-essays built around some of the fallacies that always surrounds the discussion of war, peace, and strategy, and I think that all of us. I'm a retired army officer as well as a faculty member here. Need to have better background in that area. And so, you know, quite frankly, strategy is much too important to be left to elected officials and the military. And this is the sort of book that will help all of us enter into the conversation more broadly.
Ken White
Interesting. And you have a second book.
Rex Holmlin
I do. Once you finished Fighting Talk, you probably still have some time for a little bit of fun at the beach.
Ken White
There you go.
Rex Holmlin
And the book I want to suggest is actually one of a series. They're the Bruno Chief of Police mysteries. They're set in France in the Perigord. Bruno is the Chief of Police of a very small town, St. Denise. The mysteries themself for good. But what I think people will particularly enjoy about the Bruno mysteries, and there 10 of them, is the fact that Bruno is also a gourmet cook and integrated into the stories he has always having his friends over for dinners and there's actually a menu or a cookbook that's been published about some of the things that he talks about the books and tells you how to make. And as you read the mysteries, you're almost always hungry and say, gee, I want to try those myself. As I mentioned, there are actually 10 of those mysteries. The first one is Bruno, chief of police, and I encourage you to start with that. And enjoy them all. I guess I could also say bon appetit.
Ken White
Professor Rex Holmlin recommends Fighting Talk and the Bruno Chief of Police mysteries.
Ken White
Well, there you have it. Our recommendations for books to read while summer is still with us. The list includes Little Bets by Peter Sims, A Leader's Legacy by Kouzes and Posner, Designing Your Life by Burnett and Evans, Option B by Sandberg and Grant, David Heenan's Flight Capital, Colin Gray's Fighting Talk, and for a little lighter reading Bruno Chief of Police by Martin Walker. We hope you find our recommendations helpful. Well, that's our podcast for this week. Leadership & Business is brought to you by the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business. If you are interested in learning more about the opportunities at the Center for Corporate Education for you or your organization, visit our website at wmleadership.com. Thanks to our colleagues here who shared their recommendations. And thanks to you for joining us. I'm Ken White. Until next time have a safe, happy, and productive week.
Summer is flying by, but there is still time to get to the beach, escape to the mountains, or take a road trip. Whatever you plan to do in the remaining weeks of the summer of 2017, you might want to take a book along to listen to or read during your travels. This week on the podcast, we asked some of the faculty and staff here at William & Mary's Raymond A. Mason School of Business what books they recommend to professionals.