Leadership Is Language

The title makes it seem like this book is about simply expanding your vocabulary, but it's really more than that. It's about changing the underlying ideas and methods of leadership by moving away from Industrial Age attitudes about who decides what and who builds what, and moving it toward a model where all employees have the ability and responsibility to make decisions. The new model is a generalization of Agile product development and thus it gets a bit hand-wavy in parts, but the basic ideas are compelling, and thoughtful examples are provided.

I was caught by the title and it proved to be correct. The book unveils deeply ingrained but incorrect patterns in our work language. It also shows better ways to deal with normal and extreme situations at work. The main example of this book is SS El Faro, a cargo ship lost at sea. The entire crew was lost too.