An uncommon list of OSS books

Since reading the first book on this list, I’ve become a very avid and wide-ranging reader. The seeds sown by the book list below have immensely helped enrich the content you see here on the PAOSS blog and other PAOSS content.

You’ll begin to notice a very curious thing about this list though. There are only two books in the entire list that are actually about OSS. I have many OSS books in my library, but most struggle for relevance beyond the author’s frame of reference – they have been written from the specific technical experiences of the author, which are rarely transferable to other OSS. Either the technologies are now out of date and/or the details / terminologies were pertinent only to that OSS time and place. It’s one of the reasons that PAOSS content is specifically intended to abstract from technology and deliver insights, methodologies, processes and frameworks that have a broader relevance and greater longevity (hopefully).

The remaining books in the list have not been written with OSS in mind but definitely provide insights and perspectives that are transferable to the challenges we face in the OSS industry. In no particular order (except the first being the first…)

	Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Sharon L. Lechter, Robert T. Kiyosaki This was the book that changed it all for me. Whilst its intent is to educate on personal finance, the effect it had was to lift my eyes beyond the purely technical. Like 95%+ of people in our industry, I had previously only ever focused on delivering the best technical solution I could (and assumed that this would deliver a great customer outcome). I now know that the challenges we face are far  bigger than that!
	Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple’s Success by Ken Segall The greatest OSS (but non-OSS) book I’ve read. The first half of this book in particular delivers powerful examples of simplification at all levels of an organisation as experienced by an advertising executive working alongside Steve Jobs at Apple. The OSS and communications industry need more people who are able to wield the simple stick like Steve did.
	The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation by Jon Gertner Put simply, this is probably the most inspiring book I’ve read in relation to the communications industry. The groundbreaking innovations (including OSS) that were developed within R&D powerhouses like Bell Labs during the 1900’s are staggering and something that we can barely even aspire to today. It’s no coincidence that the OSS Call for Innovation references this book
	Make Elephants Fly: The Process of Radical Innovation by Steven S. Hoffman The OSS and comms network Industries are in need of some radical innovation. This book provides dozens of ideas on how to generate, develop, test, launch and foster innovative ideas, big and small.
	Rework by Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson These gentlemen have built a strong business around the Basecamp project management suite of tools. In Rework, just like their blog at 37signals, they provide brilliant contrarian insights into how to run a software business… Or any business for that matter. Efficiency and simplicity are the mantra ahead of the Red-Bull fuelled heroics spouted by many organisations in the software industry. One of my all-time favourite business books.
	Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions by Guy Kawasaki Guy defines enchantment as, “the process of delighting people with a product, service, organisation or idea. The outcome of enchantment is voluntary and long-lasting support that is mutually beneficial.” If there was ever an industry that was in need of enchantment, it is the OSS industry right now.
	Rain: What a Paperboy Learned About Business by Jeffrey J. Fox An easy to digest story about a boy with a paper-route learning the key tenets of rainmaking, the ability to delight customers and make sales (and projects) happen. Every OSS project we’ve ever worked on has come from a rainmaker persuading someone to allocate resources to the possibilities of a future transformation.
	The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World by Peter Schwartz When we undertake an OSS transformation, we know that it should have a useful life of at least 5 years, but preferably much longer. We know that it will take up considerable time and resources so it must be an investment in the future. But what will the future look like in 5+ years? What changed environment will this OSS work within? Nobody can truly predict the future, so this book presents the concept of scenarios to help identify what the future might look like for our OSS to work within.
	The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience by Carmine Gallo There are two acronyms that pervade in the OSS / telco / tech industry; DBA (Death by Acronym) and DBP (Death by Powerpoint). This book provides some stunning insights into how to make a compelling presentation on your latest OSS project.
	Killing Giants: 10 Strategies to Topple the Goliath in Your Industry by Stephen Denny There are a number of goliath incumbents in our industry. However, I suspect that most of the required disruption is coming from the Davids of our industry, despite the burning platforms at the goliaths. Interesting reading for a different perspective on innovation and change.
	Jack Welch & The G.E. Way: Management Insights and Leadership Secrets of the Legendary CEO by Robert Slater This book describes a number of key strategies for how Jack Welch pared back the weighty bureaucracy of General Electric upon his ascension to CEO. I suspect our industry needs similarly brutal change leadership to thrive into the future
	The Best Service is No Service: How to Liberate Your Customers from Customer Service, Keep Them Happy, and Control Costs by Bill Price, David Jaffe There is a distinct difference between the customer service models of the typical communications service provider (CSP) and digital service providers (DSP) like Google, Facebook, Amazon, et al. Most CSPs can only wish for the level of customer self-service that the DSPs enjoy. I was working on a project for a customer-facing business unit of a CSP whilst reading this book and the parallels were almost scary.
	Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown Think: Less but better. A motto for our industry, one individual at a time.
	Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur by Derek Sivers Derek Sivers was a professional musician before starting his own business, one that helped sell the CDs of the long tail of the music industry, musicians overlooked by the big labels. This might sound barely relevant to the OSS industry but there is an uncommon clarity in the way that Sivers views businesses, customers and delivery. Many of his thoughts really struck a chord with me (bad pun intended).
	The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Tim Ferris The title of this book is a bit of a misnomer. I’m not suggesting that any role in the world of OSS can be done in only four hours per week. Quite the contrary! However, the first aspect of this book that really resonated for me relates to process optimisation / automation. The second, and perhaps more pertinent message was in how you can build rapid testing to determine market / user interest. OSS projects can be huge, time-consuming, expensive and complex. This book helped me to think of more lateral, clever and contained approaches to ensure OSS product / project success.
	Brick by Brick: How LEGO Rewrote the Rules of Innovation and Conquered the Global Toy Industry by David Robertson, Bill Breen Bespoke creativity took this icon of childrens’ toys to the brink of bankruptcy. Perhaps counter-intuitively, paring it back to the basic building blocks (another bad pun) allowed creativity and profitability to thrive at Lego.
	Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio Built around the principles that Ray Dalio codified at his company, Bridgewater Associates. Many of his principles of team and culture seem like common sense, but helpfully compiled into a single volume. Not all OSS teams have these principles mastered.
	Blue Ocean Strategy, Expanded Edition: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim, Renée Mauborgne This book provides frameworks for shifting an organisation out of fragmented, highly competitive markets (bloody red oceans) into a unique market segment (blue oceans). I’ve even added some of the concepts in this book into a framework that helps my clients plot differentiated strategic roadmaps and product evaluations.
	Leading Change by John P. Kotter OSS projects are challenging to implement. Through harsh experience, I’ve learnt that even technically perfect implementations are prone to fail if the organisational change effort hasn’t been managed well. Whilst there are newer change management methodologies available, I still find that Kotter’s 8 steps provide a valuable framework for building OSS change management strategies around.
	Everything Is Negotiable: How to Get the Best Deal Every Time by Gavin Kennedy Introduces some fascinating negotiation tactics such as “The Mother Hubbard” (ie the cupboard is bare). There is more negotiation required in OSS than I first gave it credit for.
	Endless Referrals: Network Your Everyday Contacts into Sales by Bob Burg In the early days of my career, I’d gone from one project to the next, with my head down focusing on delivery. This book opened my eyes to the value of staying in touch with past colleagues and adding value to my network. The results have surprised me so I recommend this book’s teachings to anyone who is purely tech-focused.
	Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin A call to action to become a linchpin, someone who delivers in territory where there is no map / rule-book, someone who inspires those around them. OSS needs more linchpins.
	Dangerous Company: Consulting Powerhouses and the Companies They Save and Ruin by Charles Madigan and James O’Shea This book provides some insights into the best and worst of management consulting. It is a little old now, dating back to the late 1990’s but it had a significant impact on me when I read it in the 2010’s. It describes some of the unscrupulous acts / tactics / results that have lead to the poor reputation that consulting has in some circles. It also reinforced a strong belief I’ve always had in doing right by the client before the firm because building reputation and integrity ultimately benefits the firm anyway.
	Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath, Dan Heath The term “stickiness” was popularised by Malcolm Gladwell in “The Tipping Point.” This book borrows the term and looks to explain why an idea or concept remains sticky. OSS tend to be so sticky, in many cases to the detriment of the customer experience, but our industry is also in desperate need for powerfully sticky new ideas and approaches.
	The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber The ideas in this book are based on growing small businesses, but there are certainly take-aways for OSS. The biggest for me is the need for repeatability. We need to codify and systematise if we are to refine and improve.
	Purple Cow, New Edition: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable by Seth Godin In a cluttered or fragmented marketplace, like OSS, it is difficult to stand out from all other suppliers. Seth Godin introduces the concept of the purple cow – when you’re on a long trip in the countryside, seeing lots of brown or black cows soon gets boring, but if you saw a purple cow, you’d immediately take notice. This book provides the impetus to make your products stand out and drive word of mouth rather than having to differentiate via your marketing.
	Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull, Amy Wallace From the creative brilliance of Pixar Studios comes this book of how to cultivate inspired creativity. My biggest take-away was the amount of time and money Pixar spends on upgrading its hardware and software platforms between films…. unlike some of our OSS that are still rooted in tech from the 1990s.
	The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss Starts off strongly but drops away rapidly in the second half IMHO. The words of a friend of mine aptly paraphrase what Tim Ferris talks about in this book, “Only do what only you can do.” Prioritise your efforts on what make you truly unique and use other efficiency tools and/or engage others to do the rest
	OSS Essentials: Support System Solutions for Service Providers by Kornel Terplan Finally, a book that’s actually about OSS. Whilst covering some obsolete technologies, this is one of the very few OSS books that retains a longevity of relevance (it was published in 2001)
	Million Dollar Consulting: The Professional’s Guide to Growing a Practice, Fifth Edition by Alan Weiss Alan Weiss has the ability to cut through the waffle that’s offered in many consultancy how-to manuals. He provides insightful and often contrarian advice that will make you a more professional consultant, no matter what area of expertise you cover.
	Mastering your OSS: Operational Support System Implementation Tips and Techniques by Ryan Jeffery This is the best OSS book that I’ve ever written (so far), but with new material in the pipeline, watch this space for even better publications. It provides the frameworks, processes, insights and recommendations that will help guide you through the myriad of challenges, technical or otherwise, that you will face in the world of OSS.
	Power Listening: Mastering the Most Critical Business Skill of All by Bernard T. Ferrari Bernard Ferrari advises the use of the Pareto Principle to listening. In other words, spending 80% of the time listening and only 20% talking. It’s such an important trait for all technical resources, yet perhaps somewhat uncommon unfortunately. As the “hired gun,” there is a tendency to start firing from both barrels verbally as soon as you meet with the customer. But the most insightful insights are the ones that are understandable to the customer. They have to be relevant in terminology, desired outcomes, roles/responsibilities, respective capabilities, etc, etc. You only get that context from Power Listening.
	The Click Moment: Seizing Opportunity in an Unpredictable World by Frans Johansson Johansson also introduces the concept of the “smallest executable step” as a mechanism for harnessing the apparent randomness of our modern, rapidly changing world. He suggests that we make many small bets rather than one massive bet as a means of improving success rates. OSS are complex systems so any small deviation makes predictions of completion time, resources and cost difficult. As implementers, it’s our job to remove as much complexity as possible
	Harder Than I Thought: Adventures of a Twenty-First Century Leader by Robert D. Austin, Richard L. Nolan More than anything else, one paragraph has stuck with me from this guide to project change leadership, “….once you start a company transformation, it’s like a stampede. If you try to lead from the front, you get trampled; if you try to lead from the back, you have no impact. Best to lead from the side by carefully nudging and turning the stampede to avoid everyone going over the cliff.”
	Waging War on Complexity Costs: Reshape Your Cost Structure, Free Up Cash Flows and Boost Productivity by Attacking Process, Product and Organizational Complexity by Stephen A. Wilson, Andrei Perumal. Amongst other things, this book introduces the concept of The Whale Curve, a model that breaks products into the profitable or the cannibalistic.
	Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and Digital Money are Challenging the Global Economic Order by Paul Vigna, Michael J. Casey You may (or may not) be interested in cryptocurrencies right now, but this book provides brilliant context for two concepts that are likely to have a big impact on future OSS – blockchains and smart contracts.
	Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionising the Way We Live and Work by Steven Kotler This book dives into unconventional methods for unlocking human potential. A lot needs to get done on OSS projects, always with constraints on time (and budgets). There are always a million conflicting demands on time. Yet the relentless allocation of time is what gets projects done. Not just any time, but time in flow state. The importance of aiding yourself and your implementation team to find their own flow states can’t be underestimated.
	Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don’t Make Sense by Rory Sutherland Fascinating perspective on original thinking and creative problem solving, from a man who’s made a living off original thinking as a marketing exec. The many examples he cites that don’t immediately make any sense, yet somehow work, provide a platform for something the OSS industry needs now more than ever – creative thinking!
	DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION: SIMPLIFIED: 50 Tenets for Delivering Projects Faster, Easier and Better by Ryan Jeffery There are plenty of books that help to describe how a digital transformation project can and should be done. Yet digital transformation projects continue to fail. This book provides 50+ short stories, mostly arising from experiences delivering OSS projects, that help you to think differently about how to deliver your next digital (or OSS) transformation project.

What have I missed? What should I be adding to my reading list? Alternatively, which books on the list do you think I’ve over-rated?

Note that the links above are affiliate links. Less because of any revenue it might raise, but more as an experiment to see how many people actually click any of the links to this uncommon list of (non) OSS books!!