21 Read for 2021 - Change Community Hub

A good book, a great companion, a wise teacher, an uplifting afternoon, a long goodbye as the last page closes.

To kick off the year, some of our Hub members have shared their favourite books
and there's 21 fantastic reads for you to dig into to enrich your year.

7 Rules For Positive, Productive Change: Micro Shifts, Macro Results by Esther Derby

Change is difficult but essential--Esther Derby offers seven guidelines for change by attraction, an approach that draws people into the process so that instead of resisting change, they embrace it. Even if you don't have change management in your job description, your job involves change. Change is a given as modern organizations respond to market and technology advances, make improvements, and evolve practices to meet new challenges. This is not a simple process on any level.

Change Sings: A Children’s Anthem by Amanda Gorman

In this stirring, much-anticipated picture book by inaugural Youth Poet Laureate and activist Amanda Gorman, anything is possible when our voices join together. As a young girl leads a cast of characters on a musical journey, they learn that they have the power to make changes—big or small—in the world, in their communities, and in most importantly, in themselves.

Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity by David Whyte

Crossing the Unknown Sea is about reuniting the imagination with our day to day lives. It shows how poetry and practicality, far from being mutually exclusive, reinforce each other to give every aspect of our lives meaning and direction. For anyone who wants to deepen their connection to their life's work-or find out what their life's work is-this book can help navigate the way.

Dare to Lead by Brené Brown

In her #1 NYT bestsellers, Brene Brown taught us what it means to dare greatly, rise strong and brave the wilderness. Now, based on new research conducted with leaders, change makers and culture shifters, she's showing us how to put those ideas into practice so we can step up and lead.

Deep Listening: Impact Beyond Words by Oscar Trimboli

Over 55% of your day is spent listening; yet only 2% of us have been trained in how to listen. What is poor listening costing you? Or feel frustrated with unproductive discussions where the loudest in the room adds limited insight and drowns out everyone else? Do you rush from meeting to meeting, your head buried in the last conversation you had, without time to think of the next? We usually think of these situations as communication problems; that we have not spoken our needs correctly or clearly. Yet, conflict, chaos and confusion are the costs of not listening.

Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions by Guy Kawasaki

Guy Kawasaki is an entrepreneur's entrepreneur who gives reliable and entertaining advice on getting a business off the ground. His bestseller The Art of the Start is the essential reference book for starting any new enterprise. The Art of Enchantment is an update of Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People, in which Kawasaki asserts that the fundamental goal of influence is not to get your own way, but to bring about a change of heart in other people by working with and through them.

How Powerful We Are: Behind the scenes with one of Australia’s leading activists by Sally Rugg

Sally Rugg is one of Australia's most influential campaigners for social change. HOW POWERFUL WE ARE is her manifesto for championing what you believe is right. In these pages Sally will teach you some of the things she learnt on the marriage equality campaign: how to develop a strategy, how to frame your messages, how to get your campaign to the media, how to build community power.

Human Factor: Revolutionizing the Way We Live With Technology by Kim Vicente

Kim Vicente is a professor of human factors engineering at the University of Toronto and a consultant to NASA, Microsoft, Nortel Networks and many other organizations; he might also be described as a technological anthropologist. He spends his time in emergency rooms, airplane cockpits and nuclear power station control rooms -- as well as in kitchens, garages and bathrooms -- observing how people interact with technology.

In Defense of Troublemakers: The Power of Dissent in Life and Business by Charlan Jeanne Nemeth

An eminent psychologist explains why dissent should be cherished, not feared We've decided by consensus that consensus is good. In In Defense of Troublemakers, psychologist Charlan Nemeth argues that this principle is completely wrong: left unchallenged, the majority opinion is often biased, unoriginal, or false. From Twelve Angry Men to Edward Snowden, lone objectors who make people question their assumptions bring groups far closer to truth -- regardless of whether they are right or wrong. Essential reading for anyone who works in groups, In Defense of Troublemakers will radically change the way you think, listen, and make decisions.

Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t by Simon Sinek

Imagine a world where almost everyone wakes up inspired to go to work. This is n ot a crazy, idealised notion. In many successful organisations, great leaders are creating environments in which teams trust each other so deeply that they would put their lives on the line for each other. Yet other teams, no matter what incentives were offered, are doomed to infighting, fragmentation and failure. Why?

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

What makes us brilliant? What makes us deadly? What makes us Sapiens? Yuval Noah Harari challenges everything we know about being human in the perfect read for these unprecedented times. Earth is 4.5 billion years old. In just a fraction of that time, one species among countless others has conquered it- us. In this bold and provocative book, Yuval Noah Harari explores who we are, how we got here and where we're going.

Self unLimited: A vocational adventure for the 21st century by Helen Palmer

Helen Palmer’s book, Self unLimited: A vocational adventure for the 21st century, is full of practical advice and useful exercises to help you become more self-aware of your own career journey. Its origin was Helen’s own workscape journey of over two decades.

Stop Listening to the Customer: Try Hearing Your Brand Instead by Adam Ferrier

If you want to stand out from the crowd, develop a clear and consistent brand voice, and ultimately build a fruitful business – listen to your brand. Stop Listening to the Customer offers insights into how consumers are driving homogeneity in brands and shares the proven strategies you can implement to amplify your own position in the world.

The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge

An astonishing new scientific discovery called neuroplasticity is overthrowing the centuries-old notion that the adult human brain is fixed and unchanging. It is, instead, able to change its own structure and function, even into old age. Psychiatrist and researcher Norman Doidge, MD, travelled around the United States to meet the brilliant scientists championing neuroplasticity, and the people whose lives they've transformed - people whose mental limitations or brain damage were previously seen as unalterable, and whose conditions had long been dismissed as hopeless.

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick M. Lencioni

In The Five Dysfunctions of a Team Patrick Lencioni once again offers a leadership fable that is as enthralling and instructive as his first two best-selling books, The Five Temptations of a CEO and The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive. This time, he turns his keen intellect and storytelling power to the fascinating, complex world of teams.

The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative by Stephen Denning

How leaders can use the right story at the right time to inspire change and action This revised and updated edition of the best-selling book A Leader's Guide to Storytelling shows how storytelling is one of the few ways to handle the most important and difficult challenges of leadership: sparking action, getting people to work together, and leading people into the future. Using myriad illustrative examples and filled with how-to techniques, this book clearly explains how you can learn to tell the right story at the right time.

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

What if you could try out all the lives you could have lived and pick one? Would you choose differently? 'Between life and death there is a library,' she said. 'And within that library, the shelves go on for ever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you had made other choices. Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?'

The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion by John Hagel & John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison

In a radical break with the past, information now flows like water, and we must learn how to tap into its stream. Individuals and companies can no longer rely on the stocks of knowledge that they've carefully built up and stored away. Information now flows like water, and we must learn how to tap into the stream. But many of us remain stuck in old practices- practices that could undermine us as we search for success and meaning.

The Sparrow by Maria Doria Russell

Set in the 21st century - between 20 and 60 years f rom now - The Sparrow is the story of a charismatic Jesuit priest and talented linguist, Emilio Sandoz, who - in response to a remarkable radio signal from the depths of space - leads a scientific mission to make first contact with an extraterrestrial culture. In the true tradition of Jesuit adventurers before him, Sandoz and his companions are prepared to endure isolation, suffering - even death - but nothing can prepare them for the civilisation they encounter, or for the tragic misunderstanding that brings the mission to a devastating end.

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think and make choices. One system is fast, intuitive, and emotional; the other is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities - and also the faults and biases - of fast thinking, and reveals the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and behaviour.

You Are Not A Gadget: A Manifesto by Jaron Lanier

Something went wrong around the start of the 21st century. Individual creativity began to go out of fashion. Music became an endless rehas hing of the past. Scientists were in danger of no longer understanding their own research. Indeed, not only was individual creativity old-fashioned but individuals themselves. The crowd was wise. Machines, specifically computers, were no longer tools to be used by human minds - they were better than humans.

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