Effectiveness = Competency + knowledge + experience
What I know: The institutions and authors that have helped me deliver better work
Institutons
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Exeter
2006 - 2011: Degree and Masters in Politics and History with a focus on the Modern Middle East.
Gained an introduction to macroeconomics and international development, shaping a growing interest in how small and medium size organisations - the engines of increased living standards - thrive or die and what governments can do to support them.
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Imperial
2018 - 2020: MBA. Part-time alongside a consulting career meant zero weekends or holiday for two years, but was transformative in giving me real-world experience of entrepreneurship, and expanding my knowledge of organisational design and digital transformation.
Was fortunate to work closely with the Royal College of Art on Digital Service Design.
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Ideo U
2021: Three months course on Strategic Innovation set me up to re-shape the strategy proposition for Capgemini Invent UK, which we went on to iterate with key clients.
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London Business School
2023: Ten week course on Digital Marketing.
A mix of theory and learning-by-doing. Gave a great grounding in cutting edge modern digital marketing, as well as foundational skills in common digital tools - PPC using Google Ads. Lead gen through LinkedIn Sales Navigator etc.
Books & Papers
Reading Porter is what first got me interested in strategy consulting. Playing to Win is the book that set out the ideas that most closely aligns to how good strategy is made today, and Measure What Matters is the reminder that every plane needs effective flight controls
On strategy …
Lean Enterprise is my most highlighted, underlined and dog-eared book. It inspired me to learn and develop specific skills, value stream mapping for example, that have become central to a lot of the work I’ve delivered
On operating model …
Some of the best lessons learned from running Agile teams has been captured and shared by the authors of the top three works. It’d take years of scrum mastering to learn as much as they teach.
The bottom row are good skills-based books. I’ve restricted myself to three who’s ideas I’ve used successfully over and over again.
On digital delivery …
Unlike Google and Elon, I don’t believe you need to be able to code to be an effective product manager. You do, however, need to deeply understand key technical concepts that are foundational to delivering high-quality and secure software at-pace. These are the works that I’ve found most useful.
On technical patterns …
Podcasts
Things to listen to … Agile and DevOps
Ever wondered where all the ideas in Agile and DevOps came from? Gene Kim and Jon Willis set out what informed them when they wrote two of the most influential Agile and DevOps books of all time. A great series for anyone looking to really dig into the ingredients that baked the cake we call Agile
Things to listen to … Innovation, strategy and op model
Firstly, sorry about the image, no idea why that’s there but I can’t change it. Secondly, if you ever do an MBA you’ll get familiar with the ‘cases’. Long, detailed pages of information meticulously researched about specific companies, problems and how they overcame them. They’re great and insightful and incredibly hard work.
Masters of Scale interviews every leader of every major company you’ve ever heard of and talks about how they went from nothing to something, and the issues they hit along the way. It’s case study after case study with 0% fiction. This links to the first six. There are a lot more. Essential for any consultant who’s ever wondered why we don’t spend more time learning real-world lessons from inside real-world companies who’ve really been there and done it.