Mark Gandy

Surrounded by Idiots by Thomas Erikson could possibly be the simplest book I’ve read on the simplification of four basic personality types that we can all understand. Thomas is an expert in the DISC profile systems, but he’s converted the assessment results into a digestible four-color system along a two-by-two matrix. In this conversation, we will gain an understanding of the purpose of such assessments. We also learn what can cause decision inertia in any senior leadership team.

When I think of books geared toward professional services firms, only one author comes to mind. His name is David Maister and some of his titles include Managing the Professional Services Firm, The Trusted Advisor, and Strategy and the Fat Smoker (my favorite). The newest title in this genre is now my favorite, and it’s entitled The Boutique: How to Start, Scale, and Sell a Professional Services Firm by Greg Alexander.

If you think the fall of BlackBerry could have been prevented because it failed to act quickly on new technologies and fend off Apple’s, iPhone, it’s time to turn back the clock and look closer at its fast rise to $20 billion in annual revenues along with the issues the two brilliant founders of RIM faced as its business model started showing cracks in its foundation. The best place to start is the book, Losing The Signal.

When I read a biography of someone I have not heard of, I want the words to jump out and grab me with the impact they had on others and the world they lived in. I want to learn from them and I especially want to be inspired. Harry Guggenheim is a larger-than-life historical figure who checks all of those boxes, and he’s far more than the godfather of flight, a publisher accolade given to this extraordinary visionary.

Should business professionals read more fiction and if so, why? Dr. Christy Seifert is a professor at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, and she wrote the 2020 article, The Case for Fiction in the Harvard Business Review. After reading that article, I just had to hear directly from this gifted communicator. I was especially intrigued by her discussion about cognitive agility and acuity along with the concepts and ideas behind cognitive openness.