Recommended Books I Read in 2025

 

Here are some of my favorite books that I read in the past year.  The reading list certainly is eclectic, but I learned a great deal from each of them.  My suggestion: put your phone down, find a comfortable quiet spot, pick up a book, and enjoy! 

Netflix, Warner, and Vertical Integration

News broke this morning that Paramount, led by David Ellison, has made a hostile takeover bid for Warner.  Paramount has made this move after Netflix announced it had agreed to purchase Warner (including HBO) for $72 billion.  Investors did not react well initially to the Netflix deal.   The stock price dropped upon the acquisition announcement (as often occurs for the acquiring firm when mergers are announced).  

In this post, I'm not providing an overall evaluation of the deal.  However, I would like to focus on one facet of the potential acquisition that will be challenging for Netflix.   For years now, Netflix has been a vertically integrated entertainment company.  In other words, they have created content in their studios and distributed that content on their own streaming platform.  However, they have not distributed content on other platforms.  It has been a closed system.  Now, they are acquiring Warner.  That studio produces content for many different distribution outlets, not just HBO Max.  The question becomes:  What will other content buyers think when Netflix becomes the owner of Warner?  Might they wonder why Netflix would be willing to put some content up for sale/distribution on other platforms?  Might they think: If the content is so good, why not stream it on Netflix?  Will they ponder: Are we getting access to lesser quality shows that Netflix does not want to stream on its own platforms?   

Herein lies a key challenge with vertical integration.  You may find yourself competing with your customers (Netflix competes with other media distribution outlets such as other streaming platforms, cable networks, broadcast networks, etc.).  When you compete with your customers, it creates potential conflicts of interest.  Making the Warner acquisition a success will require navigating these challenging relationships.  Others in the entertainment business do it, but some have found it very difficult at times.  Netflix does not have much experience with this type of arrangement to this point.  

Of course, you might argue that they could avoid this problem if they simply distribute all Warner content on their own platforms (Netflix and HBO Max).  However, you then have to ask: Did they have to spend $72 billion on an acquisition to gain access to that valuable content?  Perhaps, but you do have to apply the ownership test.  In other words, would some other organizational arrangement have accomplished similar goals without the hefty price tag?

Are Others Pretending to Listen to You?

We have been taught that active listening is key to effective communication and collaboration.  What, though, constitutes the most effective form of active listening?  Suppose that someone is making eye contact, affirming your statements with a few simple nods, and/or uttering "mm-hmm" after a key point or two.  Are they listening closely?  Or are they pretending to listen?   

It turns out that we are not always very good at discerning whether another party is listening closely or feigning attentiveness.   UCLA's Anderson Review recently spotlighted the research of Professor Hanne Collins and her colleagues, writing:  

A burgeoning area of study, with papers co-authored by UCLA Anderson’s Hanne K. Collins, is establishing that speakers who feel heard often are not; that when the spoken-to feign attentiveness, it’s highly effective at misleading a speaker; and that a more active listening mode — volleying back a bit of what you’ve heard, explicitly stating a desire to engage, especially on topics of a sensitive nature – is the path to a more effective sort of conversing.

Collins suggests that there are two forms of active listening.  In the simpler form, it involves non-verbal cues intended to suggest that you are paying close attention. In another form, you are engaging with the other party in a much more conversational form.  This latter form of active listening is much more effective, and it signals clearly that you are in no way feigning attentiveness.  Collins focuses on three types of interaction:

• Paraphrasing: “Let me make sure I have this right. What happened at school today was…”
• Conversational callbacks: “As you mentioned in your email last week, your team needs more support to complete this project on time.”
• Follow-up questions: “I hear that you’re asking me to do more around the house. What specifically would help?”

For more on how to have an effective dialogue that includes a healthy dose of active listening, I highly recommend Charles Duhigg's book, Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection. 

Testing Your Assumptions

You've used AI and/or Excel to build a beautiful model that examines the ROI of a new venture, project, or initiative.  The result? A strong case for investment, because the ROI is quite good.  You are ready to make your case to senior executives and/or investors.  How can you stress test your model?  The most important thing you can do is to test your assumptions. After all, garbage in, garbage out. If you build a model based on false assumptions, you are in big trouble.  Of course, confirmation bias afflicts many of us as we make decisions. We may be picking and choosing assumptions to deliver a rosy picture, rather than making more realistic presumptions about the future.  

How do we decide which assumptions warrant the most attention and should be tested vigorously?  Jon Fjeld was a long-time tech industry executive, and he now teaches at Duke's Fuqua School of Business.  He has a simple method for determining which assumptions need to be scrutinized first.  He argues that three factors are critical:

1. Severity:  How big is the impact on the project if the assumption is not true?

2. Probability: How likely is it that the assumption is not true?

3. Cost:  How expensive and time consuming is it to test the assumption?

Fjeld uses these three factors to create a simple ratio that can be used to rank your assumptions.  His equation is: (Severity x Probability)/Cost.   The higher the ratio, the more important it is that your prioritize the testing and validation of that assumption.  While we don't actually have a clear way to quantify these three factors, the concept of this ratio makes good sense.  By thinking about these three factors, and their relationship to one another, we can do a better job of deciding how we want to test, experiment, and prototype before making a big bet.  

Educating Students More Effectively, Preparing Them for the Workforce

Source: https://theglobalscholars.com/

Did you use a laptop to take notes in class during school?  Do your children use laptops during class to take notes?  University of Wharton Professor Adam Grant points us to a recent meta-analysis published in the Educational Psychology Review by Abraham Flanigan and his co-authors.  The results are crystal clear.  Grant summarizes the key findings: 

24 experiments: Students learn more and get better grades after taking notes by hand than typing. It's not just because they're less distracted—writing enables deeper processing and more images. The pen is mightier than the keyboard.

Perhaps all those schools requiring students to spend a big chunk of their day on Chromebooks should rethink their pedagogical approach.  As more and more companies complain about the skills and capabilities of entry-level employees, we need to rethink how we teach and how students learn.  Yes, we need to enable young people to use technology productively.  We can't go back to the stone ages.  However, we cannot just blame the phones and social media for the challenges that learners face these days (though banning phones in schools is an excellent idea).  We have to ask ourselves whether we have contributed to the challenges learners face by shifting so much teaching and learning from paper and pencil to the Chromebook (or other devices).  

Reviewing the Performance Reviews

Do you write effective performance reviews for your team members?  Have you received a performance review that you considered especially constructive and useful?  Stephanie Mehta has an interesting article about performance reviews in Fast Company this week.  She focuses on the effort by Ironclad CEO Dan Springer to improve the way his managers evaluate employees.   Mehta writes,

The CEO then read one written midyear review from every frontline manager—about 80 in total. He says about 20% were outstanding. Another 60% were solid—clear, metrics-driven, with specific examples. But roughly 20% missed the mark. Some featured long narratives that showed care for the employee but lacked actionable guidance. Others were short and vague. Springer tapped these managers for further training on how to give effective feedback. “We really did try to make it fun and not boring,” he says.

I admire the commitment to providing an in-depth examination of how these reviews are written and then following up with training.  Many managers receive very little education in how to write an effective review.  They are promoted to lead a team and then asked to take on this important task without a great deal of guidance and support.  Providing useful feedback is an art and a science.  Educating leaders about the science of providing constructive feedback is essential. For example, research suggests that providing forward-looking advice is more effective than traditional forms of feedback.  Giving them chances to practice is key to helping them master the art of reviewing their team members' performance.  

How Quickly Should a Leader Respond to Feedback?

Suppose that you a leader receives feedback, perhaps through a 360 degree evaluation.  Should leaders respond immediately to this feedback and change their behavior?  Perhaps not.  A new study suggests that moving too quickly to adapt in light of constructive feedback may be detrimental to a leader's reputation and effectiveness. Stanford Leadership Insights reports on the findings from an interesting new study by Danbee Chon, Ovul Sezer, and Francis Flynn: 

While past research — and conventional wisdom — suggests that leaders should respond promptly to employee feedback to avoid seeming dismissive, the researchers demonstrated through a series of studies that people don’t necessarily trust rapid changes in their leaders’ behavior, especially when they consider those changes to be difficult. Instead, they may regard sudden shifts as inauthentic, betraying a lack of fidelity between a person’s actions and their genuine thoughts and feelings.

What's the implication for leaders?  Is it simply to move slowly?  Not necessarily. The research suggests that leaders should carefully explain to their employees the consideration and effort that they put into a behavioral or policy change.  They should explain how they considered the feedback, why they chose to adapt given the critique from employees, and very importantly, how hard it was to alter their behavior.  Showing that it was not a kneejerk reaction meant to placate others is critical in these situations.