4 new books we’ve read for you

Discover visual tools. A four-step gender balance framework. Transforming your team. Getting ultra-productive

Visual Consulting: Designing & Leading Change 
David Sibbet & Gisela Wendling (Wiley)
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As a visual person, I found this book to be a delight. Even in the first chapter, I started doodling, reflecting on my own experiences. From the start, I knew I was in for a treat.

The authors have mastered the development of visual tools while consulting and testing them in the real world. This book can be used as a reference, and as a tool for project management leaders – at any level. I came to understand how these tools can be used to enhance employee engagement and quickly drive productivity.

The authors enable you to become a creative genius in your own right! Indeed, by following the book and sketching along, my confidence grew, and I managed to create my consulting profile.

If there is a downside, some of the hand-drawn figures are too cluttered, with overlapping details. But this book will benefit all project management and change professionals. They can use it to facilitate project meetings and communicate outcomes and roadmaps to various stakeholders.

Review by independent project management consultant Sunchana Johnston

How to be a Productivity Ninja
Graham Allcott (Icon) 
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This book recognises the complexity of the environment we operate in today, and seeks to help the reader become a better, more efficient manager. The first-person, anecdotal style should appeal to practising project managers everywhere. Readers will need to be comfortable with the self-help approach, willing to reflect on the suggestions in the text and prepared to experiment with the ideas.

The book emphasises the importance of logic, structure and self-discipline. You may ask yourself: ‘Is this new?’ But How to be a Productivity Ninja is definitely an evolution from the traditional subject of time management.

Review by David Pearce, secretary to APM’s Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire branches and a chartered construction manager

WE: Men, Women, and the Decisive Formula for Winning at Work
Rania H Anderson (Wiley) 
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This book explains why gender balance matters, the various ways that businesses benefit from women’s active engagement and “why the only way to win is to win together”.

Introducing the ‘WE 4.0 Framework’, the author urges men to take four-step “intentional behavioural actions”. These are to: ‘eliminate’ actions negatively impacting women (such as discrimination and the gap in wages); ‘expand’ by being inclusive with similar treatment of both genders, such as assigning challenging roles to women; ‘encourage’ women to thrive (such as through sponsoring and publicly acknowledging their contributions); and, finally, ‘engage’ in women’s initiatives, such as those that provide support in the workplace.

The book is enriched by real-world examples and seemingly insignificant workplace events with serious consequences for women – such as a sudden team agreement on changing negotiation strategies in the middle of a key meeting in the absence of the team’s only female negotiator (the decision was made in the men’s restroom!).

Despite these, I frequently stopped and asked myself how far statements such as “simple: diverse teams are more productive, innovative and make more money” would convince the equality sceptic. And it’s hard to believe that many of the suggested actions could easily be taken without organisational readiness and structural support.

But change needs to start somewhere, and the act of appreciating and taking full advantage of both genders’ contributions is a useful starting point from this book – as is practising the WE 4.0 Framework.

Review by Ramesh Vahidi, lead for the MSc in project management at Southampton Business School

Brave New Work – Are You Ready to Reinvent Your Organization?
Aaron Dignan (Portfolio)
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Brave New Work uses stories from companies at the cutting edge of organisational transformation. If you’re a project manager fired up to drive actual change in your organisation, this book is for you.

Aaron Dignan explains how humans can’t thrive in a work culture that uses burnout and ‘always available’ as proxies for dedication and success. Instead we need to look at teams and companies that maximise their potential by decentralising their power – ‘evolutionary organisations’.

This book shows you how to transform your team, department and business from the inside out, making work more adaptable, abundant and human. It is packed with tactics and tips for updating your company’s operating system: the simple rules and assumptions so deeply embedded that you don’t even think to question them. Brave New Work will show you how to reignite passion and energy throughout your organisation and to build a company that runs itself.

Review by Judd Norton, a technology programme manager in the IT advisory practice at Grant Thornton UK