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The Manager's Path by Camille Fournier A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change

- March 04, 2026

What's it about? The Manager’s Path (2017) serves as a practical career guide for technology professionals transitioning from individual contributor roles to management positions, from mentoring and tech lead positions all the way to senior executive leadership. It addresses the unique challenges of tech, where management itself is a technical discipline, providing actionable advice and frameworks for handling the obstacles that arise at each stage of a manager’s development. You’ve been coding for years, solving complex technical problems, and suddenly someone asks you to mentor a new hire. Or maybe you’re already a manager, buried under the weight of one-on-ones, performance reviews, and the nagging sense that you’re making it all up as you go. The truth is, most engineers stumble into management with zero training, expected to figure out on their own how to turn individual contributors into high-performing teams while somehow staying technical enough to earn respect. The path...

Assumption-Based Planning by James A. Dewar A Tool for Reducing Avoidable Surprises

- March 02, 2026

What's it about? Assumption-Based Planning (2002) offers a different way to think about strategy. Instead of trying to predict what the future holds, it gives you a method for finding the weak points in any plan – the silent beliefs that, if they turn out to be wrong, bring everything down. You'll walk away with practical tools for stress-testing your goals and making them sturdy enough to survive surprise. All of us want certainty. So, when we plan, we often draw a line from where we are now to where we want to be, and we fill that line with milestones that feel solid and real. There’s comfort in picturing the finished project after all – the thriving business, the goal achieved. But somewhere in the back of your mind, there’s usually a flicker of unease. A quiet awareness that spreadsheets don't account for chaos. The confidence we feel might just be a story we tell ourselves to avoid staring into the unknown. This lesson will strip away that story. You’ll look beneath...

Be Yourself at Work by Claude Silver Show Up, Stand Out, and Lead from the Heart

- February 25, 2026

What's it about? Be Yourself at Work (2025) demonstrates how authenticity becomes a strategic advantage in modern workplaces. It tackles the burnout that stems from endless performance and pretense, revealing how genuine self-expression actually drives connection, innovation, and meaningful results. It also provides you with actionable strategies for building inclusive teams where people belong and feel genuinely valued. At the age of 19, Claude Silver found herself struggling up an 11,000-foot incline in the Rocky Mountains, crying hard. Her Outward Bound instructor spotted her and asked what was going on in her head. Silver admitted she was singing a Nine Inch Nails lyric: “Head like a hole, black as your soul, I’d rather die than give you control.” The instructor told her to get another song into her head. That moment changed everything. Silver realized that even when circumstances felt beyond her control, she could choose the internal soundtrack guiding her thoughts. She lea...

Sticking Points by Haydn Shaw How to Get 5 Generations Working Together

- February 25, 2026

What's it about? Sticking Points (2013) explores what happens when up to five generations work side by side. It shows how shared goals at work are often undermined by everyday misunderstandings rooted in different generational experiences, habits, and expectations. The central message is practical and optimistic: these tensions are normal, manageable, and solvable when we learn how to work with differences instead of fighting them. You've probably been in this meeting. Someone's checking their phone. Someone else looks annoyed. One person wants to talk it through. Another just wants the follow-up email. Everyone leaves irritated. This kind of friction shows up everywhere at work: it’s present in debates about remote work, feedback styles, meeting length, dress codes, loyalty, and technology. It can feel personal, even when it’s not. But this isn't a case of the devil being in the details. The real driver is something much bigger—and much newer. For the first time, w...

Root Cause Analysis by Matthew A. Barsalou A Step-By-Step Guide to Using the Right Tool at the Right Time

- February 23, 2026

What's it about? Root Cause Analysis (2014) explains how to investigate quality problems systematically using empirical evidence and structured methods rather than intuition or blame. It introduces the theoretical foundations of root cause analysis and then shows how to apply cycles of plan–do–check–act together with a range of quality tools to identify underlying causes of failures in manufacturing and service environments. Things rarely go wrong at a convenient moment. A product fails at a customer site, a service grinds to a halt, a complaint lands on your desk, and suddenly everyone is under pressure to “fix it fast.” In the rush, it’s tempting to blame the nearest suspect, patch the symptom, and move on. The problem is that the same issue often comes back wearing a slightly different mask, and each repeat costs more money, time, and trust than the last one. Root cause analysis offers a different way of responding. Instead of asking "Who messed up?", it asks "...