Book Club

Why we run them regularly and why you should too

About 4 years ago, after I joined riseup, I got introduced to the concept of book club. We picked a book - Good Strategy Bad Strategy - and read it together, chapter by chapter. Every two weeks a group of coworkers assembled and we spoke about the chapter and how it relates to our day-to-day.

Ever since book clubs have been part of my life. Book clubs have played a role in my personal and professional growth as well as helped me build a thinking and empowered team.

I think more people should try them and this post will try to explain why.

The value of reading together

In hindsight I can now see the strength of this simple tool, I’ll try to list some of the values:

• Teamwork
  Reading together is creating bonds and strengthens collaboration.
  It enables people from different parts of the company who have little day-to-day contact to connect over something.
  Discussing sensitive topics that are not strictly work-related with coworkers in a safe space builds empathy and connection between team members.

• Openness
  Many of the meetings are setting the right example for an open environment.
  All discussions we had are civil and people do listen. It is practicing the right type of discussion in a safe setting.
  In the book clubs I’ve run, team members shared personal things about themselves and got supported by the listeners.

• Creating a shared language
  After reading a book together, some ideas are shared. I can use ideas from “Good Strategy Bad Strategy” or other books in discussions to clarify my thought.

• Connect to the mission [if the CEO/Founder/Executive attends]
  Reading the book with a senior leader brings extra value.
  The leaders, when joining can talk about the things behind the company strategy and mission, they have a chance to elaborate on what made them build the company the way it is.
  They also have the rare opportunity to get deep and thoughtful challenges to the way they are leading.
  When I was in riseup, whenever the CEO joined the group we felt that we gain deeper understanding of how the company became what it is. It was also a good place to raise questions or concerns about things that happen in the company.
  Whenever I participate as a founder of a small company I feel some of the discussion is an opportunity to connect attendees to our mission.

How to do it?

The technical details are quite simple

• Pick a book you like and that you think resonates with your company stage and culture [I’ll share some books I recommend below]

• Share that you are opening a book club and see who wants to participate, I usually connect to it a poll [paper, audio, kindle] to make it more tangible and get responses.

• Buy the books and set a first meeting date. Our meetings are recurring two weeks apart

• Before every meeting - go over the chapter and summarize the main ideas. This should be a 5 minute summary of the chapter to set the context.

• Encourage participants to take notes before the meeting.

• Open the meeting with the summary.

• Let people discuss.

Some more notes to know

• Note for the moderator - try to hear everybody in the meeting. You can ask people who didn’t talk for their input.

• We tried to have some people join remotely and it doesn’t work as well, I think having people discuss face-to-face works better.

• Some / all of the books we read had some less interesting chapters, the moderator can skip those if they know the book.
  For example: in “Learned Optimism”, there are some parts about kids, education and sports that are less relevant to me so we just didn’t read and discuss them.

Another way to do it - the “Hevruta” model

Hevruta - the idea of learning together in small groups, usually pairs. It comes from the Jewish tradition I absolutely didn’t know until David, a co-worker in riseup, told me about it.

The concept is very similar to the group book club but done with only two people. It enables a deeper intimate discussion.

The concept of a club leader is no longer needed as both people read and discuss together.

David and I have been running this Hevruta for the last 3 years, we are now on our 4th book and not planning to stop anytime soon.
We pick books that are relevant to us. The discussion always brings us back to our day-to-day and how to apply what the books suggest.

I find myself speaking about ideas from those Hevrutas in many of my daily meetings, they sometimes help clarify my communication.

When I first hired people to the current company, I suggested reading a book together as a way to support their personal growth. Reading together allowed us to shape the environment at the same time we build the mastery.

For example:
I read “Deep Work” with a co-worker that felt the daily hustle and overbearing noise isn’t allowing for them to grow their mastery.
During the read, we would talk about the tension between what is expected from them and what is required for them to grow their mastery and deliver great work.

The cost of reading together

The commitment for whoever joins the book club is one hour every other week + the time to read the book. Usually reading the chapter takes 1-2 hours depending on the length of the chapter. I rarely saw people reading in the office, but I’m totally fine with that. I usually do read in the office and summarize which takes a little longer.

Some people won’t join and that is totally fine, I think book clubs must be optional but inclusive, everybody should be invited. I did find that the people who did join were usually the top performers in the org, not sure if it is anecdotal or the correlation exists there.

Recommended books

• “Good Strategy Bad Strategy” - a fundamental book that explains what goes into building strategy and strategic thinking.
  The concepts from it help create clarity in an otherwise ambiguous term.
  Reading it when deciding on the next product strategy, or next go-to-market strategy helps frame the discussion in a helpful way.

• “No rules rules“ - the essential culture book, its greatness is the extreme view and the simplicity of the explanations.
  The book is easy to disagree with, It is a good conversation starter. If you are familiar with “the keeper’s test” or “unlimited time off” you know what I mean.
  We read this book as a small company and it helped us talk about tricky issues in an open and collaborative way.

• “Learned optimism“ - my personal favorite, a psychology book that helped me be a better listener over the years.
  The simplicity with which different explanation styles are described and the impact of these styles on people’s actions was truly revolutionary for me.

• “Deep work“ - A great book about how hard it is to build meaningful things. This is another extreme book - like “No rules rules” that will cause people to disagree with it.

Summary

I love the ability to engage in correlation and establish a language as the base of the culture. I think book club is a great way to do it.

If you have recommended books - let me hear about them.

I’m available at odedblayer@gmail.com and always open to chat via https://calendly.com/od3d/talk-to-oded-30-minutes