Resources

I often joke that my love language is to send people links to things they might find relevant.

I’ve realized I tend to send the same links and references, so I’m starting to aggregate them here.

Have fun!

For now, it’s mostly books, but I’ll probably add other sorts of resources.

Career Stuff

• The Business of Expertise
  Excellent for Experts that make a living from what they know. David C. Baker truly knows his audience. At times I felt he had been stalking me throughout my career. I heartily recommend the exercise “Getting to Know”. And if you’re feeling Impostor Syndrome, try the “Drop and Give me Tweenty” one.
• Damn Good Advice
  This is is book for creatives and people with unique perspectives. People with taste and a nagging feeling that it is worth to be bold. The book in itself leans towards work of art and is filled with stories from the Art Director that inspired the character of Don Draper.
• Ignore Everybody
  Another book for creatives and the gimmick is right in the title. I think I got this book in Amsterdam (I miss the bookstores) and it followed me across 3 countries and countless moves. It’s short, funny and smart. It’s good.
• War of Art
  Accept that you might be an artist and learn to live with the responsibility it entails. A bit of a 2010-internet classic. It has been a while since I’ve read it, but I liked the reverence and no-non-sense approach to the creative life. “A pro goes to work” is a great motto to live by. Artists not exempt.

Sales

• 100 Million Dollar Leads
  Hormozi is bit of a Bro, yes. But the book is extremely densely packed with useful and actionable stuff you can do. I wish I had found it sooner in my life.
• Little Red Book of Sales
  This was the first book on Sales that I have read. At times, the tone betrays it’s age, but there are multiple practical ideas that you can use. To me, that’s very valuable.

Working with others

This includes clients

• Trusted Advisor
  I keep talking about this one because it gave me the language and the foundations to understand how to frame what had always been my approach to advisory work. It is a classic and I recommend it all the time. Also, very applicable for Creative types, as it shows a type of relationship we often strive for, but lack the tools and/or confidence to create.
• Humble Consulting
  It’s hard to pretend to know all the answers. That pressure, no doubt informed by the collective consciousness around Expertise, can be relieved when you shift from Diagnose-Prescribe to a more dialect model of helping your clients. Connects really well with other ideas around sales of services and coaching.
• The Coaching Habit
  Here in Brazil, the book has a terrible name that translates to something like “make Coaching an habit” and when I got it (it was recommended to me) I cringed at the cover. But the book is actually very good, not too long and something that you can put to use quite quickly.
• Images of Organization
  This is more about working with clients that work at larger companies. If you’re a solo serving solos, don’t need to read this. Its fascinating to think that people inside of an Org tend to have different mental models of what it is. It relates very much with the power of metaphor. The book touches on 7 main archetypes (one of them is Psychic Prison, btw)
• Living with Extreme Intelligence
  I’ve noticed that some clients of mine are truly outliers. Clever to the point of being exceptions. They see the world differently and working with them has its own sets of delights and challenges. I wanted to know more about this and read the book. The book is more about how gifted and above people can socialize better, but it’s still useful to my purposes.
• Articulating Design Decisions
  It’s unfortunate that for some, Designers have a reputation for being difficult to work with, leaning on the Diva or Artiste. Designers often fall into their own micro-cosmos of assuming everyone understands the value of what they do. This book is great, especially for junior designers or those trying to get into positions of more impact. Also, much of it can be applied to other professions that rely on the approval of non-experts (read: almost everyone).

Turning Expertise into products

• The Lean Product playbook
  There are countless Product Management books. I’ve read a few. This one is the one I keep coming back to. Also, the way it distinguishes between Problem-Space and Solution-Space is brilliant. If you’re a busy startup founder being bombarded with “you gotta read X”, ignore them all and get this one. The sooner, the better.
• Productize
  In the world of Expertise and turning Services into Products, there are a couple of books (E-myth, The Boutique, Built to Sell). I haven’t read the other ones, but I’ve read this. What I mostly appreciate from this book is how it touches on the probable pain points that services firms will face as they shift their operating model towards productized offers. It’s well researched and also offers a more nuanced take than “all consulting firms will become software firms”, which I appreciate.

Workshop Design & Facilitation

• Gamestorming
  A classic for people looking for Workshop activities. The hidden treasure are the initial chapters, that cover the psychology and how to be strategic about creating the right space and times for different types of collaboration. I hear a V2 is coming out soon.
• Workshop Survival Guide
  This is mostly about Training Workshops (my focus is on Problem Solving Workshops) but it’s rather good. It covers the basics really well and will almost certainly guarantee success. It’s geared at beginners, and is very good at that. Good intro into Training Worskshops.
• The Graphic Facilitator’s Guide
  This one has been with me for many years. The best parts are not necessarily the skills around Graphic Facilitation, but the tips on how to run a Facilitation business. Also, it has a tone that I appreciate, that mixes fun without being infantilizing.

Writing & Shaping Ideas

• How to Make Sense of Any Mess
  The first book I’ve bought for my kindle. Hard to explain, but the title says it all. Good for learning how to navigate the weird projects, filled with uncertainty and shifting sands.
• On Writing
  This is not about how to write better. It is more about how to create a life that will lead to better writing. Stephen King has been quite prolific, so it’s generally good advice. Also, it’s an easy read.
• The Boron Letters
  A classic among copywriters. It’s format is quite unique and you can see how the book is written following the very rules and practices it defends. Very meta. And, appropriately gripping.
• Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking
  One of the stranger and harder to pin down books I’ve read. But it is basically a defense of the idea that our thinking is mostly based on Analogy. It’s useful if your work involves playing around with symbols, either literal or figurative.
• Propaganda
  The book is old and full of stories of how things we take for granted became that way. To me, it was also quite illuminating on how public opinion is shaped. In a sense it is a manual. It’s age shows in the examples, but I suspect many of the principles remain valid in today’s day and age. It changed how I approached my work.

Books that have shaped some of my perspective

• Guns Germs and Steel
• A Brief History of Everything
• Sapiens
• Anti-Fragile
• In the Bubble
• Unflattening
• Superforecasters
• Intro to Systems Thinking
• Systems Bible

• 3 Body Problem
• Exhalations
• Neuromancer (Sprawl trilogy)
• Anything from Paul Auster

Reading backlog

• Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play
• The Functions of the Executive
• Whiteboard Selling
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
• Notes on The Synthesis of Form