1. 19 FROM 19
THE BEST BOOKS OF 2019

2.  A library of 400 books
 A blog
 A series of printed books
 One-page summaries
 One-sentence summaries
 Training programmes
 Motivational speeches
 A fertile source of new ideas

3. To be brilliant, you have to be
irrational – ideas that don’t
make sense have surprising
power.

4. • The world economy defies comprehension. A constantly
changing system of immense complexity, it offers over ten
billion distinct products, doubles in size every fifteen years,
and links 7 billion people. Nobody is in charge of it, and no
individual understands more than a fraction of what’s going
on.
• This book is effectively 50 short sections. 4 examples…
• The plough: because it enabled people to stay in one place
for the first time.
• The gramophone: along with all subsequent recording
formats, it enables artists to be experienced without going to
a concert in person.
• Barbed wire: enabled the ownership of land to be
designated and enforced, particularly with regard to
livestock.
• Seller feedback: has allowed many online services to
circumnavigate concerns about trust.
The author sets out 11 rules of alchemy:
1. The opposite of a good idea can also be a good idea.
2. Don’t design for average.
3. It doesn’t pay to be logical if everyone else is being logical.
4. The nature of our attention affects the nature of our
experience.
5. A flower is simply a weed with an advertising budget.
6. The problem with logic is that it kills off magic.
7. A good guess which stands up to observation is still science.
So is a lucky accident.
8. Test counterintuitive things only because no one else will.
9. Solving problems using rationality is like playing golf with only
one club.
10. Dare to be trivial.
11. If there were a logical answer, we would have found it.

5. Creativity is all around us and
creative vision exists wherever
people are.

6. • You can cure creative blindness by problem solving, clarity of thought,
seeing what others do not see, and removing complexity to make things as
simple as you can.
• A series of over 70 real life anecdotes dramatise how to spot creativity in
unusual places and then get practical with it. The thoughts include:
• Corkscrew thinkers: from the Churchill era when the UK had fewer resources
than the Germans – people who think differently.
• Turning the problem into an opportunity.
• Moving the problem up the list, so creating greater urgency.
• Two minuses can make a plus: when a dog rescue charity in the USA was
looking for people to clean and train dogs for free before rehoming them,
they used prisoners, who then benefitted themselves from newfound pride
and discipline.
• History can be invented: just like the ploughman’s lunch in 1960, by the Milk
Marketing Board, to encourage cheese consumption in pubs
• Technology may change, but people don’t: Steve Jobs launched the ipod as
“a thousand songs in your pocket” – an emotional claim, not a scientific one.
• Common sense beats brains every time.
• Show, don’t tell. Don’t believe me: look for yourself. Demonstrate product
benefits visually and dramatically. Done properly, reason is emotion.
• Real disruption is uncomfortable – you can’t do it easily and politely.
• Simple is harder than complicated.
• Put communications resource where it will make a difference. Don’t waste it
where it can’t. This is simple triage – another name for creativity.

7. It is
Brands can use agitation,
collisions, proximity,
spotlights and contributors to
ensure cultural velocity -
ideas that move fast through
culture fast to gain relevance
with consumers.

8. Cultural velocity is defined as an idea or brand message that moves through
culture at speed while remaining relevant and growing. It captures where a
brand is going – its movement and trajectory.
The book identifies five ways to generate cultural velocity:
1. Cultural Agitation: is all about controversy & challenging the status quo by
associating a brand with a polarizing issue. Brands who play it safe can
appeal weakly to many, but they are unlikely to appeal strongly to anyone. It’s
not enough to be plain vanilla anymore.
2. Cultural Collisions: is pairing two things that aren’t usually seen together -
things from seemingly opposing or different worlds.
3. Cultural Proximity: demonstrates hyper-local knowledge through data. This
allows brands to prove that they truly understand the people and subcultures
they are trying to reach.
4. Cultural Spotlights: is about understanding an existing cultural boundary
and extending it to encourage conversation. These tend to be less surprising
than agitation and collisions – lifting something to cultural attention. This leads
to valuable virality – making brands integral to the issue being put under the
spotlight.
5. Cultural Contributors: is providing open access to information, tools and
resources to encourage helpful cultural change.

9. EVERYTHING IS F*CKED
Our maddening urge always to
find happiness only serves to
make us unhappier, and too
much of a good thing (money,
entertainment and the internet)
can psychologically eat us
alive.
ems.

10. EVERYTHING IS F*CKED
• We are a culture in need of hope. The author’s definition of hope is a
motivation towards something perceived as valuable, sometimes described
as purpose or meaning.
• The opposite of happiness is not anger or sadness – it’s hopelessness, an
endless grey horizon of resignation and indifference.
• This is the Uncomfortable Truth of life: one day you and everyone you love
will die, and beyond a small group of people for a brief period of time, little of
what you say or do will ever matter.
• Hope narratives give our lives a sense of purpose, implying that there is
something better in the future. These are before/after stories.
• The paradox of progress is that the better things get, the more anxious and
desperate we seem to feel.
• To build and maintain hope, we need a sense of control (the feeling that we
can affect our fate), a belief in the value of something (worth striving for), and
a community (being part of a group trying to achieve something).
• Our Feeling Brain wins over our Thinking Brain every time. We are moved to
action only by emotion. (This is effectively the same as Kahneman’s System
1 and 2 theory).
• For every action there is an equal and opposite emotional reaction. This is
called equalization. Sadness is powerlessness to make up for a perceived
loss. Anger is the desire to equalise through force and aggression. Happiness
is liberation from pain. Guilt is feeling that you deserve some pain that never
arrived. Our self-worth is the sum of our emotions over time, and our identity
stays our identity until a new experience acts against it.

11. Most of the so-called facts that
people state about the world
are wrong – things are better
than you think.

12. 1. The Gap Instinct: when a story talks about gaps, things are rarely as polarized as
you might think. Beware comparisons of averages and extremes, and look for the
majority in the middle.
2. The Negativity Instinct: expect bad news because good news is not news, and
neither is gradual improvement. Things can be both better and bad. More news
does not equal more suffering.
3. The Straight Line Instinct: don’t assume straight lines. Just because something is
going up doesn’t mean it won’t come down.
4. The Fear Instinct: frightening things get our attention, but before panicking we
should calculate the risks. Risk = danger x exposure, so work out how dangerous
something is and what your exposure to it is.
5. The Size Instinct: recognise when a lonely number looks impressively large or
small. Get things in proportion and look for comparisons.
6. The Generalization Instinct: categories can be misleading when used in an
explanation. Look for differences within groups, and similarities across groups.
Beware of “the majority”, and of vivid examples.
7. The Destiny Instinct: many things appear to be constant just because the change
is happening slowly. Keep track of gradual improvements, update your
knowledge, and collect examples of cultural change.
8. The Single Perspective Instinct: get a toolbox, not a hammer. Test your ideas,
and don’t claim expertise beyond your field.
9. The Blame Instinct: recognise when a scapegoat is being used. Look for causes,
not villains. Look for systems, not heroes.
10. The Urgency Instinct: decisions are rarely urgent. Take small steps. Take a
breath. Insist on the data, beware fortune-tellers, and be wary of drastic action.

13. You can deliver effective
feedback and drive great
performance with three simple
steps.

14. • The book suggests a simple three-step model. For feedback to be acted on it
needs to be fair, focused and credible.
• To prepare a FairTalk Statement, you need to:
• Identify what matters: name it, refine it, check it (tell me why it matters)
• Check for accuracy: control your social, cognitive and organisational biases,
such as a tendency to give weight to things we personally value, and making
swift judgment based on just one opinion (tell me how I’m doing)
• Validate your opinion: collect information from others before sharing (tell me
what to do)
• Performance is affected by capability, characteristics and context. Feedback is
fair when it is tempered to take account of why performance is the way it is.
Then it’s easier to explain what needs to happen next.
• Capability: competencies, experiences, intelligence (what I bring to it)
• Characteristics: personality, drive, mindset/attitude (how I get it done)
• Context: culture, people, places (what made it hard or easy for me)
• All this adds up to observable performance.
• The reasons that managers don’t give feedback can be boiled down to:
• Nil: “I don’t” (lack of personal accountability)
• Skill: “I can’t” (don’t know how to, or lack experience)
• Will: “I won’t” (rational thinking with skewed beliefs: “I don’t have any answers,”
or rational thinking with bad leadership: “I don’t want to be the bad guy.”)

15. Hit makers create moments of
meaning by marrying new and
old - they are the architects of
familiar surprises.

16. Feeling (feel good)
Fluency (be recognisable)
• This is all about how things become popular and the hidden rules behind how it
happens.
• The Myth of Novelty refers to the idea that people are obsessed with new
things. In fact, they have an “aesthetic aha” when they hear or see a fresh
voice telling a familiar story (something new that opens a door into a feeling of
comfort or meaning).
• The Myth of Virality suggests that an idea that becomes popular quite suddenly
has ‘gone viral’ like a disease. In fact, it’s usually one or two large broadcast
events that do the job.
• Most consumers are both neophilic – curious to discover new things –and
deeply neophobic – afraid of anything that’s too new. The best hit makers are
gifted at creating moments of meaning by marrying new and old. So a hit is
new wine aged in old oak, or a stranger who somehow feels like a friend – a
familiar surprise.
• People like what they like, and they don’t want to change too much: “If you’ve
seen it before, it hasn’t killed you yet.”
• Raymond Loewy’s MAYA rule (Most advanced, yet acceptable) offers three
relevant lessons:
1. Audiences don’t know everything, but they know more than creators do.
2. To sell something familiar, make it surprising. To sell something surprising, make
it familiar.
3. People sometimes don’t know what they want until they already love it.

17. Much advertising planning avoids
the basic spadework of
establishing the true facts, uses
sloppy language and vague
objectives, and fails to learn from
historical data.

18. • This is a workbook produced by the Account Planning Group which
explains 66 ways to plan advertising incorrectly or screw it up.
• It covers setting objectives, product, price and place, brand and
communication, research and analysis, talking and thinking about strategy,
target audiences, budgets and media, creative work, and effectiveness and
evaluation. It is impossible to summarise such a book, but here are some
pieces of advice that stand out:
• Don’t define your competition too tightly and obsess over it.
• Brand loyalty is a vague concept that can’t really be measured. In the
loyalty myth, brands can succeed with a small number of intensely loyal
customers. This is appealing but false.
• Conversion is a myth. Think nudging instead.
• Beware the lure of price promotions. They are usually unprofitable and
damaging.
• Customers don’t have high interest in brands, and they certainly don’t want
relationships with them. Weak relationships with more people is the best
approach.
• Engagement is another myth – people don’t want to engage. Online figures
for large brands may look impressive, but they typically represent less than
2% of their user base.
• Not everything has to make perfect sense. The seemingly irrelevant can
work too.
• Differentiation doesn’t really work. Don’t confuse saying something
different with saying something in a different way. Brand segmentation
hardly exists, if at all. Aim to get more from all parts of the market. Go for
reach rather than frequency.

19. HOW TO LEAD SMART PEOPLE
You can lead teams of equals
with intelligence and
diplomacy.

20. HOW TO LEAD SMART PEOPLE
• To master leading smart people effectively, you need to look to
yourself (leading me), the team, and the organisation. It only
works when you combine all three components: me, team, and
organisation.
1. Leading me involves being assertive, authentic and resilient,
radiating energy, building trust, developing you for the future,
having emotional intelligence, and listening well. You also need to
be able to overcome the imposter syndrome (Any time now
they’ll discover I’m not up to the job), and juggling the roles of
leading, producing and managing.
2. Leading the team involves choosing when to step up and lead,
coaching, decision-making, delegating, and providing
empowerment and motivation. There is also a need to have
necessary conversations, resolve conflict, set clear objectives,
and ensure healthy team dynamics.
3. Leading the organisation involves developing the business,
dealing with change, promoting diversity and inclusiveness,
leading your boss as well as your equals, mentoring, networking,
and managing stakeholders – not to mention strategy and vision.
There’s a lot to do.

21. HUMBLE INQUIRY
People can be much more
effective by asking than by
telling.

22. HUMBLE INQUIRY
• Relationships are the key to good communication, which is vital to task
accomplishment; and humble inquiry, based on here-and-now humility, is the key to
good relationships.
• Too often in companies when we interact with people – especially those who report
to us – we simply tell them what we think they need to know. This shuts them
down. Instead we need humble inquiry.
• This is defined as “the fine art of drawing someone out, of asking questions to
which you do not know the answer, of building a relationship based on curiosity
and interest in the other person.”
• We must become better at asking and do less telling in a culture that overvalues
telling. In particular in the USA, task accomplishment is valued more than
relationship building. The culture of tell prevails, and asking questions is seen as a
sign of ignorance or weakness.
• But asking is actually a strength rather than a weakness because it provides a
better chance of figuring out what is going on before acting.
• There are three kinds of humility:
• 1. Basic: usually generated by societal norms, such as class or respect for elders.
• 2. Optional: feeling humble in the presence of those who have clearly achieved
more than us.
• 3. Here-and-now: how I feel when I am dependent on you. This is crucial to humble
inquiry. My status is inferior to yours at this precise moment because you know
something or can do something that I need in order to accomplish a task or goal.

23. Leadership is for everyone,
and you can learn it by making
effective decisions, building a
great team, and taking care of
yourself and others.

24. • Anyone who has people who depend on them is a leader, and we need more of
them from all walks of life.
• Top-down, hierarchical leadership doesn’t work any more so we need a new
way.
• The bullshit that surrounds the subject of leadership inhibits people from fulfilling
their potential and excludes people from believing that they too could lead. No
one is born a leader and there is no leadership type.
• Leadership is difficult but not complicated. It involves navigating a group of
people from a defined starting point in the present to a different and simply
defined state in the future. (see diagram)
• It is the art of getting stuff done. It is hill climbing, and it requires energy and
resilience.
• Leadership impact = (objectives + strategy + team + values + motivation) x
action. Nothing to the left of the x makes any difference if action = 0.
• Stay true to Colin Powell’s 40/70 rule: don’t take action if you have only enough
information to be 40% right, but don’t wait until you are 70% certain because
then you will have waited too long.
• Embrace the inevitability of error: the most wrong you can be is to not take
enough decisions.
• Culture is the most powerful and defining characteristic of most organisations,
but often has little in common with the ‘values’ found on the website.

25. It is completely possible to
understand those whose
behaviour baffles you by
looking at the four main types
of human behaviour.

26. • This is a summary of the four types of human behaviour as defined by the
colour coding system. This is often called DISA (dominance, inducement,
submission, analytical ability) or DISC (c = compliance).
Red: dominant (don’t get in their way)
Positive: strong-willed, independent, ambitious, determined, effective
Negative: pushy, strict, tough, hard
Yellow: inspiring (head in the clouds)
Positive: stimulating, enthusiastic, dramatic, outgoing
Negative: manipulative, hot-tempered, undisciplined, egotistic
Green: stable (change is difficult and may never happen)
Positive: supportive, respectful, obliging, reliable, pleasant
Negative: stubborn, uncertain, compliant, dependent, awkward
Blue: analytical (only perfection will do)
Positive: diligent, thoughtful, serious, persistent, demanding, methodical
Negative: critical, indecisive, narrow-minded, fastidious, moralizing
• Here’s an example to show their different behaviour. Someone discovers an oil
stain on the floor:
• Red: lambasts the person nearest and orders them to mop it up.
• Yellow: sees it, forgets it, is surprised when he slips on it two days later.
• Green: sees it, feels a bit of guilt because it poses a problem, does nothing.
• Blue: wonders “Why is there an oil spill?” and many other questions.
• Statistically, only about 5% of the population has just one colour that shows in
their behaviour. Around 80% have two, and the rest have three. No one has
four.

27. There are shortcuts to enable
you to become older than your
years.

28. • Wisdom does not come from living a long life full of rich experiences. It
can be learnt. Wisdom is not instead of logic – it is the operating system
of perception. It comes from paying greater attention to perception, the
edge effect, truth, certainty, arrogance, the power of possibilities,
contradiction, identity and contribution.
• Wisdom is a wide-angle lens that is more about perspective than detail.
Cleverness is a lens with a very sharp focus that understands technical
detail.
• Values and emotions can guide you through life without allowing them to
enslave you.
• The edge effect works in two ways. In the negative version you do not
take the next steps because it is too difficult. In the positive, you take the
next step because it is easy. Dealing with this depends on culture,
identifying it through awareness, working out the consequences, looking
at super-patterns – overriding models that permanently seek to alter
behaviour.
• The dividing line between confidence and arrogance is very fine but the
difference is great. Confidence and certainty make for strong decisions
and leadership. Arrogance is isolating and seeks no input – the ultimate
system sin.
• There are various types of truth: game truth, in which you set up the
game and follow the rules; experience, in which you check out whether
things are as you suppose; and belief, which changes your perceptions
so they reinforce the belief.

29. Leaders who adopt an infinite
mindset build stronger, more
innovative and inspiring
organisations - playing in an
infinite game with a finite mindset
doesn’t work.

30. • Finite games have clear rules, participants and beginnings and endings. The
Infinite Game does not – it never finishes. That’s what business is. You don’t win
your career or life, and you don’t beat the competition – it just carries on and on.
• Many businesses and business leaders get this all wrong by applying finite
thinking to infinite issues. “What’s best for me” is finite thinking. “What’s best for
us” is infinite thinking. Short-term thinking kills businesses.
• Sadly, finite-thinking leadership has become the norm. The average lifespan of a
Standard & Poor’s 500 company has dropped by over forty years since the
1950s (from 61 to 18 years old).
• Many executives now suffer from finite exhaustion – continually chasing goal
after (short-term) goal. For example, 70-90% of acquisitions are abysmal
failures.
• There are three factors to consider when deciding how to lead:
1. We don’t get to choose whether a particular game is finite or infinite.
2. We do get to choose whether or not we want to join the game.
3. Should we choose to join the game, we can choose whether we want to play with
a finite or infinite mindset.
• Assuming you want to adopt the preferable infinite mindset, you need 5
essential practices:
1. Advance a Just Cause
2. Build Trusting Teams
3. Study your Worthy Rivals
4. Prepare for Existential Flexibility
5. Demonstrate the Courage to Lead

31. Make new ideas practical and
useful, work with others in an
idea-hungry culture, and
marshal the forces to help
them win.

32. 1. Make new ideas useful. Innovation is all about practical creativity,
having insights, creating, improving, crafting and nurturing new ideas.
It’s also about making new ideas from old ones, reinventing what
already exists, and making new ideas easier to swallow.
2. Build a bigger brain. This means getting other people to help, doing
things collectively, and encouraging idea-hungry cultures, fighting off
idea zombies and sharing the rewards of creativity.
3. Win with new ideas. This involves helping new ideas to win so they
can truly be useful, competing with other ideas, and finding friends to
provide influence, resources and strategy to make them succeed.
• The true parents of innovation are necessity and curiosity. Before
invention there is insight, and there are three types:
• Problem insight: you are dissatisfied with something that needs
improving.
• Solution insight: you recognise a new approach that may prove
useful.
• Curiosity insight: driven by the need to discover, play and create
for its own sake.
• Innovation hurts. You need the right pain for the right gain.
• Most change comes from demand pain – what customers want
when they have experienced better.

33. There are 30 ways to fix your
work culture and fall in love
with your job again.

34. The book is divided into three sections: recharge, sync, and buzz.
• Recharge: performance-enhancing ways to make work less awful
1. Have a monk mode morning: block off time and think properly.
2. Go for a walking meeting: science shows they are more creative.
3. Celebrate headphones: people need flexibility to work as they like.
4. Eliminate hurry sickness: slower is better than doing it twice.
5. Shorten your work week: they are proven to be more productive.
6. Overthrow the mill owner who lives inside you: presenteeism doesn’t work.
• Sync: fixes to make teams closer
1. Move the kettle: people mix more readily over food and drink areas.
2. Suggest a tea break: or drinks to get the whole company together.
3. Halve your meetings: either their length or their number.
4. Create a social meeting
5. Laugh: it improves everything.
6. Energise inductions: first impressions are the most important.
• Buzz: secrets of energised teams
1. Frame work as a problem you are solving
2. Admit when you messed up: hot debriefs (immediate) are the best.
3. Keep teams lean: adding people to a late project makes it later.
4. Focus on the issue, not the people
5. Introduce a Hack Week
6. Ban phones from meetings
• For the full list, check the blog

35. Celebrating starts and finishes
is all very well, but we should
also discuss the messy
journey in between to improve
our approach.

36. • This is all about the messy bit after launch and before selling your
business, with lots of advice about what to do when there appears to be
no end in sight.
• To find your way, you must employ tactics to endure your own self-doubt
and the uncertainty and ambiguity that accompany every new venture.
• The middle isn’t pretty, but it is illuminating. It’s where you realise you’re
capable of more than you ever thought possible. So it’s time to start
talking about it. The basic cycle is start, endure, optimize, finish in the
final mile, then repeat if necessary. It’s not about the start and finish, it’s
about the journey in between. The author’s advice includes:
• The relative joy of creating follows a path like the diagram. Aim to make
each peak a little higher than the last one.
• Don’t celebrate fake wins at the expense of hard truths.
• Leave every conversation with energy.
• DYFJ: Do your f**king job. Don’t duck important decisions.
• Attempt a new perspective before you quit it.
• Prompt clarity with questions. There is power in brevity.
• Sometimes a reset is the only way forward.
• Playing the long game requires moves that don’t fit with traditional
measures of productivity.
• Diversity drives differentiation: speaking more than one language helps
people approach problems in multiple ways.
• If you avoid people who are polarizing, you avoid bold outcomes.

37. There are some surprisingly
simple truths behind achieving
extraordinary results.

38. • Focusing on your one thing can help you cut clutter, achieve better
results in less time, reduce stress, and overcome that overwhelmed
feeling.
• The critical question underpinning the philosophy of the book is:
What’s the one thing I can do such that by doing it everything else
will be easier or unnecessary?
• The big picture is your one big thing and the small focus (today) is
your one thing right now. Tasks should be big and specific. Big and
broad is too vague, and small things are too functional to make much
difference.
• There are six lies between you and success:
1. Everything matters equally. No it doesn’t. Equality is a lie.
2. Multitasking. It doesn’t work. Juggling is an illusion and interruptions
ruin all high quality work.
3. A disciplined life. We can have enough in short bursts, but we need to
turn discipline into habits that then come naturally. Research shows that
the disciplined repetition of something turns into a habit after 66 days.
4. Willpower is always on will-call. You can’t just turn willpower on
because it takes a lot of energy and has a limited battery life.
5. A balanced life. It’s a myth. We do our best work at the extremes.
6. Big is bad. Not true. Aiming big is better than doing small stuff.

39. You can’t be seen until you
learn to see, so to bring the
work you care about to the
people eager to see it, you
need to be fully engaged.

40. • This is a synopsis of everything the author knows about marketing,
essentially covering all the material in his seminar on the topic.
• Marketing in 5 steps:
1. Invent a thing worth making, with a story worth telling, and a contribution
worth talking about.
2. Design and build it in a way that a few people will benefit from and care
about.
3. Tell a story that matches the built-in narrative of that group.
4. Spread the word.
5. Show up regularly and consistently to lead and build confidence in the
change you seek, so as to earn permission to follow up and earn enrolment.
• People don’t want what you make - they want the way it will make them
feel. “People like us do things like this.”
• Set up your three-sentence marketing promise:
1. My product is for people who believe ________
2. I will focus on people who want ___________
3. I promise that engaging with what I make will help you get ________
• For people who want what you want (_____) and believe what you believe
(______), your choice of (______) is absolutely correct.

41. • Be inquisitive
• Make the time
• Understand the lines of argument
• Have a point of view
• Inform your work
• Enjoy the debate
• Ask Kevin to speak or train

42. More at: greatesthitsblog.com
Ask Kevin to speak or train: 07979 808770
kevinduncanexpertadvice@gmail.com
Twitter @kevinduncan