Thread by @minethatdata

This thread outlines the books that have been influential in my work. The books frequently diverge outside of my profession, and that's a good thing.

This book is one of my favorites, from Super Bowl winning head coach Bill Walsh. He outlines every detail about running a football team, and no detail is too small. Everything he talks about applies to running a department, or a business.

This book is about the invention of an offensive system that is the polar opposite of what Bill Walsh created. It shows that there are many ways to be successful ... the roots of the system described here are run all across college (Mike Leach, Mississippi State, for instance).

In old-school catalog marketing, Don Libey perfected the concept of "RFM" (still used by folks today). This is the business version of the "West Coast Offense".

RFM and the analytics Mr. Libey created have their roots in a statistical methodology known as "Correspondence Analysis" ... though I'm confident Mr. Libey had no idea he was borrowing from this discipline.

RFM analysis leads to the requirement that you test different ideas ... A/B tests are common and popular in modern e-commerce. Those concepts were perfected nearly a hundred years earlier by Snedecor & Cochrane. This text is very old ... found it at a book sale at Iowa State.

You eventually learn that business is like nature ... things evolve and change. Predator/Prey models, interactions, chaos theory. All covered in my all-time favorite book.

Of course, you can only get so far by studying math. Eventually you have to understand people to be successful. What could possibly be better than studying the Peanuts comic strip to understand people?

Reading the comic strips is one thing. Reading how others interpret the comic strips is interesting as well. I read this whole book while sitting on a sunny beach in Kauai.

You can learn a lot about humans by playing poker. You have human behavior, bluffing (lying), and the chaos of probabilities that lead to unpredictable outcomes. This book is a recent gem.

Forty-five years ago, my love of statistics was born out of this book, which I still own.

If you like statistics and you like how business evolves, then you'll enjoy this book about the demography of industries. You're seeing the concepts in this book applied in real time today (Shopify vs. Amazon).

And finally, collaboration in the music industry applies directly to how retail is currently evolving, as well as how e-commerce is evolving. The story of "Yacht Rock" ... of Loggins & McDonald and their influence on music from 1976-1984 ... applies e-commerce today.

There are other books as well, but I have them on my Kindle.

The Book of Basketball by Bill Simmons.

Sprawlball by Kirk Goldsberry.

Iterating Grace by Anonymous (an all-time classic).

Swing Your Sword by Mike Leach.

The Only Rule is it Has to Work (Lindbergh & Miller).

Poking a Dead Frog by Mike Sacks.

The Art of Smart Football by Chris B. Brown.

The Essential Smart Football by Chris B. Brown.

God is Disappointed in You by Mark Russell

You undoubtedly have a dozen books or two-dozen books that you enjoy. Those books likely shaped your view of business. Think a bit this week about how those books interacted with each other to change how you do your work.