Category: Business

3. SHELF it · Book Review Actions · Book Reviews · Business · Entrepreneurship

BR 257: The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek

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Category: 3 – SHELF it (All Categories are 1 – Read ASAP!, 2 – BUY it!, 3 – SHELF it, 4 – SOMEDAY it)

Comments: A nice read – one of those books that could have been a long blog post though. :-)

Insights that resonated:

1. Values aren’t values until they cost us something. This lesson from a while ago was reinforced with a story focusing on the decision made by CVS pharmacies to not sell cigarettes (more here).

2. To change outcomes, we must change behavior. And, to change behavior, we must change culture. There was a memorable story about how Alan Mullaly changed the culture within Ford by insisting executives stopped bringing slides that showed all their initiatives marked as “green” despite the company not turning a profit. “We are going to lose billions of dollars this year. Is there anything that’s not going well here?” (more here)

3. The title itself. Life is an infinite game.. think long term. :-)

2. BUY it! · Book Review Actions · Book Reviews · Business · Entrepreneurship · Self Improvement

BR 256: Upstream by Dan Heath

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Category: 2 – BUY it! (All Categories are 1 – Read ASAP!, 2 – BUY it!, 3 – SHELF it, 4 – SOMEDAY it)

Comments: I love books by the Heath brothers. While this didn’t quite hit the heights of a Decisive or Switch, it was still a good book that sought to focus energy on attempting to solve problems upstream vs. simply reacting to crises.

Insights that resonated:

1. “Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.”

2. I loved this story from the beginning of the book.

“You and a friend are having a picnic by the side of a river. Suddenly you hear a shout from the direction of the water—a child is drowning. Without thinking, you both dive in, grab the child, and swim to shore.

Before you can recover, you hear another child cry for help. You and your friend jump back in the river to rescue her as well.

Then another struggling child drifts into sight. . . and another. . . and another.

The two of you can barely keep up.

Suddenly, you see your friend wading out of the water, seeming to leave you alone.

‘Where are you going?’ you demand.

Your friend answers, ‘I’m going upstream to tackle the guy who’s throwing all these kids in the water.’”

Other notes here.

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BR 252: Trillion Dollar Coach by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg

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Category: 3 – SHELF it (All Categories are 1 – Read ASAP!, 2 – BUY it!, 3 – SHELF it, 4 – SOMEDAY it)

Comments: Got off to a promising start as it promised to detail how Bill Campbell became such an influential executive coach. However, it quickly just became a gushing list of platitudes. So, the book works as a lovely memoir if you knew Bill Campbell in some ways. For folks who’d like to learn more about the “how” behind Campbell’s magic, it falls short.

4. SOMEDAY it · Book Review Actions · Book Reviews · Business · Management

BR 245: Brave New Work by Aaron Dignan

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Category: 4 – SOMEDAY it (All Categories are 1 – Read ASAP!, 2 – BUY it!, 3 – SHELF it, 4 – SOMEDAY it)

Comments: I think this might work for folks who are working in an old-world industry with no exposure to technology driven workplaces. It didn’t work for me. I got through 80% of the book before I quit.. so, I might have missed something game changing in the last 20%…

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BR 242: Principles by Ray Dalio

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Category: 3 – SHELF it (All Categories are 1 – Read ASAP!, 2 – BUY it!, 3 – SHELF it, 4 – SOMEDAY it)

Comments: This is going to be a controversial rating for a book that has been lauded a fair bit in the mainstream media. Ray Dalio is a legendary investor and is clearly very smart. I just happened to follow his work via his videos and his “Principles” website after having done a case on Bridgewater in graduate school. So, a lot of the book wasn’t new to me. It would be in the “Buy it” category otherwise.

Top 3 Lessons: 

1. Ray Dalio’s success built on investing since he was 12 + reflecting on experiences + approaching every decision with a fear of being wrong (never being over confident).

2. First order and second order consequences are often in opposition. Unhealthy food has a good first auto consequence but a bad second out a consequence.
Question – Will you choose a painful healthy route or an unhealthy comfortable delusion?

3. Managers are engineers. They focus on setting up the machine to create the outcomes they seek. Build systems first, then put people in.

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BR 234: Subscribed by Tien Tzou

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Category: 3 – SHELF it (All Categories are 1 – Read ASAP!, 2 – BUY it!, 3 – SHELF it, 4 – SOMEDAY it)

Comments: This felt like subscription economy 101.. I guess I expected more. :)

Top 3 Lessons:

  1. With subscriptions, product companies are replaced by companies who put the customer first.
  2. When we said newspapers and music were dead, what we were really saying is that the old business model was dead.
  3. The move from access to ownership means everyone is creating a subscription business. And the presence of sensors means even old manufacturers are embracing it. Schneider electric is making elevators default to most used floors for example.
1. Read ASAP! · Business · Career · Skills

BR 228: The Pyramid Principle by Barbara Minto

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Category: 1 – Read ASAP! (All Categories are 1 – Read ASAP!, 2 – BUY it!, 3 – SHELF it, 4 – SOMEDAY it)

Comments: This is my second review of this book after a first read ~7-8 years ago as it felt like I was reading this for the first time. I decided to re-read this book as I was getting some feedback about a lack of clarity in a couple of strategy documents I presented at work. This book made a marked change in my outputs in the second half of the year by simply pushing me to commit to rewriting once I put the ideas down. It is book I’m going to be reading again.

Top 3 Lessons:

  1. “For the average business or professional writer, producing more literate memos and reports does not mean writing shorter sentences or choosing better words. Rather, it means formally separating the thinking process from the writing process, so that you can complete your thinking before you begin to write.”
  2. As a consequence of the above learning, expect to break up with the first draft. The challenge – “Once you put ideas in writing, they take on an incredible beauty in the author’s eyes. They seem to glow with a fine patina that you will be quite reluctant to disturb.”
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BR 226: Creativity Inc. by Ed Catmull

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Category: 3 – SHELF it (All Categories are 1 – Read ASAP!, 2 – BUY it!, 3 – SHELF it, 4 – SOMEDAY it)

Comments: This will be a fun read if you are a Pixar fan. I enjoyed Ed Catmull’s narration of the Pixar story as most other versions I’ve read focus largely on the genius of John Lasseter (who, as expected, is a key character in this book too). I think my rating for the book was tainted a bit because of the news around John Lasseter’s sexual abuse allegations. :-(

Top 3 Lessons:

  1. For all the care you put in artistry, visual polish doesn’t matter if you’re not getting the story right.
  2. Drawing well requires us to learn how to see. The difficulty with drawing is that we let our mental models of objects get ahead of us and get us to jump to conclusions. So, we lose track of what is actually on the page. Art teachers teach students to conquer this by getting them to draw an object upside down or by asking them to drag the negative space around the object – both of which don’t require mental models.
    This is applicable to problem solving. Don’t just look at the problem. Look at the context/situation around it. In Pixar, a scene could sometimes only be fixed by looking at the entire story or preceding scenes.
  3. If there is more truth in the hallways than meetings, you are in trouble. For managers who go out of the way to prevent surprises, get over it.
2. BUY it! · Book Review Actions · Book Reviews · Business · Creativity · Marketing · Novel Concepts and Interesting Research · Psychology · Relationships

BR 221: The Power of Moments by Chip and Dan Heath

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Category: 2 – BUY it!* (All Categories are 1 – Read ASAP!, 2 – BUY it!, 3 – SHELF it, 4 – SOMEDAY it)

Comments: I love books by Chip and Dan Heath. While this book didn’t resonate as strongly as Decisive (their previous book) did, I thought it brought together lessons on a very important topic, Great moments are what we remember in this life. Understanding how these get made is, thus, as important a lesson as any.

Top 3 Lessons:

  1. A formula for excellent mentorship: High expectations + Assurance + Direction + Support
  2. Responsiveness is the key to strong relationships. It means you are attuned to the other person. The idea that physicians ask patients “what matters to you” revolutionized children’s healthcare in Scotland.
    Do we understand what matters to the people we care about? (Deep questions, thus, are a great way to get to know people.)
  3. In the short term, we often choose to fix problems over creating moments. In the long term, that backfires. Moments are not a means to the end, they are the end. They are what we remember in the end.
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BR 220: Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham

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Category: 3 – SHELF it (All Categories are 1 – Read ASAP!, 2 – BUY it!, 3 – SHELF it, 4 – SOMEDAY it)

Comments: Hackers and Painters was an interesting read. This is unvarnished Paul Graham from before his Y Combinator celebrity days. His writing has been a lot more controversial of late. But, in this book, he shows up as a compelling writer sharing his notes on a wide variety of topics – from education to hacking to design to programming languages.

Top 3 Lessons:

  1. The least sophisticated users tell you what you need to simplify and clarify while the most sophisticated users tell you what features you need to add.
  2. School was created as a means to keep kids busy while adults did work. (I’ve thought of this from time to time since I first read it)
  3. The difference between design and research seems to be a question of new versus good. Design has to be good while research has to be new. These two paths converge at the top – the best design surpasses others by using new ideas and the best research solves problems that are not only new but worth solving.