Take Aways

This is only a little bit related to the course.  Mainly it is just some suggestions of interesting reads, none of which are very recent, that you might peruse over the break or next semester for your own entertainment and edification.

• Bolman and Deal Part 2 - the second half of the book, which we didn't cover at all, is worth a read in its own.   It takes the four frames developed in the first half and recasts them in a leadership setting.  You might enjoy that. 
• We did not talk at all about executive pay, which really is a big topic.  Since the subject matter gets more than a mention by the a current Nobel Prize Winner in Economics, Bengt Holmstrom, I thought this might be interesting for you to look at.  Note in the second half of the piece the issue on whether the compensation must depend only on verifiable performance.  We did talk about that in considering the principal-agent model.  
• This piece called Is Giving the Secret to Getting Ahead? is from a few years ago and is by Adam Grant, a psychologist at Wharton (the business school at U Penn).  The giving he talks about is more random acts of kindness than it is where a quid pro quo is expected.  You might try some of your own random acts of kindness over the break - with your friends or your family.   See how they react, particularly whether you surprise them with your kindness.  A positive reaction (as opposed to a gift in return) may encourage you to try it again. 
• This piece called The Bell Curve is one I really like.  It by Atul Gawande, a MacArthur Genius Award winner and a prolific author (plus he is a very well known M.D.).  It is about what determines excellence when excellence can be measures, in this case in the treatment of cystic fibrosis.  It might interest you to to see excellence cast this way, as it probably defies many of the stereotypes you have for it.  
• This one called The Expert Mind mind and should appeal to those students in the class who have a chess interest (I know there are a few of you), and other students as well.  It is about how experts differ from novices in their thinking and what it takes to become expert.  Chess is used as means to illustrate the more general issues.