Books, blogs and research about IT, management and research
The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling
Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative
By Stephen Denning
Book If you missed this book when it came out a few years ago, pick up the recently revised edition. Denning explains why stories are often the best tool for the job—they create social bonds and spark action—and suggests ways to tell different stories. Many examples are given and at the end of each chapter is a template to help you craft your own tales. The new edition reflects evolving attitudes about business storytelling and addresses the current role of social media. Jossey-Bass, $27.95
As One
Individual Action, Collective Power
By Mehrdad Baghai and James Quigley
Book You may not be providing the leadership your organization needs to function most cohesively. Baghai, the managing director of Alchemy Growth Partners, and Quigley, the CEO of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, believe many executives think too narrowly about how they make decisions and motivate employees. Leaders either exercise tight control or try for maximum collaboration. The authors use original research to define a spectrum between these extremes, taking into account what leaders want to accomplish and what employees expect. Portfolio Penguin, $40
All Things Distributed
Werner Vogels’ Weblog on Building Scalable and Robust Distributed Systems
By Werner Vogels
BLOG For those considering using Amazon in the enterprise, this blog by its CTO is worth following. It provides a nitty-gritty breakdown of some of Amazon’s services, along with some more general business musings. Vogels is big on practical applications and frequently provides examples of how Amazon Web Services are being or could be used. In fact, he now runs his blog entirely from Amazon Simple Storage Service—no servers involved at all. (For more on Amazon Web Services, see “Cloud Computing: Will Amazon’s Elastic Beanstalk Platform Appeal to Enterprise CIOs?”) www.allthingsdistributed.com
The New Edge in Knowledge
How Knowledge Management Is Changing the Way We Do Business
By Carla O’Dell and Cindy Hubert
Book As was discussed in our Feb. 1 issue, knowledge management (KM) may be making a comeback. The authors of this book think so too and will help you make the business case for KM. They discuss proven and new approaches to implementation, and explain how to create a culture that prompts employees to actually use the system. The book also includes a healthy appendix of case studies. John Wiley and Sons, $45
Closing the IT Skills Gap
2011 SHARE Survey for Guiding University and College IT Agendas
By Joseph McKendrick
Research With the economy on the upswing, more companies will be hiring this year. Will recent college grads be ready to slot in smoothly at your company? Probably not, says this report, which found that only 8 percent of its 376 respondents would rate their recent entry-level hires as “well-trained, ready to go.” In contrast, more than three quarters of employers thought that colleges should teach programming, database and architectural skills. www.share.org/tabid/69.aspx
