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.