Books. A brilliant way to access the wisdom of great thinkers and doers.

Cheap (with Amazon), accessible (with Amazon) and plentiful (you get the picture). Very very plentiful. The best guess I could find for number of book titles in the world is 65 million.

That’s a lot of books.

How on earth is anyone who is in the “I don’t know what I don’t know” phase of leadership development meant to know what is worth reading and what isn’t?

Well, for quite a number of years my approach to reading was a stumble and pray strategy and it produced “some” good results. Most of the books I read though, while  not useless to someone who knew next to nothing, could have been much better. The result of this lack of guidance was a factor in why I didn’t read as much as I could have for quite a while.

However, I then got a stroke of good luck (yay for serendipity). I tripped over Josh Kaufman’s Personal MBA (PMBA) website. Josh created this website with the vision that you don’t have to spend a fortune on an MBA to get a good business education. While I was stumbling around not reading much, he was reading books by the thousand! Josh has created a list of what he considers to be the 99 best in the categories he considers of most importance for a successful business leader.

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. - Sir Francis Bacon

All of the books on the PMBA that I have read so far, fall very much into the last category. The list’s brilliance is down in most part to Josh’s own laser sharp understanding about business and leadership, which is very evident from his own blog articles, videos and projects.

Since I started my quest to understand leadership development I have read a lot of books and I usually have some trepedation before starting one (I hate not finishing books once I’ve started them).However everytime I pick up a PMBA book I know that it’s going to end up on my “I can’t imagine myself not having read this book” list.

So far I’ve read 16 of the 99 total. I’m thinking of some way to show my progress on this blog since it’s something I really want to complete.

So anyway, go check out the PMBA manifesto, start reading, and become just a bit more awesome with every page turn!

- James

PS. This is not an attack on MBA programmes, I think they have their place and can be very good choices for many people. However I also feel that in today’s world, the idea that you can have a monopoly on knowledge is silly. If I ever take an MBA I’ll let you know my opinion of MBA vs. PMBA but until that time I’ll take the knowledge I can get a hold of right now.

When I was twelve I watched a documentary series first shown in 1994 and presented by Desmond Morris called The Human Animal. While I suspect the intro of naked people walking through a busy city street did more for the interest of a kid just entering puberty then the promise of the scientific import of the material, I nevertheless loved the series and the way it approached the study of people from a zoological perspective. Something I had never thought of before.

It was my first introduction to linguistic and social anthropology, although it would be some time before I learned that’s what it was.

Over a decade later and I’m now studying leadership development.

The significance of social anthropology to anyone either wanting to either become a leader or develop someone else to become a leader should be obvious. After-all, we’ve already said that one of the purposes of the leader is to forge the team and social anthropology is the study of how humans behave in social groups.

The tales and stories of social anthropologists are full of jungle treks, mountain hikes, paddling between islands in canoes and bumping across rough desert terrain in 4x4s. And although many of them have now moved towards studying modernity rather then… *tires to remember the PC term*… um, people with sticks, they have taken the tools they developed during those expeditions and turned them towards us.

Social anthropologists study how people behave by observing them in their natural conditions. They don’t pull them into labs, in controlled conditions and ask them to give shocks to each other (although they seem to be very fond of sticking needles in people). They are very much interested in how the many facets of human individuality, culture, religion, hierarchy, wealth, gender, lineage, education etc. come together to form behaviors between people.

Social anthropologists are impartial observers (ideally). And one of the best tools that leaders can get out of a study of social anthropology is a healthy habit of observing human behavior and questioning its causes and purpose.

There’s long running joke in the anthropology world comparing those who go out and actually observe people to those who stay at home reading the reports of those who do the field work. The latter often being referred to as “armchair anthropologists”. A leader is never an armchair anthropologist. Sure, go and buy books, listen to courses and watch documentaries. But more then that, whenever you’re with other people, watch how they behave and try to figure out why; Their body language, voice tone, emotions, who they pay attention to and who they ignore, everything.

Understanding people makes you a better leader… duh.

- James

I like to think of myself as a travelled person. I’ve lived in 4 different countries and moved 6 times.

I’ve hiked up Mt. Vesuvius, skied in the Alps, kayaked down the Ardeche, eaten reindeer stew in Lapland, climbed Aphrodite’s rock, dinned in the oldest restaurant in Russia, walked the museums of Vienna, bought a bit of the Berlin wall (guaranteed not a random bit of masonry lying around… honest gov.), rambled across the lake district, and generally made awesome memories wherever I could (not hard).

But in all that time, I’ve never stepped far outside Europe. So when I received an email this morning saying I’d been accepted to the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing I was very, very happy *dancing*. I’m still waiting for word back from another uni I’ve applied for in Shanghai but as it stands chances are I’ll accept the offer from these guys.

The thought that I’ll be spending four years in the Celestial Kingdom is such a hit. No doubt reality will bring me down soon enough however for the moment I am walking on air.

I often get asked, why China? And to save myself from going through a carefully thought through chain of reasoning which makes my dinner companions eyes glaze over, I usually look them in said eyes, lean in and say “I just feel drawn there” and they smile and nod knowingly.

Truth is I’ve always loved East Asia and East Asian Culture…. (What follows is definitely not a carefully thought through chain of reasoning but my bed is seducing me from the other room and all attempts at rational thought are failing me):

• China:  Upcoming world power house, largest population on earth, amazing culture reaching back 7,000 years, leadership seriously serious about being the best.
• India (not technically east asia but I like anyway): Ditto, nearly ditto, democracy.
• South Korea: Hugely intensive IT scene, concentrated population in a small area.
• Japan: Best popular culture in my world, concentrated population in a small area, stagnant/declining  economy.

After looking at the options I decided on China. I’d love to live in Japan but I’m doing this to develop myself as a better business person not to sink further into otaku tendencies. Similar reasoning goes for South Korea. Flipping between China and India… I feel that learning Mandarin would be more useful then Hindi and I guess I just like Chinese culture more.

I still have a three or four months where I am now which I intend to take full advantage of (I somehow doubt I’m going to have a swimming pool outside my apartment for quite a while).

So there you have it, to the Middle Kingdom!

- James