Traction Heroes – Details, episodes & analysis

Is your business in service to the bottom line or something higher? Whichever you pick will influence the organization's culture.

Show notes:

• Tim O’Reilly in a Nutshell by Tim O’Reilly
• Rosenfeld Media
• Shai Agassi
• OODA loop
• Thinking In Bets by Annie Duke
• The Art of Action by Stephen Bungay
• Makers and Takers by Rana Foroohar

How do you get useful information from people when the very act of asking might compromise the answer? Harry offers insights from a surprising source.

Show notes:

• Confidential by John Nolan
• Climbing the Ladder of Business Intelligence by James E. Cates, Sam S. Gill, and Natalie Zeituny 
• Precision questioning
• EnlivenWork

Jorge and Harry discuss how to proactively shift your mental models to get unstuck.

• Framers by Kenneth Cukier, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, and Francis de Véricourt
• Breakneck by Dan Wang
• Precision questioning
• Iceberg model

Jorge and Harry discuss a classic book about how to avoid getting in your own way through overthinking.

Show notes:

• The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey
• Stick (Apple TV show)
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
• Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel
• Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
• Esther Dyson

Harry and Jorge discuss the implications of John Boyd's work beyond its original military context.

Show notes:

• The Mind of War: John Boyd and American Security by Grant Hammond 
• John Boyd
• OODA loop
• Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War by Robert Coram
• Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd by Francis P.B. Osinga
• Hoyt Ng
• Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths
• How Big Things Get Done by Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner

Jorge and Harry discuss a book focused on using AI to lead better — and has underpinnings that align with the show's themes.

Show notes:

• More Human by Rasmus Hougaard and Jacqueline Carter
• The Mind of the Leader by Rasmus Hougaard and Jacqueline Carter
• The Glass Cage by Nicholas Carr

Harry reads a passage from a book by Robert Pirsig that raises questions about what authentic effort looks like — and the traps inherent in its trappings.

• On Quality by Robert Pirsig
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
• Lila by Robert Pirsig
• Traction Heroes Ep. 11: Gall’s Law
• Atomic Habits by James Clear

Harry gives Jorge advice on how to focus on strategically important things.

Show notes:

• The ONE Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan
• unfinishe_ – Jorge's new consultancy with Greg Petroff
• The Power of a Positive No by William Ury
• The Harry Max Boot-up Protocol (How to get going in the morning) by Christina Wodtke
• Essentialism by Greg McKeown
• Impro by Keith Johnstone

Harry explains a framework for learning and change that originated in the field of NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming) — just in time for the launch of Jorge's new consultancy.

Show notes:

• unfinishe_ – Jorge Arango and Greg Petroff’s strategic AI consultancy
• Sam and Jony introduce io
• Tools for Dreamers by Robert B. Dilts, Todd Epstein, and Robert W. Dilts
• Neuro-linguistic programming
• Awaken the Giant Within by Anthony Robbins
• General semantics

On the folly of designing complex systems in one go, from the top down.

Show notes:

• Traction Heroes ep. 6: Chesterton's Fence
• Traction Heroes ep. 2: Unprecedented
• The Design Squiggle
• Systemantics by John Gall
• A New Kind of Science by Stephen Wolfram
• Wardley map