Association Executive Book Shelf: A Look Back at 2018

By Raphael Badagliacca

Looking back at the year, the 2018 reviews confirm the value of reading for association leaders - or anyone, for that matter. Books slow things down. They help you master the vanishing art of listening - to a single voice. Then, almost magically, the knowledge you accumulate transforms into a conversation among the books you’ve read that you’ve earned the privilege to overhear.

This is especially true when you read with a purpose – in this case, to learn now you can better lead your organization.

Like all collections of wisdom, this year's harvest is made up of cautions, clarifications, and directions towards a more fulfilling future.

The authors want us to be cautious about the internet and technology in general. The Darkening Web alerts us to the forces that want what we value – our data – how compromising us and our organizations is a veritable worldwide economic enterprise, and how to protect ourselves. Through a medical information lens, Hype tells us to how to evaluate data coming our way in all formats, and always to consider the source. Hello World explains the pervasiveness of algorithms, urging the combination of human plus technological elements in matters that control our lives. "Don’t leave the human out." 21 Lessons for the 21st Century makes us aware of the distinction between intelligence and consciousness, going deep on algorithms, artificial intelligence and big data, and making it clear that the future will be controlled by who owns the data.

Meltdown attributes breakdowns in our system to their complexity and interconnectedness, largely the result of computerization and the possibilities inherent in the ability to handle ever increasing amounts of data. Truth Machine gives us a picture of a transformative future full of greater transparency if blockchain technology fulfills its promise – also a data story.

"Disruption" was a popular word in 2018. Digital Renaissance takes an encyclopedic look at the transformation of popular culture – music, movies, television, books – and its economic consequences, because of, you guessed it, data. Frenemies reminds us that advertising fuels the internet and that advertising decisions in the modern age are not primarily driven by creativity, as they may have been in the days of Don Draper and Mad Men, but by the data plan. In the 20th anniversary edition of Amusing Ourselves to Death, an introduction written by the author’s son shows us just how prescient his father had been to predict that our devotion to looking at the world through a small screen would usher in the Republic of Entertainment where we now live. And that introduction was written ten years ago. I just happened to read it last year. It was about a different small screen – television. Now that the screens are smaller in size but have a much bigger place in our lives, its conclusions are so much more accurate.

Since right action always requires right thinking first, several books strived to improve our perspective. Why Dinosaurs Matter takes the long view of history and puts us in our place as a species. I love this sentence from its pages, "A fossil without a story is just a rock." The end of the dinosaurs is re-imagined, but even more dramatic and cautionary are the final pages which urge us as a species not to assume the role of the meteor this time around. The Inner Life of Animals is all about perspective and understanding the other, whether four-legged or two-legged. Tailspin traces developments of the last 50 years mostly in the legal and financial sectors that have brought Americans to where we find ourselves, giving us perspective, with prescriptions for improvement and change. Factfulness articulates ten reasons why we get things wrong, improving the perspective of our worldviews. The Order of Time, a scientific and poetic exploration of something we all feel, but none of us really knows what it is – time – puts everything in perspective for anyone intent upon knowing the one thing that informs everything before taking the next step – that everything is always changing. Scale is an in-depth exploration of the universal laws in many contexts of what we think about when we look at our organizations – growth.

Everybody Writes appeals to me because it’s true and because writing is a process of discovery for everyone who does it. The Speed of Trust tells us that nothing happens without trust, giving the association leader a blueprint for managing relationships with staff, constituents, and the society at large. Readers may conclude that at this point in history the association is the organization best suited to mediate between polarized views, bringing things together through transparency and trust.

The crowning book reviewed this year, though, is Applied Minds which tells us why we are all engineers, urging us all to become "engineers of the success of our organizations" and "engineer the success of our personal lives."