Boom!

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink

ISBN: 978-1-59448-884-9

242 pages

Aug  - Sep 2025

Approx. 10.5 hours

Part 1 – A New Operating System

Chapter 1: The Rise and Fall of Motivation 2.0

• Motivation 1.0: survival-based.
• Motivation 2.0: rewards and punishments.
• Both work for simple tasks, but fail with complex, creative, knowledge-based work.

Chapter 2: Seven Reasons Carrots and Sticks (Often) Don’t Work

• External rewards can:
• Crush intrinsic motivation
• Diminish performance
• Crush creativity
• Crowd out good behavior
• Encourage cheating, shortcuts, unethical acts
• Become addictive
• Foster short-term thinking

Chapter 2a: …and the Special Circumstances When They Do

• External rewards can work for simple, routine tasks with clear rules.
• Best used as “if–then” rewards for algorithmic tasks.
• For creative work, unexpected praise or feedback (“now that” rewards) can help without undermining intrinsic drive.

Chapter 3: Type I and Type X

Part 2 – The Three Elements

Chapter 4: Autonomy

• People want control over their:
• Task (what they do)
• Time (when they do it)
• Technique (how they do it)
• Team (who they do it with)
• Companies like Atlassian (innovation days) show autonomy boosts creativity and engagement.

Chapter 5: Mastery

• Motivation thrives when work hits the sweet spot: not too easy, not too hard (the “Goldilocks effect”).
• Mastery is a mindset: growth and improvement matter more than perfection.
• Requires grit and persistence—progress is endless.

Chapter 6: Purpose

• People are motivated when they see their work as meaningful and part of something larger.
• Businesses with a clear mission outperform those focused only on profit.
• Profit maximization -> insufficient; Purpose maximization -> sustainable success.

Part 3 – The Type I  Toolkit

• Type I for Individuals
• Type I for Organizations

Organizations and individuals who embrace these principles unlock higher performance, creativity, and satisfaction.

The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries

ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780307887894

The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses

336 pages.

Approx. 12 hours, August-September 2025

The book presents a framework for building startups (or new products within companies) more efficiently by focusing on validated learning, rapid experimentation, and iterative product development rather than long, rigid business plans.

Key Principles

Start Small with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

Instead of perfecting a product before launch, release the simplest version that solves a core problem.

The MVP tests key assumptions with real customers as quickly and cheaply as possible.

Build–Measure–Learn Cycle

Build: Create the MVP or experiment.

Measure: Collect data on how customers actually behave.

Learn: Decide whether to pivot (change direction) or persevere (improve on the same path).

Validated Learning

Progress is measured by how much is learned about customers’ real needs, not by vanity metrics (downloads, likes, etc.).

Experiments should be designed to confirm or reject business hypotheses.

Pivot or Persevere

A pivot is a structured course correction—changing product, strategy, or target market based on evidence.

If evidence shows growth and customer adoption, continue improving (persevere).

Innovation Accounting

A system for measuring true progress in a startup by focusing on actionable metrics (like customer retention, lifetime value) instead of surface-level numbers.

Continuous Deployment & Small Batches

Release updates frequently to test assumptions in small, low-risk steps.

This allows quicker feedback and prevents wasted effort.

Lean Thinking

Adapted from lean manufacturing: eliminate waste, focus only on what creates value for the customer, and continuously improve.

The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt

ISBN 978-0-88427-178-9

408 pages

Easy reading on the theory of constraints application.

Approx. 10 hours. July 2025

"The Goal" by Eliyahu M. Goldratt is a business novel that introduces the Theory of Constraints (TOC) through the story of a plant manager named Alex Rogo, who must save his struggling manufacturing plant from closure within 90 days.

Key Concepts:

The Goal: The true objective of a business is to make money.

Three Key Metrics:

Throughput – the rate at which the system generates money through sales.

Inventory – all the money invested in purchasing things the system intends to sell.

Operational Expense – all the money the system spends to turn inventory into throughput.

Bottlenecks/Constraints: Every system has at least one limiting factor. Improving performance requires identifying and elevating that constraint.

Five Focusing Steps (TOC):

Identify the system's constraint(s).

Exploit the constraint.

Subordinate everything else to the constraint.

Elevate the constraint.

If the constraint has been broken, go back to step 1.

Outcome:

By applying these principles, Alex and his team streamline operations, improve delivery times, and save the plant. He is promoted, and the story ends with Alex applying the same logic to improve other parts of the business.

Огород

 Прикопал помидоры

Better Boy

BeafSteak

Project Management in The Hybrid Workplace

 Project Management in The Hybrid Workplace by Phil Simon 2022 Racket Publishing , 324 ps

Chapter 1

• As a group and for at least two decades, employees have never particularly felt engaged while on the clock. The reasons may stem from an especially pro-business environment in the United States.
• For decades, the business environment has been decidedly pro-business, especially in relation to other industrialized countries.
• COVID-19 caused the employer-employee pendulum to shift toward the latter. It won't be swinging back to the former anytime soon.
• Employees have spoken loud and clear: They want their work lives to revolve around their personal lives, not the other way around.

Chapter 2

• Elon Musk's audacious postpandemic behavior aside, certain types of work are much harder to pull off in remote and hybrid fashions.
• The process of navigating hybrid workplaces is especially tricky. Asymmetries abound, and proximity bias is a tough nut to crack.
• Thanks to massive advances in collaboration technologies and more relaxed views around remote work, employees can easily change jobs without uprooting their lives. The reduced friction in labor markets means more turnover, especially in today's high-inflation environment.

Chapter 3

• Minor changes throughout the supply chain reverberate throughout it. The bullwhip effect causes major problems that no company can resolve overnight.
• The process of managing physical inventory and natural resources is often just as vexing as managing people. 
• More efficiency means less resilience, and vice versa.
• Erring on the side of extreme efficiency makes any resource management system fragile.

Chapter 4

• Project management is a rich, vibrant, and multidimensional discipline.
• The type of methodology your team follows should reflect the project's ultimate goal. Don't try to fix a plane while it's in the air.
• Regardless of your approach on a given project, the tradeoff among cost, scope, quality, and time is real. If someone suggests otherwise, run.
• Historically, projects have failed about two times in five and that's when people largely worked in the same place at the same time.

Chapter 5

• Cognitive biases have always been problematic at work. They're even more vexing in hybrid and remote workplaces.
• The same delays that slow physical production lines slow human ones. The results are predictably similar.
• In their efforts to secure the enterprise, IT departments can complicate employees' efforts to communicate and collaborate, especially when working with outsiders.
• Employees have been working harder throughout the pandemic, but not necessarily smarter. Not surprisingly, they're exhausted. Something's gotta give.

Chapter 6

• Old standbys still matter, but it's imperative to add new questions when vetting prospective employees, vendors,
• clients, and partners for projects in hybrid workplaces.
• Consider the tools that a prospective partner uses to complete its projects. Generally speaking, the answer to that
• question will provide a valuable signal about whether you should walk down the aisle.
• Establishing core work hours can reduce employee stress, WIP, and turnover.

Chapter 7

• Millions of employees have accepted jobs during the pandemic. As a result, they have yet to meet their peers and have struggled to build valuable social capital with them.
• Through in-person meetings and project kickoffs, employees can build invaluable relationships and social capital. The benefits can be significant on complicated projects as problems manifest themselves.
• When getting together, think face up, not face down.

Chapter 8

• Employees use a greater array of tools than ever. Their willingness and ability to use those tools well-and possibly learn new ones-can determine if a project or product will
• succeed or fail.
• As soon as possible, talk tech with your would-be partners. Discuss and agree upon the tools that the team will use. And, for God's sake, involve IT early.
• Use a proper PM tool from the get-go. If you start a new project with a simple spreadsheet, it's unlikely that you'll
• think of everything you ultimately need from day one.
• For years, it's been dangerous to assume that another department within the same company uses the same tools-never mind an entirely different company altogether.

Chapter 9

• Conducting a project premortem reduces the chance that an organization will have to perform an autopsy down the road.
• An array of human biases prevents us from accurately assessing our ability to successfully plan and complete projects.
• Odds are that you'll face resistance when suggesting a project premortem, but the pros of doing one typically outweigh its cons.

Chapter 10

• Project and product pilots aren't novel ideas. In hybrid and remote workplaces, however, they're more important to conduct than ever.
• As Hertz's management learned the hard way, hiring a venerated consultancy doesn't guarantee a successful outcome-no matter which party was ultimately culpable for the $32-million disaster.
• Pilots can snuff out all sorts of project issues before a team or company gets in too deep. Potential problems may stem from employee skill levels, communication styles, partner compatibility, and logistics.

Chapter 11

• Even smart, successful people underestimate the value of employee training and the power of today's applications.
• The farther we are from our colleagues, partners, managers, and clients, the more we need to rely upon software programs and technology in general. That's why application training is so important.
• Expecting employees to learn on their own time and dime is sanguine at best and dangerous at worst.

Chapter 12

• Clear business writing has always been critical. The rise in hybrid and remote work only accentuated its importance.
• Amazon and Automattic are two prominent companies whose management has taken steps to institutionalize clear employee writing. More firms are coming around to the benefits of holding formal workshops.
• Workshops can pay off in spades, especially since electronic messages are becoming less disposable.

Chapter 13

• The advantages of MBWA may seem obvious, but the practice is pointless or even counterproductive in remote and hybrid workplaces.
• A construction company used analytics to turn around a failing project.
• Even the most sophisticated use of analytics guarantees nothing. Analytics can, however, help people make more informed project- and product-related decisions.

Chapter 14

• In-person performance management has always proven challenging. It's even harder in hybrid and remote workplaces.
• Taken together, proper PM and survey tools can help diagnose project issues and identify ways to correct them.
• Organizations are beginning to creatively reward their employees with nontraditional employee benefits and bonuses. These can improve employee morale, reduce attrition, and potentially mitigate project-related issues.

approx. 12.5 h June July 2025

9 дней...