One Strategy (Amazon) is about building the organisation that built Windows 7. It’s a long book that covers a bunch of things. Most notably:
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Strategic alignment – how do you get a large organization all on the same page? (Everything else is really a sub-part of this).
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Planning, middle out. Leadership sets direction, but not details. Everyone is involved.
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Making hard choices – what goes in, what gets left out. You can’t make everyone happy and in part as a result of this criticism of the paths not taken is disproportionate.
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Communication. Much of the book is internal blog posts from that period.
My favourite thing about this book was the intwining of theory and the blog posts from the period. Fascinating – so many business books are all theory, or micro-case-studies. I loved the combination with what it looks like in practise, and the change over time.
The book inspired me to think about how I want my team aligned, but most of all, how can I be transparent in communicating that?