Continuous Improvement: Never Stop Learning

Image by Grammarly.com

At HNM we are big on continuous improvement. Our team focuses on development – daily. HNM Team Members are challenged to read at least one leadership book per year. Our CEO has a lending library in his office. Yes, old fashioned paper books. He’s not big on Kindle Books or iBooks (sorry Amazon and Apple). While I personally love them I can see his point – they wouldn’t work well with a lending library. We’d need multiple devices.

Keri Hulme (author of The Bone People) says, “You want to know about anybody? See what books they read, and how they’ve been read.” We couldn’t agree more. We love to read and share and encourage others to never stop learning. Here are a few of our favorite books and most valuable lessons.

Books:

• Reputation Rules by Daniel Diermeier
• Value to Action by Harry Kraemer
• Minority Business Success: Refocussing the American Dream by Leonard Greenhalgh and James Lowry
• Good to Great by Jim Collins
• Orbiting the Giant Hairball by Gordon MacKenzie
• The Last Word on Power by Tracy Goss
• Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin
• Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
• Managing with Aloha: Bringing Hawaii’s Universal Values to the Art of Business by Rosa Say (recommended by one of our key accounts)
• Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization by John Wooden

Lessons:

• Learn from your mistakes and from others. Life’s lessons will be repeated until they’re learned
• Listen and silent have the same letters. Learn to listen more than you speak
• Keep it moving – Some days you’re the pigeon and other days the statue
• “Put your best people in the biggest opportunities” -Jim Collins, Good to Great
• Know your Incoterms it will make the challenging world of freight easier
• Listen to others – You’re the last person to know when you smell

What is a valuable lesson you’ve learned? Please share….