Bookshelf
What I'm reading
I read a lot, and I keep track of all of it. Some of it changes how I work; most of it just makes the world bigger. Here are a few that stuck — the full catalog lives at bookshelf.drost.us.
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How Clients Buy
Built from interviews with hundreds of actual buyers instead of from theory, which is why it's the rare business development book that survives contact with a real firm.
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The Snowball System
Makes the case that business development is a process you can learn, not a personality you either have or you don't. If you've ever heard a partner say “I'm just not a rainmaker,” hand them this.
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The 12 Week Year
One observation, well made: annual planning fails because twelve months is long enough to procrastinate for eleven of them. I've watched the shorter cadence change how teams operate.
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Competitive Strategy
Forty-plus years old and still the cleanest structural way to look at an industry. A lot of what gets sold as strategy today is a diluted version of what's already in here.
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The Coaching Habit
Seven questions, and the discipline to ask them instead of jumping straight to advice. Short enough to read twice, hard enough that most people still don't do it.
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Liminal Thinking
About noticing that your beliefs are constructions built on partial information. Useful in any room where two smart people are certain of opposite things.
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Dare to Lead
The vulnerability research translated into behaviors a leadership team can actually practice. The translation is the valuable part.
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Atomic Habits
Everyone has read it, which is a fair reason to be suspicious of it, and it's still right. Systems over goals, compounding over intensity.
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Sapiens
A reminder that most of what holds an organization together — money, firms, titles — are shared fictions we agreed to believe. Changed how I think about culture.
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Between the World and Me
Not a work book, and that's the point. Some of what I read is meant to make the world bigger rather than make me better at my job.
That's ten of about three hundred. The rest are at bookshelf.drost.us — catalogued by theme and author, with the threads between them mapped out.