• Drucker on cultural change (my blog). I explore a very heavily-quoted Drucker bit on changing culture that is actually a blatantly wrong misquote. Understanding what he was saying about how to successfully change culture is something that will save you a lot of pain. I took over from a CEO/founder at Etsy and realized much later that I had followed much of Drucker’s advice here.
• Andy Grove’s writing on centralization vs. decentralization in High Output Management is the best writing I’ve ever read on the subject. In Kindle, look at locations 1922-2088: “In the real world, of course, we look for a compromise between the two extremes. In fact, the search for the appropriate compromise has preoccupied managers for a long, long time. Alfred Sloan summed up decades of experience at General Motors by saying, ‘Good management rests on a reconciliation of centralization and decentralization.’ Or, we might say, on a balancing act to get the best combination of responsiveness and leverage.”
• Collaboration without burnout (HBR, July-August 2018). Discusses concept of “collaborative overload” and how to manage it in your life and organization.
• Organizational Blueprints for Success in High-Tech Start-Ups (2002). This one is really fascinating and answers the question: how do founders’ initial blueprints on an organization impact long-term culture and company success, even after they have left?