Systems, Scale, and the Occasional Dragon
April Reading Recap
This month, I read about scaling things: teams, companies, audiences, even dragons. The books weren’t coordinated, but they might as well have been. Whether I was deep in Andrew Grove’s blueprint for management, dissecting Brendan Kane’s playbook for going viral, or mapping mental models with Diana Montalion, the throughline was clear: systems either work, or they break loudly. And the best ones scale, if you’re paying attention. If you’re not, well, enjoy the fire.
The Internal Infrastructure: Agency and Self-Delusion
The Self-Driven Child by William Stixrud and Ned Johnson
A parenting book, technically. But it reads like a guide to autonomy for humans of any age. The core idea: give kids more control over their lives and stop micromanaging them into anxious wrecks. This applies to adults, too. Especially the ones managing OKRs like they’re piloting a drone strike. The authors argue for agency as the foundation of resilience—because nothing breaks a person faster than feeling powerless in the name of “structure.”
Insight by Tasha Eurich
Everyone thinks they’re self-aware. They are not. Eurich makes the brutal case that self-awareness is mostly illusion wrapped in affirmation. What actually improves it? Getting feedback that stings, reflecting without spiraling, and stopping your obsession with journaling every emotion you’ve ever had. Good leaders know themselves. Great ones build systems that tell them when they’re being stupid.
Systems, Strategy, and Execution
Learning Systems Thinking by Diana Montalion
A slow, dense, but rewarding read if you treat it like a philosophy seminar disguised as a tech manual. Systems thinking isn’t about diagrams. It’s about understanding how change ripples through the ecosystem you're meddling with. Cause, effect, feedback loops and the fact that trying to fix one thing without seeing the whole is often worse than doing nothing. If your product roadmap looks like a to-do list with anxiety, start here. A great follow up to “Thinking in Systems” by Donella H. Meadows
High Output Management by Andrew S. Grove
Still the field manual. Still better than most modern management books published 40 years later. Grove breaks down leadership as an engineering problem: inputs, outputs, leverage. It’s not sexy, but it’s brutally effective. Key lesson: managers should spend their time where they have the highest leverage. Not on inbox triage or Slack theater. Also, meetings aren’t evil. They’re tools. You just suck at running them.
12 Months to $1 Million by Ryan Daniel Moran
A startup book that skips the philosophical fluff. Moran walks through a plan to build a 7-figure business in a year, step by unglamorous step. Validate the product. Build the audience. Don’t get cute. It’s not revolutionary, but it’s rare to see someone lay out the actual work required, without pitching a $4,000 mastermind group halfway through.
Influence, Algorithms, and the Attention Economy
One Million Followers and Hook Point by Brendan Kane
These are either growth-hacking goldmines or cautionary tales, depending on your level of caffeine and cynicism. Kane’s advice is tactical, aggressive, and absolutely allergic to nuance. It’s optimized for platforms, not people. But that’s the point. Want reach? Play the game. Just don’t pretend the game has morals. The best insight: people don’t care about your message until you earn their attention. Don’t try to hack virality with templates and tricks instead of saying something useful. Your mileage will vary.
Fiction Break: Dragons and Discipline
Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros
Because even systems thinkers need dragons. Think Hunger Games meets How to Train Your Dragon with better worldbuilding and slightly less eye-rolling romance but more sex. Way more sex. It’s fun, fast, and sneakily insightful about power, discipline, and loyalty. The twist at the end of the book is of the perfect variety- surprising, but absolutely logical and earned with setup throughout the book. Plus, it reminded me that sometimes you need a literal battlefield to rethink your own.
Closing Thoughts
April was about structure—mental, organizational, operational. You can’t scale chaos. And you can’t outsource clarity. Whether the topic was parenting, product launches, or platform growth, the message was the same: the system you’re in is producing the results you’re getting. Don’t like them? Change the system. Or burn it down and start over.
If you’ve read anything recently that changed how you think about scale. I want to hear about it.
Bonus points if it includes dragons.
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Wow… definitely some interesting reads to check out. Thanks for sharing.
Really good article with interesting book titles. I’ve saved some of them in my reading list! Thank you for sharing this! 😊