Control Freak

One of the most unusual policies that I operate in my technical team is to let them buy whatever books they want provided they are at least loosely work related. All they have to do is send an email to purchasing and they will have the book delivered, no questions asked.

I don’t mind if they might start reading the book, decide it is rubbish and stop reading. Nor do I mind if they want a book that their neighbour has on their desk. People read books in different ways.

The rationale is

• the more they know the better they will be at their job
• in order to do their job they have to keep up to date with new things
• books are a very cheap way of learning
• having a book nearby as a reference can be an enormous timesaver

Most people on this scheme spend around £250 per year, but even the most determined person won’t exceed £1,000 per year on books, which is about the same cost as one third of an average technical training course. For a 25 person team I budget around £5,000.

You might be wondering how do you stop technical staff from building a library at home? The answer is that I don’t actually care if they do. Technical books are not, on the whole, like classic novels. Nobody reads a FoxPro manual any more because it is stale information. They are much more transient, almost disposable.

But we do stamp all the books with a ‘property of …’ stamp, just to limit their resale (not that anyone in my team would do that) and to remind people whose books they are.

Interestingly, with this policy in place, I find myself getting suspicious of those in the team that don’t buy any books. Can you really keep up with new technology just by reading the web?

jay Leadership