One of my goals is to tell true short stories about life at startups, to teach lessons about management or leadership. While there are many high-level academic books about management that I like, I find that they tend to be too abstract. They are often bloodless. They miss the real-world conflicts that managers have to deal with. They skip over all the moments when someone loses their temper, as if such moments don't exist.
I feel strongly that we need more honesty about such conflicts, both when managers lose their temper and also when employees lose their temper. How do such situations play out? How should they play out? What is allowed?
For example, here are 3 books about leadership that I like, but I'm also wary of how abstract they are:
The Discipline of Teams, Jon R. Katzenback and Douglas K. Smith
Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win, by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin.
Semper Fi: Business Leadership the Marine Corps Way, by Dan Carrison and Rod Walsh.
I like these books, but I often think they would be better if they had more specific stories about the real-world uses of the tactics they promote. I'd like to see more personal stories.
Of these, only Jocko Willink is associated with telling personal stories, and indeed, I think some of his popularity is exactly because he tells honest stories about the kinds of conflict that come up among people who work closely together, under great stress.
My first book (How To Destroy A Tech Startup In Three Easy Steps) was fairly popular with the readers of Hacker News, and many have commented on the big screaming rage-filled argument at the end. Some have said I should not have tolerated a boss who screamed like that, but the important point is that such situations really do occur, and we need more honest writing about such conflicts.
Likewise, after the last 7 years of doing high-level tech consulting, I decided to write up everything I've learned about management in my book "One-on-one meetings are underrated; group meetings waste time" and here especially, I was determined to tell short stories, and to try to honestly convey how much conflict comes up at work, and how people tend to deal with that conflict, and what styles of conflict management seem to lead to success.
In Japan, there is a genre of manga that is focused on telling stories about business life. I've often wished that America had something similar. I'd like to see more books of true short stories about business life, and I think all of society would benefit.