Read Any Good Books Lately?

Ever since my son got his drivers’ license, anytime he and his best friend from high school want to have a serious conversation, they get in the car and drive.  Long, long drives to no where.  Doesn’t matter what time of day or night, a conversation becomes a road trip.  Every once in a while, however, the road trip becomes the conversation.

I am not often privy to the content of these conversations, but every once in a while, I get lucky and get a text  that sheds some light on the conversation (fortunately the texter is the friend, who is the passenger).

Last Friday night, as they were driving to New York for a 21st birthday party, I got the following text:  did u learn in undergrad or from reading?  I needed to clarify if they were asking whether I had learned as a result of going to classes, hearing the professors’ lectures and the discussions of my professors and peers, or simply from doing the assigned readings.  Neither, was the response.  Did I learn more from my undergraduate education (they are both juniors in college) or from the reading that I have done throughout my life?

That was a much easier question to answer.  As a voracious reader, there is no question that throughout the many decades of my life, I’ve learned far more from reading that I ever could have possibly learned from four years of undergraduate education.  And this is no slight on my undergraduate education, which was superb.  It, unlike so many undergraduate educations, actually fostered learning from reading.

But the learning I’ve gained from reading has been intentional.  While I confess I do not read in every field and every discipline, I have a very varied reading repertoire.  I read that which I know will help me develop in my profession, and am frequently thrilled when something not on that intentional list does the same trick, as well as that which I know will simply give me a deeper and richer pool of examples, analogies and food-for-thought.   It seems that having spent so much time as an academic, however, I do segment my reading, assigning fiction to the summer and holidays, while non-fiction is for year ’round.  I’m trying to work on that.

And I read everything, from serious tomes to headlines to the inside of bottle caps; from the two page essay to the 52 chapter book.  And from all of it, I learn.  I get Google’s daily nonprofit alerts – must reads. .  Sometimes it is just the headline; other times, the full article.  And from there, I’ve gotten fodder for blogs and ideas for developing new classes for The Nonprofit Center.   I read and re-read books to see what I glean at time one that is different—because I’m different—at time two.  (I even date and color code my notes with each reading.  (Did I hear someone say nerd?)

When I first read Jim Collins’ seminal works, Good to Great and Built to Last, I read them as an academic, teaching traditional academic classes.  Years later when I reread them, I was the executive director of a nonprofit and part-time consultant, and I saw very different messages that needed to be conveyed.  I’ve told executive directors and board presidents who bemoan the state of their boards to buy every board member a copy of The Source:  Twelve Principles of Governance That Power Exceptional Boards, and have everyone read one principle in preparation for each board meeting and then discuss it.  A mini book club that can move a board—and therefore—an organization forward!

While reading should not be the sole source of professional development used by an individual or an organization, its power and value should not be undervalued, particularly in these tight financial times.