Six Business Books That Can Make Academics More Productive
Most academics receive little training in the fundamentals of business and work-life integration. Academics are trained to work on the edges of their discipline to make an impact. Incorporating concepts popularized in several business books can increase your productivity and provide a rich academic life.
I’ve found that implementing many strategies from business books has assisted me in my academic career, from grad school to associate professor at the University of Minnesota. David Allen’s Getting Things Done instilled in me the importance of the weekly review and the two-minute rule. I learned how to implement the important/urgent matrix of task management from Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
Tenured faculty in the natural sciences run lab groups with teams of grad students, post-docs, and staff. They often act more like administrators than the free-thinking scientists they trained to become. Many faculty are “intrapreneurs” within their own university, establishing new research groups and bringing funds to the institution.
Graduate students juggle research, coursework, and teaching assistantships, among other duties. They take advanced courses in their field of study and may spend over five years completing their dissertation.
While many books you come across in the business section may seem like self-help or even laughable in their statements (Nine proven strategies to land more clients!), there are many hidden gems. The following books have not been largely adopted outside of the business world, but any academic from graduate student to tenured professor can incorporate their insights into their daily work.
Traction by Geno Wickham
Best for: Assistant professors with a team of grad students and researchers
Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business (2012) lays out the Entrepreneurial Operating System, concepts and tools that allow business owners to set and meet goals for their business. It focuses on six core components: your vision, data, process, ration, issues, and people.
The author mentions the Traction system is most effective for small to medium-sized businesses with three to 1,700 people. The process will benefit early career researchers and assistant professors that have a long term vision and require a team of people to get them there.
I particularly enjoyed how the book prompted me to think critically about the core values and focus of my work. At a more tactical level, the book outlines how you can make plans for one, three, and ten years into the future, with specific measurable goals listed for each.
The book uses dollar amounts to reflect goals, but I’ve found that measurables can be adapted to include the number of grants you want to write, how many graduate students you want to advise, and how many words you want to write for your manuscripts.
One of the most helpful tactics I’ve taken from the book is outlining your Rocks. Rocks are three to seven specific initiatives identified for you and your team. While the book’s template suggests Rocks be written every quarter, in the academic world this translates well to Rocks for the fall semester, spring semester, and summer.
The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber
Best for: Assistant and associate professors that want to grow their lab group
The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It (2004) centers on why small businesses fail. I gave it two stars out of five on Goodreads (I thought it could have been about half the length), but it has great insights into the roles of a business owner. This translates well to the role of a faculty member.
For the academic-minded I will rephrase a key phrase from the book: “If your lab group depends on you, you don’t have a lab group, you have a job.” The book describes a process for creating systems to have in place to help grow your team while not burning out in the process.
Academics are entrepreneurs. But many of us spend only 10% of our time asking entrepreneurial “I wonder…” type questions. Academics also need to be managers which takes about 20% of our time. We need to run the day-to-day operations and keep people employed, address conflicts in our classes and lab groups, and hire and onboard new graduate students and employees.
But the bulk of our time (70% of it) is spent on being a technician, or already on the tasks that got us to be hired as faculty in the first place. With the motto “If you want it done, I’ll do it myself”, this is a trap for many faculty, particularly ones that have trouble delegating tasks.
The greatest value in this book in convincing the reader to dedicate time to creating standard operating procedures. Create that advising statement to help prospective and new students understand how you and your lab group operates. Draft a protocols document for how to use that machine in your lab. Create shared Google Drive folders with key people and places to consult on different administrative tasks.
Deep Work by Cal Newport
Best for: Graduate students writing a thesis/dissertation
Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World (2016) provides practical tips and suggestions on living a deep life, with rigorous research to psychology and productivity studies. The suggestions are intuitively simple: block out time to get work done, save menial tasks for times when you’re less productive, and find ways to make better use of commutes.
What makes the book unique is how deep work is presented as competing with all of the distractions in everyday life: social media, email, and “pop-ins” from colleagues. Dedicating time to deep work will leave you fulfilled and make you better at your craft.
Graduate students often face challenges with making progress on a large task like writing their dissertation. In a remote working world, graduate students will benefit from the book’s insights on carving out deep work time amid the smartphone notifications and social media posts that creep into our workday.
The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christianson
Best for: Researchers exploring a new direction
The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (1997) is a classic book on disruptive technologies. The examples used in the book are dry, including case studies on hard disk drives and hydraulic products in the 1980s. But the lessons on when to work on your “bread and butter” academic research or switch to something new are insightful.
An example is when General Motors might decide to continue manufacturing trucks and SUVs, their long-standing profit-producing line of vehicles. Or, GM might decide to invest in Saturn, a small fuel-efficient car. Here lies the “Innovator’s Dilemma”: do you sell a well known product to current customers, or make a disruptive product that may not satisfy the growth needs of a large company?
Many academics face a point when they’re up for something new. This might be studying a new species, steering focus towards a new discipline, or learning a new set of methodologies to understand a phenomenon of interest. Many companies fail because they don’t see the disrupters coming; the impact of researchers may degrade over time if they don’t recognize the trends in their discipline.
A theme of the book is that there is no need to stick to the original business plan. Researchers seeking a new area of work need to adapt, and the best tests of new research directions is whether or not they’re funded.
168 Hours by Laura Vanderkam
Best for: Academics that struggle with work-life balance
168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think (2011) will get you mulling about what to do with the time you don’t spend working. It is an excellent read for those seeking to better understand how to integrate work and life.
Vanderkam outlines how you can quantify the 168 hours available every week. To get the most out of this book, get your spreadsheet out. Start labeling the tasks you complete throughout the day in 15- or 30-minute blocks. After doing this for a week or two, you will see how you’re allocating your time and you can adjust and prioritize as needed.
I tried Vanderkam’s suggestion in early 2019 and found it to be illuminating. I slept 7.4 hours per night, worked 40.8 hours per week, and commuted 10.3 hours per week.
It was also interesting to compare how different tasks took up similar amounts of time. For example, I exercised, cleaned up around the house, and watched TV about the same amount per week (5.5 hours each). What I took away from it is to seek ways to replace casual entertainment like watching TV with more reading from less demanding books and magazines.
The book is a practical read that will urge you to consider how you spend every hour of every day.
Post-Corona by Scott Galloway
Best for: University and college administrators
There is only one chapter on higher education in Post-Corona: From Crisis to Opportunity (2020), but it’s prescience on the academy should be taken seriously. Scott Galloway has made a lot of rumblings about the future of a university education, and the thoughts in this book summarize them excellently.
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated many changes that were already happening. Higher education is no different. Online learning is everywhere, it’s here to stay, and faculty need to do it better.
Colleges and universities may be faced with the decision to close or cut back programs and offerings significantly. “A year without the in-person experience, and the pricing power it brings, could drive 10–30% of universities out of existence”, says Galloway.
Galloway also has stark comments on university professors. The best known and productive faculty, the “ringers”, will continue to be well compensated. The idea of tenure should be reevaluated only to those faculty in the disciplines that need it, saving funds that can otherwise be spent reaching more students.
For a glimpse into what a post-pandemic academy might look like, the book outlines the challenges and roadblocks that higher education is facing.
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Matt Russell is an Associate Professor and Extension Specialist in the Department of Forest Resources.
