FT business books of the month: October edition

Compassion Inc: Unleashing the Power of Empathy in Life and Business, by Gaurav Sinha

Reading this book will make you feel a bit better about the world and your business, even before putting Sinha’s ideas into practice. He is an Indian-born Dubai resident and a “vibrant thought leader” who runs a branding and communications company for the luxury hotel and travel industry. A lot of his ideas come from Buddhist practice — essentially, as individuals and as business leaders we need to be more mindful about our consumption. Sinha calls the ideal state “conscientious consumption”, and he offers an eightfold path to “managing material gratification and also finding a balance in life”.

A lot of this will not appeal to those who instinctively recoil from the language of the yoga retreat — he suggests getting into a state of “monastic materialism” — learning from the practice of monks who don’t turn away from modern life (he cites an encounter with a monk and his iPhone) but who are mindful consumers.

The deeper philosophy touches on the meaning of business. Sinha wants chief executives to be “chief empathy officers” and makes arguments throughout the book that compassion in business does not have to be a drain, rather, it can be a “critical driver of prosperity, both in life and in business”.

Transforming Nokia: The Power of Paranoid Optimism To Lead Through Colossal Change, by Risto Siilasmaa

Siilasmaa was appointed a director of Nokia in 2008 when the mobile phone company was “on top of the world”. But although the Finnish group did not realise, Apple’s launch of the iPhone the previous year had already sounded the death knell for the group’s devices business. Siilasmaa recalls one signal that Nokia had a problem, when he visited a near-deserted Nokia flagship store in New York in early 2009, and compared it with the packed Apple store a few blocks away.

Siilasmaa lays much blame for the isolationism and arrogance of Nokia at the door of Jorma Ollila, then chairman (who has responded to some of the criticism in the Finnish press). This settling of scores makes the first half of the book the more interesting. The turbulent context that eventually saw Siilasmaa take over from Ollila as Nokia’s strategic turnround, and then lead the rebuilding of the group after it sold its devices business to Microsoft, is described in exhaustive detail. Nokia has since bought Alcatel-Lucent to underpin its position as a telecoms equipment group. The leadership lessons Siilasmaa draws from his experience are a little trite, and his account is sometimes self-serving. But this unfinished inside story of Nokia’s rise, fall, and rise again is a valuable addition to the endless Nokia case study.

The Bullet Journal Method: Track the Past, Order the Present, Design the Future, by Ryder Carroll

The quest to be more organised, productive and balanced is frenzied in itself, but one of the most successful “life hacks” in recent years has been a method that uses just a notebook and pen. Bullet journaling is a system developed by Ryder Carroll, a digital product designer, in order to keep track of his tasks and goals. People worldwide follow his lead, reading his blogs and posting photos of their gorgeous bullet journals to sites such as Tumblr. Many are works of art, a repository for the owners’ hopes and dreams. In Carroll’s new book, he distils the philosophy to date (“You can view your bullet journal as a living autobiography”) and shows beginners how to get started. There’s a lot to take in, and the overwhelming impression is of having to learn a lot of symbols and move tasks and goals backwards and forwards on dedicated pages for days, weeks, months ahead, as well as lots of non-linear “collections” of interests, plans and so on. Those who have taken the time to perfect their “BuJo” game often swear by it. It’s counter-intuitive in an app-y world: “When we take shortcuts, we forfeit opportunities to slow down and think,” Carroll says. After reading this book, you will be inspired to join him.

The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation and Growth, by Amy Edmondson

A simple insight underpins Edmondson’s latest book: when team members are afraid to express their opinions at work, to present new — even offbeat — ideas, or to challenge existing practice, the results can be catastrophic.

She has produced a valuable addition to the popular management literature on teamwork, which pays generous tribute to earlier work in the area. At the same time Edmondson folds in empirical evidence from her own research and links it to colourful and dramatic examples of success (Pixar) and failure (the space shuttle Columbia or the 1977 Tenerife airline disaster).

Inevitably, there are overlaps here with other books on teamwork. Some of these examples are over-familiar. But Edmondson makes a compelling and practical case for “psychological safety” as a pre-requisite for strong, effective, and safe, team performance and shows how leaders can work to achieve such an environment. Reaching this goal, Edmondson points out, is hard, constant work, but it is worthwhile. Fearless organisations, she writes, not only “have a powerful advantage in competitive industries”, but offer a better workplace for employees.

The Playful Entrepreneur: How to Adapt and Thrive in Uncertain Times, by Mark Dodgson and David M Gann

All work and no play not only makes Jack a dull boy. It is the reason why many entrepreneurs fail at business, according to the authors of this analysis of the successes and failures of famous founders.

Mark Dodgson and David Gann are both professors of innovation at London’s Imperial College Business School, so they have spent a while looking at what enables people to nurture new ideas.

Drilling down into concepts, such as grace, fortitude and ambition, they come up with a guide to how anyone can benefit from a more playful attitude at work by, for instance, recognising personal shortcomings, finding pride in what you do and getting a good balance between making money and contributing to society.

In a world where the boundaries between work and leisure are increasingly blurred, the insights in this book will be of value to a much broader range of people than those who start businesses.

It Doesn’t Have to be Crazy at Work, by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson

As the title of this book suggests, it doesn’t have to be crazy at work, and Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson share their experiences of how they have created a calm culture at their software company Basecamp.

In short, jargon-free chapters, the authors challenge the way many of today’s businesses are run. They also criticise some common practices, such as negotiating individual salaries instead of providing equal pay for everyone working in identical roles.

For the authors, employees’ time and attention are among the most precious resources any company has, yet companies mostly fail to protect them. In order to create uninterrupted stretches of time for employees to focus on their work, there are examples of how the authors have cut all unnecessary meetings, do not ask employees to share their calendars with the rest of the company and have created a culture of eventual, rather than immediate, response to requests.

The Leadership Lab: Understanding leadership in the 21st Century, by Chris Lewis and Pippa Malmgren

Authors Chris Lewis, an entrepreneur, and Pippa Malmgren, an economist and government adviser, argue that the qualities needed by leaders in the 20th century are different to those required in the 21st. The world is in flux and leaders have been blindsided by waves of populism, the election of US president Donald Trump and Brexit. They need to broaden their outlook by talking to diverse groups of people — and perhaps use their imagination rather than sticking solely to analysis.

Drawing on interviews with top executives, it makes a case for thoughtful, inclusive leadership, steering clear of short-termism and distraction.

Reviews by Andrew Hill, Emma Jacobs, Isabel Berwick, Jonathan Moules and Tatjana Mitevska