Sources | Management Craft / Management Craft

Books

Accidental EmpiresBook · 1993Robert X. Cringely's book on the personal computer industry. Chapter 12, 'On the Beach,' describes company growth through Commandos, Infantry, and Police, the model Simon Wardley later credited as the source for Pioneer, Settler, Town Planner.Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday LifeBook · 1997Csikszentmihalyi's accessible distillation of his flow research, applied to the psychology of optimal experience in everyday life.Flow: The Psychology of Optimal ExperienceBook · 1990Csikszentmihalyi's foundational 1990 book introducing flow theory based on decades of empirical psychological research at the University of Chicago. Distinct from his 1997 popular companion *Finding Flow* (csikszentmihalyi-finding-flow.md): Flow is the canonical theoretical text; Finding Flow applies the theory to everyday life.High Output ManagementBook · 1983Grove's canonical text on management as a measurable, improvable craft, written by Intel's operating chief at the company's peak.Mastering the VC GameBook · 2010Jeffrey Bussgang's book on venture capital and entrepreneurship. Source for the Jungle, Dirt Road, Highway metaphor for startup stages.Mind Over MachineBook · 1988Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus's book on human intuition and expertise versus machine intelligence, elaborating their five-stage model of skill acquisition. First published in hardcover in 1986; the revised 1988 paperback (which corrected the book's account of expertise from 'pattern recognition' to a neural-net 'discrimination and association') is the edition to cite.Nicomachean EthicsBook · -340Aristotle's foundational treatise on virtue ethics; Book II sets out the doctrine of the mean, holding that each virtue of character is a mean between a vice of excess and a vice of deficiency.OdesBook · -23Horace's four-book collection of Latin lyric poems (Carmina); Ode 2.10 contains the phrase aurea mediocritas, the golden mean.Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company BuildingBook · 2022Johnson's operating manual for building and managing high-performance teams at scale, distilled from leadership roles at Google and Stripe.Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in BusinessBook · 2006Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business — scaffolded for v2.5 extraction; description pending.The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership: A New Paradigm for Sustainable SuccessBook · 2015Dethmer, Chapman, and Klemp's framework of fifteen paired commitments distinguishing leading from above the line versus below the line.The Tao of CoachingBook · 1996The coaching classic that coined the Skill/Will matrix -- the name and the 2x2 that Skill vs. Will carries to this day.WHO: The A Method for HiringBook · 2008The book that built the Scorecard framework -- mission, outcomes, and competencies -- and shaped how a generation of founders learned to hire.

Articles

Career Development: What It Really Means to be a Manager, Director, or VPArticle · 2015The single best piece on what each management level actually requires. Defines what managers, directors, and VPs are paid to do.Competency LayersArticle · 2026The original Management Craft card behind The Competency Stack, defining the layered competency model the tool expands.Hiring for a new role/function? Do this.Article · 2024Where the name 'calibration call' comes from, plus a strong set of calibration questions for learning what great looks like in a role you haven't hired for before.How to organise your teamsArticle · 2023Wardley's later explanation of the Pioneer, Settler, Town Planner model, framed as a hard and risky organizational structure for companies coping with constant evolution.Pioneers, Settlers, Town Planners: How Innovation WorksArticle · 2018Mansfield's concise explanation of Wardley's Pioneer, Settler, Town Planner model as a cycle for moving from invention to usable product to industrialized utility.Pioneers, Town Planners and those missing SettlersArticle · 2011Wardley's early Pioneer, Settler, Town Planner note, later updated to credit Robert X. Cringely's Commandos, Infantry, Police model from Accidental Empires as the source.Startup States: Jungle, Dirt Road, HighwayArticle · 2022Sparks's explanation of Bussgang's Jungle, Dirt Road, Highway metaphor, including the hiring and operating mistakes founders make when they confuse company stages.The Hiring ProcessArticle · 2023The most detailed public walkthrough of the MOC framework in practice, with a sample CFO scorecard worth studying. Where the term 'MOC' comes from.

Papers

Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview QuestionsPaper · 2019The study that found narcissism and sadism predict who uses brainteasers in interviews.Revisiting Meta-Analytic Estimates of Validity in Personnel SelectionPaper · 2022The most important hiring research published in decades. Proved structured interviews are the single best predictor of job performance, dethroning cognitive ability tests.

Reports

The Holloway Guide to Technical Recruiting and HiringReport · 2019The most comprehensive reference on building an interview process from scratch, including IC leveling, rubric design, interviewer training, and debriefs.