sona khosla

I loooove this book. Yes, loooove with 4 o’s.

The Designful Company: How to Build a Culture of Nonstop Innovation is the third of Marty’s “whiteboard books” in which he takes a deep and complex topic on branding and simplifies it so that it just makes plain sense.

The powerful concept that Marty (I feel like we’re on a first name basis) presents here is that design is change. Wowzer. That’s so powerful. Mainly because it takes the power out of the hands of the few people who know how to use Photoshop and puts it in the hands of every individual in an organization. There are so many kinds of designers. People who re-engineer process. People who design ads. People who dream up new solutions for customers. People who champion the people in their company. People in Marketing. People in Product. People in Customer Service. People in HR. People everywhere.

What I love about this book is that it reminded me of a part of myself I sometimes lose. The creative, the designer, the one who cares so much about beauty, harmony and integrity. The one who fusses over typography and prides herself on guessing the typeface being used in the movie credits. It’s so easy to lose this part of myself. I get caught in typical left-brain ideals like the bottom line, rules, margins, KPIs, standards and start to lose touch with that part of myself that knows with something other than my logic. Then, even worse, I lose respect for my intuition, my instincts, my desire to make things better and different and I become part of the “system” that I myself don’t respect.

Anyways, this book reminded me that designers and creatives are to be respected, if not understood. And it reminded me to trade in the “or” for the “and” to find creative solutions to “wicked problems” that all organizations face like: balancing long-term goals with short-term demands; predicting the returns on innovative concepts; combining profitability and social responsibility. It’s true, these can be solved, albeit not easily.

Admist the simple aesthetic of the book lies some revolutionary ideas that have the power to transform people and corporations. Don’t be fooled. This isn’t just another little book on branding.

This is an amazing book that I do not recommend.

The Answer to How is Yes: Acting on What Matters unmasks our obsession with how we should do things instead of why we do things. Peter Block argues that we are so focused on finding the most efficient ways of executing on ideas that we overlook asking the important questions, like “is this the right thing to do?” or “why am I doing this?”

I have never thought so much about the values that drive my choices, behaviours and leadership. I’ve never thought so much about my relationship to my company, my boss, my community and my co-workers, but I’m always delighted when a book triggers me to think hard about my deepest values and beliefs.

If there were a “Coles notes” version to The Answer to How is Yes, I would full-heartedly recommend it. But as it is, I just can’t recommend this book. While the book is rich in ideas, the writing is dense, academic and sometimes overly esoteric making it difficult to fully absorb the profound reflections of this bold thinker. I would, instead, recommend any of Peter Block’s articles. Albeit short, they have brought me to tears.

Yes, another children’s book. That’s what happens when you’re 32 and your only regular activity is attending baby showers.

Admittedly, Hug has become my de facto baby shower gift for 3 reasons:

1. It made me cry the first time I read it in the childrens’ section of a NE location of Chapters.
2. My friend called me up and told me her 2-year-old daughter loves having it read by her mama.
3. The protagonist’s name is Bobo - a nickname my mom had for me when I was little.

See the book cover below? How could you resist? Seriously?

Great case studies, but too academic.

Parts of Brand Digital were dense and after re-reading these parts, they ended up being somewhat meaningless. The the last 10 pages, however, delivered the entire message of the book in a succinct, engaging and consumable way. 

It took me a year-and-a-half to read this book. Most other brand books have taken me less than a month to gobble up.

I’ll admit, I thought twice about counting this as a legitimate 95 books book. But after thinking about it again and again over the last 24 hours (since my husband asked last night, “what’s that Yellow Square book on the shelf all about?”), I figured, what the hell?

When I set out to write this post, I decided I was going to conclude by saying that I didn’t like it and wouldn’t recommend it. I was going to write how I didn’t think it had value for children, I didn’t know who it was written for (“all ages” is a cop-out”), it doesn’t teach anything, it doesn’t mean anything, it’s just kind of pretty. 

Then I actually started writing this post. And I kept finding myself challenging my conclusions. Do children’s books have to teach? Am I just looking for a formulaic children’s book and that’s why I don’t like this one? Is my aversion to this book related to the fact that it just doesn’t fit nicely into the “children’s book” category in my head? Guilty.

Yellow Square is a beautiful book. As a former book designer myself, I can appreciate the intricate die-cuts, the interactive pulls, twirls and slides and the idea of the whole book. The first line is “Paper noodles wrestle and a yellow square.” I can just see that fight going down in my soup bowl. The last line in the book is ”Square tubes bloom and a yellow square.” I can see the paper flowers that my nephew brings home from school for his mom after days of work leading up to mother’s day. This book teases you to think creatively, to imagine quirky metaphors, to think abstractly, to indulge in the playfulness of simple shapes.

Yellow Square forces you to think outside the box.

After many false starts on various books in the last month and a half, this happens to be the first book I have finished in my quest to read 95 books in 2010.

It’s a cheesy pick, no doubt; but I’m a bit of a sucker when it comes to business books and self-help books. And being that it was going to be my quick read while on a business trip abroad, it had to be small, easy to pack and lose-able. Who Moved My Cheese? fit the criteria.

I liked it. I didn’t love it. It has some profound themes around the difficulty of identifying and adapting to change. I was most struck by the idea that everyday change is happening, but because it’s so small, so incremental, we don’t notice it. Then one day it hits us like a bus and we’re shocked. But all along, it was happening in small ways and we were just oblivious.

I was told this is THE book to read if you think you are about to be “made redundant” (the euphemism for being laid off). While this wasn’t my motivation for choosing the book, I definitely think it would be an appropriate pick for anyone in that situation, but also anyone who just doesn’t deal with change well. There’s a lot of us out there, so if we can get over the silly title and metaphor, this book really does offer some gems.