The Boston Business Journal Executive Pursuits column featured thoughts from Larry Gennari, partner at Gennari Aronson. Larry shared highlights from some of the business books he has been reading as curator of the annual Authors + Innovators Business Ideas Festival.
Below is an excerpt from this article with a link to read the entire piece in the Boston Business Journal.
Executive Pursuits: Reading Makes You Smarter
by Larry Gennari
Ready or not, 2019 is here — and with it, at least according to most pundits and economists, comes the prospect of slower growth, more uncertainty, and continuing general anxiety about divided politics and our overall place in the world.
So, what should you do in this first quarter or for that matter throughout the entire year? No surprise, my advice for C-suite executives is to read, more thoughtfully and expansively, but also to write and reflect— all while putting down your phone – because our brains are changing and adapting as we become more dependent on digital technology.
Check out the new and incredibly entertaining book, written in the form of letters to us: “Reader Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World,” by Tufts professor and cognitive neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf.
If you think you don’t have time to read, remember that Warren Buffet credits many of his best business decisions to his habit of spending 80 percent of his time reading. So, if you, too, want to track business trends, you should read “AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley and the New World Order,” by Kai-Fu Lee, founder of Sinovation Ventures and former president of Google-China.
What about writing? Writing regularly and more deeply, whether for a blog or just for yourself and via every digital medium, is great practice and it’s critical for engaging communication. Just ask Aron Ain, CEO of Kronos and the author of the smart new book: “Inspired: How to Build an Organization where Everyone Loves to Work” and pay close attention to his chapter “Overcommunicate.”
You may think you already do plenty of reflecting, but if you read Hans Rosling’s timely and insightful book Factfulness, you’ll learn that most all of us process information through continually reinforced biases and pre-conceived notions of what must be true.
In short, 2019 will present some of the same challenges that we have seen before — but that doesn’t have to mean “more of the same” for you. A renewed focus on reading, writing and reflecting may be just what you need as you make your way through it.
Lawrence Gennari is a business lawyer, law professor, and chief curator for Authors & Innovators, an annual business book and ideas festival.
