Honest

Business

Books

There are loads of problems the business world could improve on - if only folks had time to read some great books! Unfortunately, we're all too busy to read, try, and improve, so the issues those books address are still going strong...

Honest Business Books helps by "reviewing" books and calling out the still-prevalent issues, misunderstandings, or common misapplications of otherwise relevant content.

If there is a book you'd like us to review, email us at hello@honestbusinessbooks.com

All content below is licensed Creative Commons.

(we'd appreciate attribution :)

Organizational Change

Work-Life Balance

Entrepreneurship

Leadership

When your incompetence, mediocrity, and ability to kiss your boss' ass has brought you this far, you don't turn back...you revel in it!-> Get The Book

Truly great leaders deftly combine the right amount of command with just enough control to create limitless activity and deliver busyness results.-> Get The Book

It's important for those in power to have the safety to say whatever they want without the repercussion of feeling guilty!-> Get The Book

The best Senior Managers know that if they are going down, then so are a few others. Fuck around and find out!-> Get The Book

Sometimes, just when you believe someone has risen to their highest level of incompetence, they'll dig really deep and surprise you!-> Get The Book

Remember, making sure YOU have a seat when the music stops is KEY to organizational agility...at least for you.-> Get The Book

This guide helps you learn what it takes to be a great manager by appearing busy while avoiding responsibility, and therefore dodging blame!-> Get The Book

Product Management

Collaboration is great for coddling sensitive engineers, but when shit gets real, it's you that knows what needs to get done!-> Get The Book

We need everyone to give 110% No, we wont pay you 110% but the big boss needs your extra labor to validate their ego - now GO BUILD!-> Get The Book

Let's be honest, user interviews are much more efficient when you take them where they need to go.-> Get The Book

Products don't have to be great. Only marginally better than other choices, sticky enough to be annoying to replace, or just trap customers with a long term contract!-> Get The Book

If you want to be a true product leader, you ship the features YOU know are right! Sing their GLORY!-> Get The Book

Great product managers know how to pivot and exploit any situation - especially a good crisis.-> Get The Book

The best leaders understand the power of confident non sequitur to maintain positional advantage.-> Get The Book

Design

Your product's user experience only needs to be less shitty than the alternatives. Even less if the users aren't the buyers! -> Get The Book

Any press is good press. And its a LOT easier to get users to talk to their friends about your app if they loathe the user experience!-> Get The Book

Ensuring feature parity with as many competitors as possible is a sure way to create...an...experience for your userssszzzzz.-> Get The Book

Users almost never know what they want if you ask them. So it's better to continuously show them what YOU know they need. Bonus points for excessive use of felt boards and post-it notes!-> Get The Book

Scrum & Agile

Breath deep resources! Organizational change has never been easier or more invasive. It's like the smell of napalm in the morning...VICTORY!-> Get The Book

Be sure to absorb the essence of True Scrums in this definitive guide to seeming Agile without the risk of improvement.-> Get The Book

If the tool being used continues to be misused, at some point you should question the design of the tool...unless it makes you MILLIONS OF DOLLARS!!!-> Get The Book

To be a good Scrums Manager you need both COMMAND and CONTROL. To demonstrate this, find an independent team with its own unique culture, then INVADE it! You'll show the whole world what kind of leader you really are, and you'll also find out who will actually stand up to you when push comes to shove!-> Get The Book

It's important to get the team together every couple of weeks and blow off steam by rehashing all the same problems that won't get fixed!-> Get The Book

Helping teams become more Agile seeming is an amazing local optimization! It certainly allows you to claim SUCCESS even though the company may only SUCK LESS!-> Get The Book

Agile is all about WINNING! Every company that has "gone agile" has become #1 in their industry! We SWEAR!-> Get The Book

Lean & Kanban

Let's be honest - with most work, it doesn't really matter if it gets done. But...there's still good money to be made not solving any significant problems!-> Get The Book

Technology & DevOps

Learning to program can bring real joy! And many business leaders need to suck that joy to fuel their egos and profit margins!-> Get The Book

DevOps sounds sooo much cooler than "Release Team", but actually change how things work? Nah. Too much risk!-> Get The Book

Being able to infer you're aligned with great research is always helpful. But it's such a timesaver to focus on one myopic aspect of it.-> Get The Book

Look, houses aren't getting any cheaper. And if anyone can maintain your codebase you're more easily replaceable! The examples in this guide guarantee a minimum of 30 years of employment!-> Get The Book

The only way to find out how truly legitimate your teams are, is to keep asking them for things. The more frequent and less related the more you'll find out!-> Get The Book

Fuck your "bounded domains" and "independently testable" units! Let's go reimplement our existing architectural problems with new words!!!-> Get The Book

Testing

You get rewarded for the features you ship TODAY! It could take weeks or months for customers to find most bugs. You'll probably be promoted by then anyway!-> Get The Book

Project Management

Help people achieve Flow by helping them realize how replaceable they are! Projects get planned much more easily in the spreadsheets too!-> Get The Book

Fractionally allocating resources allows good managers to start ALL their projects AND avoid blame!-> Get The Book

Good Scrums Managers and Project Owners know that the key to success is making sure their resources know, in detail, what their job is and how to do it!-> Get The Book

Organizational Change

When the board demands Bigger Value for Shareholders Sooner from the Hierarchy (BVSSH) you need to install Agility...fast!-> Get The Book

It doesn't matter if the deadline was made up to create pressure to work harder. You missed it. Now, say you're sorry!-> Get The Book

You often need new words to make new changes - and even MORE often to make things seem like they are changing while really keeping them the same!-> Get The Book

Work-Life Balance

Sometimes you know the grass isn't greener - but maybe the view will be different in another pasture?-> Get The Book

Working in the office improves the efficiency of monitoring resources and asserting the importance of a Scrums Manager! Re-embrace the commute...and PANTS!-> Get The Book

Entrepreneurship

At the end of the day it's all about raising funds and getting acquired. A facade of meeting user needs is imperative to inflating the life time customer value of your products!-> Get The Book

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