Books thread...

Hello, tens of readers! (I'm being optimistic...)

I'm starting to feel a little short of reading material and thought I'd turn to the Internet for inspiration. So, recommendations please!

What do I like? Well, I'm big into SF and fantasy, but most definitely prefer books that take a realistic approach to the unbelievable, if that makes sense. Some of my favourite authors include Steven Erikson, Stephen Brust, and Neal Stephenson - don't suggest Bakker though, tried it and found it too grim for my tastes.

I'm also keen on any recommendations for any other sort of fiction, although I doubt I'd have much truck with a romance novel... I'd be interested too in your thoughts on non-fiction in any of the following areas - Photography, Travel, Knowledge Management, Generic Business Wisdom, Military History.

I hope to use this as yet very young blog to talk more about what I read in the future, so it would be great to kick off with some suggestions - please get involved! Thanks...

Bits and pieces 14 November 08

I've recently been reading "Understanding Organisations". I'm not that far in yet, but it seems a pretty accurate and pragmatic guide to human behaviour in organisations and how to deal with it. Not really had much exposure to the theory of this sort of thing, having previously just gone by personal experience and tips from blogs like Rands, so it's good starting to get stuck in to a more conceptual approach. Would appreciate any guidance on further reading material, if anybody would care to suggest anything?

On the subject of insight, I went for my first personal coaching session through my company's scheme yesterday morning. It went really well and was a fascinating example of how changing your environment or actions can help you make progress. My coach didn't offer any amazing advice or wisdom - but by helping me shift out of the worn paths of my thinking, I was able to get a new perspective on things. Very useful, and I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to improve their performance, whether in the work environment or to improve in a hobby or sport.

I'm curious about the relationship between Twitter and blog posting. The general verdict seems to be to use your blog for lengthier more essay-type pieces, whilst all the one-line links and sarcastic comments get stuck on Twitter. However, most people also seem to tweet a link to their blog postings. This approach works for me, I think, and I'll try to keep going that way. How else do people see Twitter and blogs working together though? Any other thoughts?

Stories

Came across a good piece about the power of stories on Seth Godin's blog here and was very struck by the mention of people relating to stories more than features.

I think this is a vital thing to understand when dealing with people in any business where you can't supply everything they wish for. It's easy to dismiss people who say they want something to work "just like Google" or who complain that their laptop isn't as sleek & stylish as a MacBook. To a certain extent this is justified - as a business, we certainly can't afford to kit people out with the latest cutting edge gear every 6 months!

However, we should recognise that when people talk this way, they aren't necessarily talking about the functionality or features of the technology. They're talking about their own stories for how it makes them feel. For example, Google search isn't infallible - but they've done an incredible job of framing their offerings around you, the user.

If we want people to buy into what we can do for them - and I feel this applies to both KM and internal IT - then we need to understand how these sorts of stories work. We can't compete with Google or Apple in marketing terms. But there's no reason why we can't understand our users and develop stories around them that make a powerful case for what we offer.

NB: This is an edited version of a post to a corporate internal blog.

US Politics etc...

Politics - in particular, the US elections. I find myself utterly transfixed by this year's election - something about the final days of Bush's time in office, the desperately weird and erratic campaign waged by McCain set against the hope that Obama may offer... It's heady stuff. However - of course, being British I don't have any say in the election and arguably shouldn't even care. So is this weird, that I'm so caught up? Not sure, really, but pretty convinced I'm not going to quit compulsively refreshing the "Politics" folder in my Google reader feed anytime before Wednesday morning my time!

Katherine Jenkins, the classical singer, has revealed she took cocaine, ecstasy and cannabis in her younger days. This was apparently to pre-empt a story about to be broken in the gutter press about it. Really, does anybody care? Should anyone care that it was illegal? Why is this news when other celebrities drug use is far more obvious and blatant? Very strange.

In other news, our internal changes continue to rumble on... All up in the air and no way of saying for sure where it's all going to land yet. Trying to keep focus on business as usual, but somewhat hard to focus under these circumstances.