Back in the dark ages when I went to Wharton at UPenn, each course had a ‘Bulk Pack’ – a set of copied articles, manuals, book excepts, etc. that were used/referenced during the semester. Since this was the early 90’s, this was in physical form — huge binders full of papers for each course. After graduation, you could see piles of these documents in dumpsters all over west Philly (who wants to carry around 100 lb. of paper).
I’m sure it’s all digital now at Wharton, so in the spirit of full disclosure – I’ll add references here that have influenced my thoughts and journey in organizational transformation. This is in no particular order, and I’ll probably move this somewhere, but might as well start now.
These eventually will be affiliate links, so be warned.
- Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson. Since it’s so small — read the whole damn thing. Still relevant — the hard part is to get people to take it seriously, and see themselves and their behaviors in the various mice. This is especially relevant is there is a sea change in a specific technology or approach (kinda like Generative AI), and part of the team is holding on for dear life to old approaches.
- The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni. Albeit somewhat old — this is still a very relevant tool to diagnose what’s going on is a team. There’s also several related tools using this approach that you can use to survey the team, and easily coalesce some findings (e.g. https://connect.fivebehaviors.com/)
- More to come…