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Identifying Bias in Your Workplace? Read Kim Scott’s Just Work
by Aidan Looney As a West Point Cadet, I often hear that the academy is a leadership laboratory. Cadets are given the space and opportunities to experiment in leadership and learn how they want to lead before going out to the operational...
Three Hockey Books On Leadership
By Dan Sukman If you want to go somewhere fast, go by yourself. If you want to go far, go together. – Glen Sather Sports often serve as a metaphor, and in many cases as a testing ground for real life. There are lessons we learn playing youth...
Book Review: Phil Jackson’s Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success
By Ryan Kranc and Megan Jantos Editor’s note: This piece is published to coincide with Army Leader Exchange’s second annual #MarchMasters competition. Click here to vote for From the Green Notebook or other leader development content...
Book Review: Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
By John Geracitano Having three kids at home, time has become my most valuable commodity. This may be why the bestselling book Four Thousand Weeks resonated with my halfway-complete journey of an approximate 80-year life. In a sea of...
Why We Should Read Fiction
by Addison McLamb I recently spent an hour looking at lists of “top leadership books.” There were a few books on psychology, some on strategy, and some on decision-making. Most were published in the last 5-10 years. None of the lists included any...
What Reading Taught Me About Living in 2023
By Joe Byerly Essayist Maria Popova recently wrote, “To look back on a year of reading is to be handed a clear mirror of your priorities and passions, of the questions that live in you and the reckonings that keep you up at night.”...
AI Picked 25 Books Military Leaders Should Read
by Jasper AI (with oversight from Joe Byerly and Jack Hadley) A Note from Joe and Jack: Recently From the Green Notebook leadership has been playing with artificial intelligence (AI) tools for artwork, branding, and social media posting. To assess...
4 Reading Recs For Holistic Self-Development
by Jack Hadley Military professionals’ reading for self-development tends to fall into two general categories. First, well, military professional reading. This genre is flexible, but generally includes things like A Message to Garcia (and other...
A Father-Daughter Book Club Review of Slaughterhouse-Five
by Amy Padilla My father is a retired Marine Corps Major General and a combat veteran who gave over 37 years of his life to the service. He is now living his best life in Woodland Park, CO, enjoying retirement and lots of time with family. A big...
What Reading Taught Me About Living in 2022
By Joe Byerly Lesson #1: The finish line is never fixed Several authors warned about the dangers of hitching our happiness to goal achievement. Too many of us spend years doing things we don’t enjoy while sacrificing the things that bring us...
MG JP McGee Recommends Five Books All Leaders Should Read
In the third episode of our second season, From the Green Notebook sits down with the Director of the Army Talent Management Task Force, Major General JP McGee, to discuss the purpose, construct and future of the Commander Assessment Program, as...
General Votel Recommends Leaders Read these 5 Books
From the Green Notebook sat down with former CENTCOM Commander, General Joseph Votel (U.S. Army, Retired), recently to discuss his leadership perspective, as well as his experience leading a combatant command in the first episode of our...
Top 10 Most-Read Articles of 2020
In 2020, a small team of volunteers worked behind the scenes at From the Green Notebook to produce over 100 published articles read by almost half a million people. This team is a great example of how a few people with a purpose can have an...
What I Learned from Books in 2020- A Reading List
This post was originally shared in the FTGN Monthly Reading List Email. By Joe Byerly I like to read a lot. I have a strong love of learning and I’ve found the easiest way for me to expand my repertoire is to open a book when I first wake up or...
4 Books to Read Before Ranger School
by 2LT Oren Abusch and 1LT Jack Hadley It’s 0200. Our platoon Charlie 1 is struggling to establish a patrol base. We have just completed a seven kilometer night ruck march, over half of which involved carrying multiple (simulated) casualties. It’s...
The Sergeant Major of the Army Shares His Reading List
By Joe Byerly Recently, I spoke with the Sergeant Major of the Army about COVID-19 and the challenges and opportunities we are facing right now as an Army and a Nation. He highlighted that now is the time to reassess our goals and set new ones. One...
3 Lessons Books Taught Me in 2019
Since starting this website in 2013, I’ve included a year-end reading list every December. But last year I did something different. I took the time to reflect on the books I read and distilled 5 major life lessons from them. In doing so, I found...
Before You Commission, Read These 5 Books
By Oren Abusch-Magder Former Defense Secretary Mattis famously once wrote, “Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation, never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed before. It doesn’t give me all the...
4 Fiction Books I’m Excited About Reading This Summer
By Joe Byerly I love beaches and books, and this summer there are four titles I’m looking forward to checking out while enjoying the ocean. The Parade by Dave Eggers (Available Now) I had to snag this synopsis straight from the...
The Books that Influenced Adm. William H. McRaven
In a recent New York Times interview Adm. (ret) William McRaven shared the books that have most influenced his thinking throughout his military career. He offered the following list: On War by Carl von Clausewitz The Art of War by Sun Tzu The...
Are You an Ultralearner?
By Joe Byerly I recently finished Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career by Scott H. Young. This is an interesting read and in many respects can serve as the self-development bible for those addicted...
The Centurions: 10 Passages that Will Make You Reflect on War and Leadership
By Joe Byerly Recently, I read Jean Lartégy’s The Centurions. The novel follows a group of French paratroopers through their tour in Vietnam, time as POWs, their return to France, and their subsequent deployment to Algeria. Although it was written...
Can You Learn to Take Initiative?
By Joshua Spodek Chatting about my upcoming book, Initiative, a friend and fellow blogger, Joe Byerly of From The Green Notebook, asked if people could learn to take initiative. I saw his question as rhetorical, since he’d read an advance copy, so...
Warfare Has Moved On: The New Rules of War
By Joe Byerly One of my favorite books this year is Sean McFate’s The New Rules of War: Victory in the Age of Durable Disorder. Sean challenges everything I’ve learned over the last 15 years, and I can’t help but wonder if...
General Donn Starry on Leadership
By Joe Byerly As military leaders we should want nothing more than to give our enemies an unfair fight—with the advantage in our favor. And one way in which we do this is through training our forces. I can’t think of anyone who has written as...
McChrystal: Everything I Thought About Leadership Has Changed
By Stanley McChrystal Because leaders don’t rise as much as they emerge to fulfill a specific need for followers at moments, it can get dangerous when leaders emerge who give resonance to our darker impulses. To caution against this, we need to...
What Does It Mean to be a Military Professional?
By Tony Ingesson and Ray Kimball Over fifty years have passed since the seminal texts that fundamentally changed the conversation on professional Western militaries were written. Samuel P. Huntington’s The Soldier and the State, Morris Janowitz’s...
Can Your Network Help Your Career?
One of my favorite books this year is Friend of a Friend: Understanding the Hidden Networks that Can Transform Your Life and Your Career by David Burkus. It’s not your typical business self-improvement book. Burkus examines 50+ years...
Will Machines Change War as We Know It?
I recently had the pleasure of reading a copy of Paul Scharre’s Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War and it quickly became the book I recommend to any leader wishing to understand the complexity...
Learning is a Team Sport: An Interview With General Dempsey and Ori Brafman
Back in the fall, I read an advanced copy of Radical Inclusion: What the Post-9/11 World Should Have Taught Us About Leadership, and couldn’t put it down. In 173 pages, General Dempsey and Ori Brafman challenged me to become a better...
MG JP McGee Recommends Five Books All Leaders Should Read
In the third episode of our second season, From the Green Notebook sits down with the Director of the Army Talent Management Task Force, Major General JP McGee, to discuss the purpose, construct and future of the Commander Assessment Program, as...
General Votel Recommends Leaders Read these 5 Books
From the Green Notebook sat down with former CENTCOM Commander, General Joseph Votel (U.S. Army, Retired), recently to discuss his leadership perspective, as well as his experience leading a combatant command in the first episode of our...
Top 10 Most-Read Articles of 2020
In 2020, a small team of volunteers worked behind the scenes at From the Green Notebook to produce over 100 published articles read by almost half a million people. This team is a great example of how a few people with a purpose can have an...
What I Learned from Books in 2020- A Reading List
This post was originally shared in the FTGN Monthly Reading List Email. By Joe Byerly I like to read a lot. I have a strong love of learning and I’ve found the easiest way for me to expand my repertoire is to open a book when I first wake up or...
4 Books to Read Before Ranger School
by 2LT Oren Abusch and 1LT Jack Hadley It’s 0200. Our platoon Charlie 1 is struggling to establish a patrol base. We have just completed a seven kilometer night ruck march, over half of which involved carrying multiple (simulated) casualties. It’s...
The Sergeant Major of the Army Shares His Reading List
By Joe Byerly Recently, I spoke with the Sergeant Major of the Army about COVID-19 and the challenges and opportunities we are facing right now as an Army and a Nation. He highlighted that now is the time to reassess our goals and set new ones. One...
3 Lessons Books Taught Me in 2019
Since starting this website in 2013, I’ve included a year-end reading list every December. But last year I did something different. I took the time to reflect on the books I read and distilled 5 major life lessons from them. In doing so, I found...
Before You Commission, Read These 5 Books
By Oren Abusch-Magder Former Defense Secretary Mattis famously once wrote, “Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation, never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed before. It doesn’t give me all the...
4 Fiction Books I’m Excited About Reading This Summer
By Joe Byerly I love beaches and books, and this summer there are four titles I’m looking forward to checking out while enjoying the ocean. The Parade by Dave Eggers (Available Now) I had to snag this synopsis straight from the...
The Books that Influenced Adm. William H. McRaven
In a recent New York Times interview Adm. (ret) William McRaven shared the books that have most influenced his thinking throughout his military career. He offered the following list: On War by Carl von Clausewitz The Art of War by Sun Tzu The...
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