2010 was an amazing year for me. And a big part of the amazingness was books. Here are some that can make a big difference for you, too.

Speed Thinking by Ken Hudson

It turns out that most quick decisions are just as good as decisions that we take ages on. Speed Thinking gives you a 9-minute process to explore the heck out of any situation, and get on to the next step. It removes a lot of stress and uncertainty, too.

Linchpin by Seth Godin

After hearing this recommended by people I knew and respected, I had to check out Linchpin. I’m glad I did – Linchpin was a tour de force. You’ll read about why you need to do your work as art, and why a company full of indispensable people is much less of a risk than you think. You’ll probably also be inspired!

Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh

Zappos is the poster child of social media. Not because of the technology (CEO Tony Hsieh says their most important piece of technology is the telephone) but because they’ve created a culture of openness and transparency, where every employee has a sense of ownership. Delivering Happiness is Hsieh’s story of how he and the Zappos team created an amazing culture, and a seriously profitable business (Zappos was acquired by Amazon last year for $928 million).

Drive by Dan Pink

On a very similar theme to Linchpin and Delivering Happiness, Drive delves into the science of what motivates us at work. It’s not money. Instead, it’s autonomy, mastery and purpose. If you haven’t got time to read the whole book, check out this video instead.

The Why of Work by Dave Ulrich and Wendy Ulrich

Continuing the theme of what makes people happy, Dave Ulrich (who comes from a background in HR) and Wendy Ulrich (who comes from a background in psychology) have created a framework to connect employees’ personal motivation with the company’s purpose. Keeping it real. The Why of Work does a great job of gathering together previous strands of thought (such as Positive Psychology) and bringing them together in the workplace.

Open Leadership by Charlene Li

In 2008 Charlene Li co-wrote Groundswell, which was a great introduction to social media for business. In 2010, with Open Leadership, Li explores the impact social technologies have on leadership styles, and gives a framework for navigating the open, slightly scary waters of the future.

Empowered by Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler

Empowered explores similar territory to Open Leadership, looking at how frontline employees and even customers can be empowered to be your company’s most enthusiastic marketers.

The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working by Tony Schwartz

It sounds obvious, but we need to look after ourselves if we’re to produce the work of arts that Seth Godin talks about in Linchpin. The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working (subtitled and what to do about it) gives some really practical advice on how to do that. See my interview with Tony here.

Dare to Dream Again by Eugene Moreau

On a personal level, we need to ask ourselves what we are here for. Dare to Dream Again by my friend Eugene Moreau, is the story of Alex, a successful executive who’s hit a wall. But it can also be your story … some very practical lessons here.

Predictable Success by Les McKeown

Where is your company on the business lifecycle? Predictable Success lays out that lifecycle, helps you find where you are, and how to avoid the death spiral. Here’s my interview with Les.

Enjoy your reading! Very relaxing photo from Lori Grieg

Recently HappyAbout.info released a new book in the THINKaha series, Social Media Nonprofit Tweet.

It’s an exercise in crowdsourcing. The front cover says Janet Fouts wrote the book with Beth Kanter, but five pages in you’ll see the cast of characters who contributed to this book of bite-sized advice.

As with the entire THINKaha series, the idea is innovative: distilling down the most important advice into a series of tweets, this time specifically for the nonprofit sector.

Here’s a taste of some of the tweet-sized observations:

You already communicate, campaign, fundraise, serve and build community locally. With social media, you can do that with the world!

Search engines love social media. It’s like candy to them.

Focus on level of engagement, not raw numbers; leaders and creators, not sign-ups; movement and conversion across the web.

Something strange is happening here. It used to be that the web would provide you with the bite-sized pieces of advice, and a printed book would give you the substance. In this case, it’s reversed. The bite-sized advice is here on the page, and the in-depth stuff is on the blogs of some of the authors. Just look at the average post length on Janet and Beth’s blogs. There’s amazing value in each post.

I’m not sure the reversal works for me personally. When I read a book, I’m looking for narrative, I want to be led on a journey exploring an issue.

However, this could be just great for someone who’s new to social media, for whom the tweet-sized insights (like those above) could be great conversation-starters.

I guess no book exists in a vaccuum. Or at least, books like this don’t. Like other forms of media (social or otherwise) they exist in an ecosystem. This book may exist in conjunction with presentations, conversations, actual tweets, blog posts and videos – among other things. The aim is clear: to explain specifically to nonprofits how social media can make them more effective.

Bonus extra reading: Janet’s story of how the book came about.

The word “engagement” gets thrown around a lot, especially in connection with social media. The Art of Engagement by Jim Hauden has nothing to do with social media, but everything to do with getting everyone on the same page.

Hauden’s company, Root Learning, helps companies engage their staff through collaborative drawings that then get transformed into paintings by professional artists. It’s a unique take on collaboration that overcomes a common communications problem: we say the same words, but mean different things!

How does this connect with social media? Social media has the potential to create the same kind of powerful collaboration, not through paintings but through photos, videos, wordles and other visual stimuli. And again – like last week’s iJumpTV – it comes back not to the technology but to the new skills we must learn.

Have you ever been in a situation where a drawing would have made the difference between success and failure?

How do you handle information overload? One Austrian librarian had an interesting method – and an interesting explanation for it – in the book I review today, How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read.

While talking about the book (which I partly read, admittedly) I was reminded of Howard Gardner’s 5 Minds for the Future. Gardner talks about the need for a depth of discipline, even as we need to get more cross-disciplinary.

Such talk of deep discipline then reminded me of Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, which says you can master anything if you put in 10,000 hours. Although I haven’t read the book, that’s okay, because I followed the advice in How To Talk About Books You Haven’t Read … nicely completing this circular, three-for-the-price-of-one book review.

How does this affect us in our daily life and work?

1. Information overload is a fact of life. Do you remember the last time you wished there was more information in your life? Yet relevance is still a struggle. The first book has some surprising strategies.
2. Our fast-moving times require innovative, cross-disciplinary thinking, yet we still need a depth of discipline or we truly will be jacks of all trades, masters of none.
3. This means that to our initial discipline we must add the skill of collaboration. We must realise that we don’t hold all the answers, nor could we ever.

It’s summed up by a great quote I read today:

“If you have come to help me you are wasting your time. But if you recognize that your liberation and mine are bound up together, then let us walk together.” -Lila Watson

Click here to view the embedded video.

I reviewed:

Twitterature

Think Tweet

Leadership Tweet

Quality Tweet

Also mentioned, The Best Ideas are Free, and ChangeThis, a source of much inspiration and cogitation!

Happy reading!

Getting stuff done is pretty important. Richard Hollingum and Mario McMillan could have written a book about how to get stuff done, but they did the opposite: How Not To Do Things is a clever guide on exactly how you can accomplish nothing.

A great insight into why change sometimes just doesn’t happen.

Why cover it on iJumpTV? Because using social media in your organisation is about far more than getting the technology right. It’s about introducing and maintaining change – and you can’t do that successfully without knowing the barriers you’ll face.

What books have you been reading over the holidays?

I would say that, wouldn’t I! But seriously, while many social media blogs talk a lot about the tools, these interviews and book reviews look at the larger issues of how to manage a large organisation through the process of change .

The most recent book review is the contrarian Against the Machine , which I disagreed with (you might have guessed I would).

And just fresh off the press today, an interview with Luigi Cappel about the Location Innovation Awards , designed to get people thinking up clever ways to use mobile for marketing and business.

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