Cody Hall

I’ve wanted to read a biography on Napoleon for a long time. Libby is the best for audiobooks!

So far, two things have stood out to me about him: he had a willingness to ask any question (no matter how dumb it seemed) in the process of learning, and he communicated frequently (sending an average of a few hundred letters per month for years on end).

This week, we launched a new strategy team at SonSet focused on mobilization – finding and recruiting staff members to join our team. The team will focus on generating new approaches to mobilization, prototyping and piloting these ideas within our team, and then rolling them out to the broader team at SonSet.

This book has been so helpful as we’ve been formulating this team’s approach. Rumelt highlights that a good strategy has a kernel at its core. This kernel is made up of three things:

Continuing in this fast-paced saga this week. Excellent writing on a remarkable man.

It has been fascinating to read of the cultural shift that occurred at 10 Downing Street (the residence of the British Prime Minister during the era) when Churchill replaced Chamberlain as Prime Minister. Churchill was energetic, demanding, and rigorous.

Here’s another great book I read this year as part of my development at SonSet Solutions. See last week’s post for an explanation of how SonSet invests in our people.

Fadell worked at Apple and was on the teams that designed the iPod and the iPhone. He later built Nest and sold it to Google. His book is full of hard-learned lessons about building incredible products, teams, and companies.

I love serving at SonSet Solutions for many reasons. One of them is that leadership cares about personal and professional development. They give latitude to our staff to grow in ways we see that we need to and allow us to use various means to achieve that growth. For me, reading is one of those ways.