A Spring Business Reading List For Mediators

I’ve got four business books on my reading pile for March. Here’s what I’m reading and why:

1. Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. After consuming the Heath brothers’ first endeavor, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, I’d read anything by them. They have a knack for taking big ideas and making them understandable in bite-sized chunks, and for bridging ideas and implementation. I’m hearing good things about Switch and since the center of a mediator’s universe is helping parties change the conflict they face, I know this one’s going to end up full of sticky notes for later reference.
2. Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith. This will be a re-read. The first time through was for the sheer pleasure of spending time with a game-changing book by two social media experts I highly respect. I’m using the book as one of the required texts in my spring term ADR marketing course for grad students in Lipscomb University’s Institute for Conflict Management, so the second read will be a careful digestion of the ideas and anticipation of helping ADR professionals bring them to life.
3. Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne. The idea behind Blue Ocean Strategy grabbed my attention because it meshes with what I believe about good marketing: Instead of hanging out in the bloody “red ocean” of rivals fighting over market share, companies should create “blue oceans” of uncontested market space ripe for growth.
4. Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs (The New Rules of Social Media) by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah. This one looks like an online marketing primer and, thumbing through it, I’m guessing it’ll be a good one to recommend to mediators new to social media and online marketing. Halligan and Shah make a similar case about outdated (“outbound”) marketing as I made in my book, so if you’ve read mine, this one looks to be a good follow-up.

                       

Tammy Lenski

Dr. Tammy Lenski helps individuals, pairs, teams, and audiences navigate disagreement better, address friction, and build alignment. Her current work centers on creating the conditions for robust collaboration and sound decisions while fostering resilient personal and professional relationships. Her conflict resolution podcast and blog, Disagree Better, are available at https://tammylenski.com/archives/… MORE >