Glenn Stovall's Public Notebook

Engineering Management Reading

My pipeline of engineering management related reading.

Bird's eye view

"Engineering management" is not a skill. Any book about management is by default a collection of essays about a wide variety of topics. They are best for getting a bird's eye view of the work. I prefer books about specific management skill sets.

  • Sarah Drasner, Engineering Management for the Rest of Us
  • Will Larson, An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management
  • Julie Zhuo, The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You

Currently reading

  • Various, Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High
  • Various, HBR's 10 Must Reads for New Managers

Frequent recommendations

  • Gary Keller, The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Extraordinary Results
  • Micheal Bungay Stanier, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever
  • Abby Covert, How to Make Sense of Any Mess: Information Architecture for Everybody (available free online)
  • Charles van Doren & Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book
  • Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking
  • Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
  • Thomas H. Davenport & Jinho Kim, Keeping Up with the Quants: Your Guide to Understanding and Using Analytics
  • Vaughn Tan, The Uncertainty Mindset: Innovation Insights from the Frontiers of Food
  • Ryan Singer, Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters (available free online)

Finished

  • Angela Duckworth, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
  • Patrick M. Lencioni, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable
  • Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
  • Donella H. Meadows, Diana Wright, Thinking in Systems
  • John Gall, The Systems Bible (FKA Systemantics)
  • Chet Richards, Certain to Win: The Strategy of John Boyd, Applied to Business
  • Carol S. Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
  • Chris Voss & Tahl Raz, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It
  • Jeff Lawson, Ask Your Developer: How to Harness the Power of Software Developers and Win in the 21st Century
  • Étienne Garbugli, Solving Product: Reveal Gaps, Ignite Growth, and Accelerate Any Tech Product with Customer Research
  • Richard Rumelt, Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters
  • Jocko Willink & Leif Babin, Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win
  • Marshall B. Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships
  • Robert B. Cialdini , Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
  • Cal Newport So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love
  • David Allen, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
  • Seth Godin, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

Tangential but useful

  • Joew Coulombe, Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys
  • Kathy Sierra, Badass: Making Users Awesome
  • Greg Mckeown, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
  • Alan Weiss, Value-Based Fees: How to Charge What You're Worth and Get What You Charge

Abandoned

  • Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power
  • Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness
  • Atul Gawande, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right

Want to Read

  • Peter Block, Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used
  • Gary A. Klein, Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions
  • Peter Drucker, The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker's Essential Writings on Management
  • Eric Nehrlich, You Have A Choice: Beyond Hard Work To Meaningful Impact
  • Stephen Bungay, The Art of Action: How Leaders Close the Gaps between Plans, Actions and Results
  • Abby Covert, Stuck? Diagrams Help
  • Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management
  • Eliyahu M. Goldratts, Goal: A Graphic Business Novel
  • Peter Drucker, The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done
  • Michele Hansen, Deploy Empathy: A Practical Guide to Interviewing Customers
  • Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford, The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win
  • Jim Vandehei, Mike Allen, Roy Schwartz, Smart Brevity: The Power of Saying More with Less
  • Reed Hastings, Erin Meyer, No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention
  • Hamilton Helmer, 7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy
  • Liz Wiseman, Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact
  • Liz Wiseman, Multipliers, Revised and Updated: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter
  • Joshua Seiden, Outcomes Over Output: Why customer behavior is the key metric for business success

Articles & Online Resources