Innovation. Correctness. Soundness.

Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.'s The Mythical Man Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition (1975, 1995) is a classic. It's a required text for software engineering classes, and a great book for a team to read together. Part of what makes the book so amazing is that most of what was written in 1975 remains true in 2004. Key concepts include:

• the importance of architecture and conceptual integrity (which rarely comes out of design-by-committee);
• the importance of documentation: "Only when one writes do the gaps appear and the inconsistencies protrude" (p. 111); and
• the importance of managing as if each day matters: "Day-by-day slippage is harder to recognize, harder to prevent, harder to make up" (p. 154).

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1990) is a wonderful read that truly reinforces the importance of building a learning organization. Csikszentmihalyi argues that we are happiest when we are challenged. He supports his argument with data gathered from human subjects, with excerpts from interviews, and with historical perspective. For example, he suggests, "philosophy and science were invented and flourished because thinking is pleasurable." This book is a pleasure to read, due to both quality writing and intriguing content.

Peter M. Senge's The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, provides an intriguing foundation for how organizations learn. Senge provides in-depth discussions of five disciplines of the learning organization: personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, team learning, and systems thinking. Senge writes, "Organizations learn only through individuals who learn. Individual learning does not guarantee organizational learning. But without it no organizational learning occurs" (p. 139).

He also observes that the organization can be an organization of three or three thousand. This is an important message. While few of us have the power to influence the learning culture in an organization of 3,000 people, most of us can find three like-minded individuals who are interested in being better learners, and who are interested in being part of a more vibrant organization.

Senge also talks about the differences between dialogue and discussion, two ways that teams converse. Dialogue is the free and creative exploration of complex issues. In discussion, different views are presented and defended. Senge suggests that most teams don't understand the difference, and don't know how to move between the two modes. Part of the beauty of book groups is that they set the ground for dialogue, for that creative exchange of ideas. And as Senge notes, teams that regularly dialogue develop a trust which carries over into discussion.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning (2004) provides an overview of the concepts presented in Csikszentmihalyi's classic Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1990). Good Business discusses flow in the context of the workplace. Good Business is about half the length of Flow, and consequently is a lighter, faster read. One of the most fascinating passages was Linus Pauling, Nobel Prize winner, discussing how he processed information acquired over the years vis-à-vis his general theory of the universe. (The reader may think, "I need a general theory of the universe to map my knowledge gathering against.") Overall, Good Business is not as rich as Flow, and does not seem as well written. The author seems more confident of, and more comfortable with, his target audience in Flow. However, Good Business is better written than many books, full of quality content, and is a good starting point for a book group.