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436. The Design of Everyday Things

Rating:  ☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Donald A. Norman

Genre:   Non Fiction, Business, Psychology, Design

240 pages, published September 19, 2002

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

The Design of Everyday Things is about how the design of objects and systems can help or hinder users.  Author Donald Norman explores how bad design can be avoided and the desirability of good design.

Quotes 

“Design is really an act of communication, which means having a deep understanding of the person with whom the designer is communicating.”

 

“When people fail to follow these bizarre, secret rules, and the machine does the wrong thing, its operators are blamed for not understanding the machine, for not following its rigid specifications. With everyday objects, the result is frustration. With complex devices and commercial and industrial processes, the resulting difficulties can lead to accidents, injuries, and even deaths. It is time to reverse the situation: to cast the blame upon the machines and their design. It is the machine and its design that are at fault. It is the duty of machines and those who design them to understand people. It is not our duty to understand the arbitrary, meaningless dictates of machines.”

 

“Principles of design:

  1. Use both knowledge in the world and knowledge in the head.
  2. Simplify the structure of tasks.
  3. Make things visible: bridge gulfs between Execution and Evaluation.
  4. Get the mappings right.
  5. Exploit the power of constraints.
  6. Design for error.
  7. When all else fails, standardize.”

 

“Good design is actually a lot harder to notice than poor design, in part because good designs fit our needs so well that the design is invisible,”

 

“Rule of thumb: if you think something is clever and sophisticated beware-it is probably self-indulgence.”

 

“A brilliant solution to the wrong problem can be worse than no solution at all: solve the correct problem.”

 

“Fail often, fail fast,”

 

“Good design is actually a lot harder to notice than poor design, in part because good designs fit our needs so well that the design is invisible, serving us without drawing attention to itself. Bad design, on the other hand, screams out its inadequacies, making itself very noticeable.”

 

“The problem with the designs of most engineers is that they are too logical. We have to accept human behavior the way it is, not the way we would wish it to be.”

 

“The vicious cycle starts: if you fail at something, you think it is your fault. Therefore you think you can’t do that task. As a result, next time you have to do the task, you believe you can’t, so you don’t even try. The result is that you can’t, just as you thought.”

 

“The idea that a person is at fault when something goes wrong is deeply entrenched in society. That’s why we blame others and even ourselves. Unfortunately, the idea that a person is at fault is imbedded in the legal system. When major accidents occur, official courts of inquiry are set up to assess the blame. More and more often the blame is attributed to “human error.” The person involved can be fined, punished, or fired. Maybe training procedures are revised. The law rests comfortably. But in my experience, human error usually is a result of poor design: it should be called system error. Humans err continually; it is an intrinsic part of our nature. System design should take this into account. Pinning the blame on the person may be a comfortable way to proceed, but why was the system ever designed so that a single act by a single person could cause calamity? Worse, blaming the person without fixing the root, underlying cause does not fix the problem: the same error is likely to be repeated by someone else.”

 

“It is easy to design devices that work well when everything goes as planned. The hard and necessary part of design is to make things work well even when things do not go as planned.”

 

“It is easy to design devices that work well when everything goes as planned. The hard and necessary part of design is to make things work well even when things do not go as planned.”

 

“A story tells of Henry Ford’s buying scrapped Ford cars and having his engineers disassemble them to see which parts failed and which were still in good shape. Engineers assumed this was done to find the weak parts and make them stronger. Nope. Ford explained that he wanted to find the parts that were still in good shape. The company could save money if they redesigned these parts to fail at the same time as the others.”

 

“Norman’s Law: The day the product team is announced, it is behind schedule and over its budget.”

 

“Poor feedback can be worse than no feedback at all, because it is distracting, uninformative, and in many cases irritating and anxiety-provoking.”

 

“original ideas are the easy part. Actually producing the idea as a successful product is what is hard.”

 

“If designers and researchers do not sometimes fail, it is a sign that they are not trying hard enough—they are not thinking the great creative thoughts that will provide breakthroughs in how we do things. It is possible to avoid failure, to always be safe. But that is also the route to a dull, uninteresting life.”

 

“Cognition and emotion cannot be separated. Cognitive thoughts lead to emotions: emotions drive cognitive thoughts. The brain is structured to act upon the world, and every action carries with it expectations, and these expectations drive emotions. That is why much of language is based on physical metaphors, why the body and its interaction with the environment are essential components of human thought. Emotion is highly underrated. In fact, the emotional system is a powerful information processing system that works in tandem with cognition. Cognition attempts to make sense of the world: emotion assigns value. It is the emotional system that determines whether a situation is safe or threatening, whether something that is happening is good or bad, desirable or not. Cognition provides understanding: emotion provides value judgments. A human without a working emotional system has difficulty making choices. A human without a cognitive system is dysfunctional.”

 

My Take

While there are some interesting ideas in The Design of Everyday Things (as exemplified by the quotes above), I found the book to be dated with lots of discussion of computer and phone systems that are no longer relevant in 2020.  2002, when this book was published, is an eternity in the world of technology.

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394. Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of NIKE

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:   Aubrey Shick

Author:   Phil Knight

Genre:    Nonfiction, Memoir, Business, Sports

400 pages, published April 26, 2016

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

Shoe Dog is the memoir of Phil Knight, founder and still majority shareholder of Nike.  He shares the story of the founding and rise of Nike that went from importer of low cost Japanese athletic shoes to an iconic global company with sales north of $30 billion.

Quotes 

“Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.”

 

“The cowards never started and the weak died along the way. That leaves us, ladies and gentlemen. Us.”

 

“I’d tell men and women in their midtwenties not to settle for a job or a profession or even a career. Seek a calling. Even if you don’t know what that means, seek it. If you’re following your calling, the fatigue will be easier to bear, the disappointments will be fuel, the highs will be like nothing you’ve ever felt.”

 

“Life is growth. You grow or you die.”

 

“So that morning in 1962 I told myself: Let everyone else call your idea crazy . . . just keep going. Don’t stop. Don’t even think about stopping until you get there, and don’t give much thought to where “there” is. Whatever comes, just don’t stop.”

 

“Like books, sports give people a sense of having lived other lives, of taking part in other people’s victories. And defeats. When sports are at their best, the spirit of the fan merges with the spirit of the athlete.”

 

“I wanted what everyone wants. To be me, full-time.”

 

“Beating the competition is relatively easy. Beating yourself is a never-ending commitment.”

 

“And those who urge entrepreneurs to never give up? Charlatans. Sometimes you have to give up. Sometimes knowing when to give up, when to try something else, is genius. Giving up doesn’t mean stopping. Don’t ever stop. Luck plays a big role. Yes, I’d like to publicly acknowledge the power of luck. Athletes get lucky, poets get lucky, businesses get lucky. Hard work is critical, a good team is essential, brains and determination are invaluable, but luck may decide the outcome. Some people might not call it luck. They might call it Tao, or Logos, or Jñāna, or Dharma. Or Spirit. Or God.”

 

“What if there were a way, without being an athlete, to feel what athletes feel? To play all the time, instead of working? Or else to enjoy work so much that it becomes essentially the same thing.”

 

“The single easiest way to find out how you feel about someone. Say goodbye.”

 

“He was easy to talk to, and easy not to talk to-equally important qualities in a friend. Essential in a travel companion.”

“Driving back to Portland I’d puzzle over my sudden success at selling. I’d been unable to sell encyclopedias, and I’d despised it to boot. I’d been slightly better at selling mutual funds, but I’d felt dead inside. So why was selling shoes so different? Because, I realized, it wasn’t selling. I believed in running. I believed that if people got out and ran a few miles every day, the world would be a better place, and I believed these shoes were better to run in. People, sensing my belief, wanted some of that belief for themselves. Belief, I decided. Belief is irresistible.”

 

“But that’s the nature of money. Whether you have it or not, whether you want it or not, whether you like it or not, it will try to define your days. Our task as human beings is not to let it.”

 

“It’s never just business. It never will be. If it ever does become just business, that will mean that business is very bad.”

 

“Starting my own business was the only thing that made life’s other risks—marriage, Vegas, alligator wrestling—seem like sure things. But my hope was that when I failed, if I failed, I’d fail quickly, so I’d have enough time, enough years, to implement all the hard-won lessons. I wasn’t much for setting goals, but this goal kept flashing through my mind every day, until it became my internal chant: Fail fast.”

 

My Take

I really enjoyed Shoe Dog and learned a lot about Nike.  Phil Knight is an engaging writer and has a compelling story to tell.  He also imparts some pearls of wisdom about how to live your life, as well as the importance of taking risks and following your passion.  An inspirational and interesting book.

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390. Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Mike Brady

Author:   Ryan Holliday

Genre:    Nonfiction, Business, History, Politics, Biography

331 pages, published February 27, 2018

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

Conspiracy tells the tale of Peter Theil, Paypal founder and billionaire investor, and the conspiracy he funded to exact revenge on Gawker Media.   In 2007, in a short blogpost on Valleywag, Gawker outed Peter Thiel as gay.  While Thiel’s sexuality had been known to close friends and family, he didn’t consider himself a public figure and was incensed that his privacy had been invaded.  It took almost a decade, but Thiel finally exacted his revenge.  He financed a lawsuit by Hulk Hogan who sued Gawker for invasion of privacy after they posted a videotape of him having sex with his best friend’s wife.  Hogan would end up with a $140 million dollar judgment against Gawker which had declare bankruptcy.  Only later would Thiel’s role in bringing down Gawker become public.

Quotes 

“It is always revealing to see how a person responds to those situations where he’s told: “There’s nothing you can do about it. This is the way of the world.” Peter Thiel’s friend, the mathematician and economist Eric Weinstein, has a category of individual he defines as a “high-agency person.” How do you respond when told something is impossible? Is that the end of the conversation or the start of one? What’s the reaction to being told you can’t—that no one can? One type accepts it, wallows in it even. The other questions it, fights it, rejects it.”

 

“His path was in some ways traditional—Stanford to Stanford Law to judicial clerkship to high-powered law firm—but it was also marked by bouts of rebellion. At Stanford he created and published a radical conservative journal called The Stanford Review, then he wrote a book that railed against multiculturalism and “militant homosexuals” on campus, despite being both gay and foreign born. His friends thought he might become a political pundit. Instead he became a lawyer. Then one day, surprising even himself, he walked out of one of the most prestigious securities law firms in the world, Sullivan & Cromwell, after seven months and three days on the job. Within a few short years, Thiel formed and then sold PayPal, an online payments company, to eBay for $ 1.5 billion in July 2002, the month that Nick Denton registered the domain for his first site, Gizmodo. With proceeds of some $ 55 million, Thiel assembled an empire. He retooled a hedge fund called Clarium into a vehicle to make large, counterintuitive bets on global macro trends, seeding it with $ 10 million of his own money. In 2003, Thiel registered a company called Palantir with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In 2004, he would found it in earnest. The company would take antifraud technology from PayPal and apply it to intelligence gathering—fighting terrorism, predicting crime, providing military insights. It would take money from the venture capital arm of the CIA and soon take on almost every other arm of the government as clients.”

 

“You rush in to stamp out the sparks and end up fanning them into flames. This is the risk.”

 

“For all the claims that what Peter had done was personal and unethical and wrong, that he had made the world a worse place and horribly wronged a group of journalists, something surprising happened: Media actually did change. Because they knew they needed to.”

 

“The Count of Monte Cristo would put it better: “What a fool I was not to tear my heart out on the day when I resolved to avenge myself!” Ah, but what dangerous business this is. This artificial hardening is a dangerous crossroads, a bargain with our primal forces that not everyone escapes or can emerge from with clean hands. William James knew that every man is “ready to be savage in some cause.” The distinction, he said, between good people and bad people is “the choice of the cause.”

 

“Peter and a team of conspirators and a judge and a jury in Florida had spoken. They said: We don’t want to live in a world where the media can publish someone having sex—even if it’s just the “highlights”—simply because that person has talked about his sex life in public”

 

“We live in a world where only people like Peter Thiel can pull something so intentional and long-term off—and it’s not because, as Gawker has tried to make it seem, he’s rich. It’s because he’s one of the few who believes it can be done.”

 

“There is a moment in The Great Gatsby when Jay Gatsby introduces Nick Carraway to Meyer Wolfsheim, mentioning offhandedly that he is the man who fixed the 1919 World Series. The idea staggers Gatsby’s idealistic young friend. Of course, Carraway knew the series had been thrown. But “if I had thought of it at all,” he says, “I would have thought of it as a thing that merely happened, the end of some inevitable chain.” It was unbelievable to him then, as it is to us now, that a single person could have been responsible for changing the outcome of an event watched by some fifty million people. In real life, the 1919 World Series was fixed not by Wolfsheim, but with great skill and audacity by Arnold Rothstein, a Jewish gangster. A young lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army named Dwight Eisenhower eagerly followed the game as the scores came in via telegram, and like everyone else, never suspected a thing. He would remark years later that the revelation of the conspiracy that had thrown the series produced a profound change in his perspective about the world; it taught him never to trust in first appearances.”

 

“The essayist and investor Paul Graham, a peer and rival of Peter Thiel’s, has charted the trajectory of a start-up, with all its ups and downs. After the initial bump of media attention, the rush of excitement from the unexpected success, Graham says that the founders enter a phase where the novelty begins to wear off, and they quickly descend from their early euphoria into what he calls the “trough of sorrow.” A start-up launches with its investments, gets a few press hits, and then smacks right into reality. Many companies never make it out of this ditch. “The problem with the Silicon Valley,” as Jim Barksdale, the former CEO and president of Netscape, once put it, “is that we tend to confuse a clear view with a short distance.” Here, too, like the founders of a start-up, the conspirators have smacked into reality. The reality of the legal system. The defensive bulwark of the First Amendment. The reality of the odds. They have discovered the difference between a good plan and how far they’ll need to travel to fulfill it. They have trouble even serving Denton with papers. Harder has to request a 120-day extension just to wrap his head around Gawker’s financial and corporate structure. This is going to be harder than they thought. It always is. To say that in 2013 all the rush and excitement present on those courthouse steps several months earlier had dissipated would be a preposterous understatement. If a conspiracy, by its inherent desperation and disadvantaged position, is that long struggle in a dark hallway, here is the point where one considers simply sitting down and sobbing in despair, not even sure what direction to go. Is this even possible? Are we wrong? Machiavelli wrote that fortune—misfortune in fact—aims herself where “dikes and dams have not been made to contain her.” Clausewitz said that battle plans were great but ultimately subject to “friction”—delays, confusion, mistakes, and complications. What is friction? Friction is when you’re Pericles and you lay out a brilliant plan to defend Athens against Sparta and then your city is hit by the plague.”

 

“The line attributed to the management guru Peter Drucker is that culture eats strategy. It’s a truism that applies as much to conspiracies as it does to businesses. It doesn’t matter how great your plan is, it doesn’t matter who your people are, if what binds them all together is weak or toxic, so, too, will be the outcome—if you even get that far. But if the ties that bind you together are strong, if you have a sense of purpose and mission, you can withstand great trials.”

 

My Take

Conspiracy was a captivating page turner.  Even though you know how it ends, the book still manages to create a great deal of suspense and wonder as to how Thiel and Hogan are going to pull off a legal win.  While I had previously read Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday, I really preferred Conspiracy.  Holiday takes himself a bit too seriously at time, but he still manages to weave a compelling tale.

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376. The End of Work

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   John Tamny

Genre:  Nonfiction, Business

256 pages, published May 7, 2018

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

The End of Work, by free market economist John Tamny, is a very optimistic treatise on the future of work in the United States and around the world.  Tamny rejects the doomsday predictions that automization and globalization will take away your dream job.  Instead, he contends that the job market is only going to get better and better as a result of rapidly increasing prosperity which will free human beings to perform work that is fun, meaningful and personal.

Quotes 

“Capitalism cannot cause a financial crisis because capitalism is about markets constantly correcting errors. It is government intervention that can and often does cause crises,”

 

“An economy robbed of failure is also robbed of success, because failure provides knowledge about how to succeed. Failure is the healthy process whereby a poorly run entity is deprived of the ability to do more economic harm.”

 

“Failure is merely a harsh word for the experiences that animate the constant drive for self-improvement.”

“Taxes are the price we charge people to work, and that price affects where they work and whether they work at all.”

 

“The same is true for taxes. Politicians may raise the cost of work for their citizens, but if the cost is too high, those citizens won’t stick around to be fleeced, especially if they’re well to do. Like the car shoppers, they’ll go elsewhere.”

 

“Most people do not begin life on top. Politicians who raise income tax rates on top earners in the name of “fairness” are telling the strivers lower down that they will incur a penalty for succeeding.”

 

“Income inequality in a capitalist system is truly beautiful. It provides the incentive for creative people to gamble on new ideas, and it turns luxuries into common goods. Income inequality nurses sick companies back to health. It rewards hard work, talent, and achievement regardless of pedigree. And it’s a signal that some of the world’s worst problems will disappear in our lifetimes.”

 

My Take

The End of Work is a great book to read if you are a young person trying to figure out what you want to do with your life.  Indeed, after I finished reading it, I ordered a copy and sent it to my 21 year old son Nick who has recently graduated from college and, while working at a great job, is not passionate about his work.  Tamny’s advice is to go for your passion and you will be rewarded with an interesting and fulfilling career.

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360. Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:   Tammis and David Matzinger

Author:   John Carreyrou

Genre:  Non Fiction, Business, Crime, Science

339 pages, published May 21, 2018

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

Bad Blood is written by John Carreyrou, the Wall Street Journal reporter who broke the story of massive fraud and deception by Silicon Valley startup Theranos which was at one time valued at 9 billion dollars and whose board of directors included such luminaries as George Schulz, David Bois, David Mattis and Henry Kissinger.  Carreyrou tells the fascinating of Stanford drop out Elizabeth Holmes, who fancied herself as a female Steve Jobs, and her quest to revolutionize the lab testing business by making blood tests significantly faster and easier.   However, when the technology didn’t work, Theranos started down a path of deception, obfuscation and harassment of anyone bold enough to challenge them.

Quotes 

“A sociopath is often described as someone with little or no conscience. I’ll leave it to the psychologists to decide whether Holmes fits the clinical profile, but there’s no question that her moral compass was badly askew. I’m fairly certain she didn’t initially set out to defraud investors and put patients in harm’s way when she dropped out of Stanford fifteen years ago. By all accounts, she had a vision that she genuinely believed in and threw herself into realizing. But in her all-consuming quest to be the second coming of Steve Jobs amid the gold rush of the “unicorn” boom, there came a point when she stopped listening to sound advice and began to cut corners. Her ambition was voracious and it brooked no interference. If there was collateral damage on her way to riches and fame, so be it.” 

My Take

I first heard about Theranos when I watched a 60 minutes expose on Elizabeth Holmes.  That piqued my interest to read Bad Blood.  However, I had to wait for my husband Scot to finish it before I had a turn.  After I finished, my mom and stepdad breezed through it in short order.  What a fascinating, page turner!  An extremely compelling true story with lots of larger than life characters, plot twists and a morality tale.  Highly recommended.

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260. Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Adam Grant

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Business, Psychology, Self Improvement

326 pages, published February 2, 2016

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

In Originals, author Adam Grant studies different types of originality and explores how can to develop new ideas, policies, and practices while minimizing risk.  Grant relates anecdotes from the worlds of business, politics, sports, and entertainment and investigates how to recognize a good idea, speak up without getting silenced, build a coalition of allies, choose the right time to act, and manage fear and doubt.  He also discusses how parents and teachers can nurture originality in children and how leaders can build cultures that welcome dissent.

 

Quotes 

“Argue like you’re right and listen like you’re wrong.”

 

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world,” E. B. White once wrote. “This makes it difficult to plan the day.”

 

“To become original, you have to try something new, which means accepting some measure of risk.”

 

“If originals aren’t reliable judges of the quality of their ideas, how do they maximize their odds of creating a masterpiece? They come up with a large number of ideas. Simonton finds that on average, creative geniuses weren’t qualitatively better in their fields than their peers. They simply produced a greater volume of work, which gave them more variation and a higher chance of originality. “The odds of producing an influential or successful idea,” Simonton notes, are “a positive function of the total number of ideas generated.”

 

“Timing accounted for forty-two percent of the difference between success and failure.”

 

“Having a sense of security in one realm gives us the freedom to be original in another.”

 

“In the deepest sense of the word, a friend is someone who sees more potential in you than you see in yourself, someone who helps you become the best version of yourself.”

 

“Procrastination may be the enemy of productivity, but it can be a resource for creativity.”

 

“Overall, the evidence suggests that liking continues to increase as people are exposed to an idea between ten and twenty times, with additional exposure still useful for more complex ideas.”

 

“Being original doesn’t require being first. It just means being different and better.”

 

“Shapers” are independent thinkers: curious, non-conforming, and rebellious. They practice brutal, nonhierarchical honesty. And they act in the face of risk, because their fear of not succeeding exceeds their fear of failing.”

 

“If we communicate the vision behind our ideas, the purpose guiding our products, people will flock to us.”

 

“When we use the logic of consequence, we can always find reasons not to take risks.”

 

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”

 

“The least favorite students were the non-conformists who made up their own rules. Teachers tend to discriminate against highly creative students, labeling them as troublemakers.”

 

“This explains why we often undercommunicate our ideas. They’re already so familiar to us that we underestimate how much exposure an audience needs to comprehend and buy into them.”

 

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” George Bernard Shaw”

 

“People who suffer the most from a given state of affairs are paradoxically the least likely to question, challenge, reject, or change it.”

 

“Entrepreneurs who kept their day jobs had 33 percent lower odds of failure than those who quit. If you’re risk averse and have some doubts about the feasibility of your ideas, it’s likely that your business will be built to last. If you’re a freewheeling gambler, your startup is far more fragile. Like the Warby Parker crew, the entrepreneurs whose companies topped Fast Company’s recent most innovative lists typically stayed in their day jobs even after they launched. Former track star Phil Knight started selling running shoes out of the trunk of his car in 1964, yet kept working as an accountant until 1969. After inventing the original Apple I computer, Steve Wozniak started the company with Steve Jobs in 1976 but continued working full time in his engineering job at Hewlett-Packard until 1977. And although Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin figured out how to dramatically improve internet searches in 1996, they didn’t go on leave from their graduate studies at Stanford until 1998. “We almost didn’t start Google,” Page says, because we “were too worried about dropping out of our Ph.D. program.” In 1997, concerned that their fledgling search engine was distracting them from their research, they tried to sell Google for less than $2 million in cash and stock. Luckily for them, the potential buyer rejected the offer. This habit of keeping one’s day job isn’t limited to successful entrepreneurs. Many influential creative minds have stayed in full-time employment or education even after earning income from major projects. Selma director Ava DuVernay made her first three films while working in her day job as a publicist, only pursuing filmmaking full time after working at it for four years and winning multiple awards. Brian May was in the middle of doctoral studies in astrophysics when he started playing guitar in a new band, but he didn’t drop out until several years later to go all in with Queen. Soon thereafter he wrote “We Will Rock You.” Grammy winner John Legend released his first album in 2000 but kept working as a management consultant until 2002, preparing PowerPoint presentations by day while performing at night. Thriller master Stephen King worked as a teacher, janitor, and gas station attendant for seven years after writing his first story, only quitting a year after his first novel, Carrie, was published. Dilbert author Scott Adams worked at Pacific Bell for seven years after his first comic strip hit newspapers. Why did all these originals play it safe instead of risking it all?”

 

My Take

Not surprisingly, there were some original (and counterintuitive) ideas in Originals.  I was surprised to learn that many of the most successful entrepreneurs were people who kept their day jobs rather than throwing everything they had at their new idea.  It was also interesting to learn that the sheer volume of ideas created led to more original and viable outcomes (this is similar to the argument made by the author of Peak that geniuses are created rather than born).  While not super-compelling, there are some interesting ideas in Originals that are worth a read.

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249. Clean Disruption of Energy and Transportation: How Silicon Valley Will Make Oil, Nuclear, Natural Gas, Coal, Electric Utilities and Conventional Cars Obsolete by 2030

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:  Tony Seba

Genre:  Non Fiction, Science, Business, Public Policy

291 pages, published June 16, 2014

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

In Clean Disruption of Energy and Transportation, Silicon Valley Entrepreneur, Stanford Professor and Futurist Tony Seba writes about the coming disruption in energy and transportation.  With a plethora of facts and arguments, Seba sets forth his thesis that wind and solar will be the dominate form of energy within the next ten years and that electric, self driving cars will be ubiquitous.

 

Quotes 

“When the wind of change blows, some build walls, others build windmills.” – Chinese Proverb.”

 

“The solar virtuous cycle is in motion. The lower cost of solar leads to increased market adoption, and this, in turn, lowers the perceived risk and attracts more capital at a lower cost for capital. And this, in turn, lowers the cost of solar, which leads to increased market adoption, not to mention increased investment, more innovation, and even lower costs for capital. Once this virtuous cycle reaches critical mass, market growth will accelerate. Solar will become unstoppable and the incumbents will be disrupted.”

 

“The information technology revolution was not brought about only by the miniaturization of technologies. This was a transition from a supplier-centric, centralized information model to a user-centric, participatory information model.”

 

“The age of centralized, command-and-control, extraction-resource-based energy sources (oil, gas, coal and nuclear) will not end because we run out of petroleum, natural gas, coal, or uranium. It will end because these energy sources, the business models they employ, and the products that sustain them will be disrupted by superior technologies, product architectures, and business models. Compelling new technologies such as solar, wind, electric vehicles, and autonomous (self-driving) cars will disrupt and sweep away the energy industry as we know it.”

 

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

 

My Take

I saw Technology Disruption expert Tony Seba give the keynote speech for the 2018 Conference on World Affairs in Boulder, Colorado and was intrigued by his predictions (backed up by facts) that we were rapidly transitioning to solar energy, as well as electric, self driving cars because the transition is compelling from an economic point of view.  At the the Conference, Seba was well received by both the left (solar and electric cars are huge in the climate change battle) and the right (climate change will be addressed by the market, not by a big government solution).  If this topic interests you, check out his talk or, if you want to go deeper, then read this book.  He’s convinced me.  My next house will be solar and my next car is likely to be electric.

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Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Katy Fassett

Author:  Bill Browder

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Memoir, History, Foreign, Politics, Business

380 pages, published February 3, 2015

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Red Notice is a real-life political thriller memoir written by American businessman Bill Browder who made multi-millions investing in Russia in the early days after the Berlin Wall came down.  After the Russians started to target Browder and his Hermitage Fund, his attorney Sergei Magnitsky was ruthlessly jailed and murdered by the Kremlin.  Browder then led an effort to expose the corruption inside Russia and obtain justice for Sergei.

 

Quotes 

“Seventy years of communism had destroyed the work ethic of an entire nation. Millions of Russians had been sent to the gulags for showing the slightest hint of personal initiative. The Soviets severely penalized independent thinkers, so the natural self-preservation reaction was to do as little as possible and hope that nobody would notice you.”

 

“I arrived in the late afternoon at Saint Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport. I stared out of my window as the plane taxied to the terminal and was astonished to see the burned-out carcass of an Aeroflot passenger plane lying on the side of the runway. I had no idea how it had gotten there. Apparently it was too much of a bother for the airport authorities to have it moved. Welcome to Russia.”

 

“There’s a famous Russian proverb about this type of behavior. One day, a poor villager happens upon a magic talking fish that is ready to grant him a single wish. Overjoyed, the villager weighs his options: “Maybe a castle? Or even better—a thousand bars of gold? Why not a ship to sail the world?” As the villager is about to make his decision, the fish interrupts him to say that there is one important caveat: whatever the villager gets, his neighbor will receive two of the same. Without skipping a beat, the villager says, “In that case, please poke one of my eyes out.”

 

“After Khodorkovsky was found guilty, most of Russia’s oligarchs went one by one to Putin and said, ‘Vladimir Vladimirovich, what can I do to make sure I won’t end up sitting in a cage?’ I wasn’t there, so I’m only speculating, but I imagine Putin’s response was something like this: ‘Fifty per cent.”

 

“The imagination is a horrible thing when it’s preoccupied with exactly how someone might try to kill you.”

 

“This whole exercise was teaching me that Russian business culture is closer to that of a prison yard than anything else. In prison, all you have is your reputation. Your position is hard-earned and it is not relinquished easily. When someone is crossing the yard coming for you, you cannot stand idly by. You have to kill him before he kills you. If you don’t, and if you manage to survive the attack, you’ll be deemed weak and before you know it, you will have lost your respect and become someone’s bitch. This is the calculus that every oligarch and every Russian politician goes through every day.”

 

“While Putin expected a bad reaction from the United States, he had no idea what kind of hornet’s nest he’d stirred up in his own country. One can criticize Russians for many things, but their love of children isn’t one of them. Russia is one of the only countries in the world where you can take a screaming child into a fancy restaurant and no one will give you a second look. Russians simply adore children.”

 

“Early in this book, I said that the feeling I got from buying a Polish stock that went up ten times was the best thing to ever happen to me in my career. But the feeling I had on that balcony in Brussels with Sergei’s widow and son, as we watched the largest lawmaking body in Europe recognize and condemn the injustices suffered by Sergei and his family, felt orders of magnitude better than any financial success I’ve ever had. If finding a ten bagger in the stock market was a highlight of my life before, there is no feeling as satisfying as getting some measure of justice in a highly unjust world.”

 

“This was not what they wanted to hear because ever since Barack Obama had become president in 2009, the main policy of the US government toward Russia had been one of appeasement.”

 

My Take

Author Bill Browder knows how to tell a compelling tale and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the audio version of Red Notice.  The first half of the book takes you through his interesting childhood.  His Grandfather ran for President of the United States representing the Communist Party and his parents were both Socialists.  Browder rebelled by going into business with the aim of making as much money as possible.  He was able to do this by capitalizing on unique opportunities in Eastern Europe and then Russia.  During the second half of the book, the Russian government turned on Browder and killed his attorney, the idealistic Sergei Magnitsky.  Browder then recounts his pursuit of justice against Vladimir Putin and his henchmen in honor of Sergei.  A captivating read from start to finish.

 

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218. The Art of People: 11 Simple People Skills That Will Get You Everything You Want

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Author:  Dave Kerpen

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Business, Self Improvement, Psychology

288 pages, March15, 2016

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

In The Art of People, author Dave Kerpen provides straightforward, sensible advice in pithy chapters laced with relevant anecdotes.  His focus is on building relationships and truly understanding and connecting with your colleagues, customers, and partners.  He covers ideas such as:

  • The single most important question you can ever ask to win attention in a meeting
  • The one simple key to networking that nobody talks about
  • How to remain top of mind for thousands of people, everyday
  • Why it usually pays to be the one to give the bad news
  • How to blow off the right people
  • And why, when in doubt, buy him a Bonsai

 

Quotes 

“However, when you’re accountable to too many people, it’s like being accountable to no one. Thus, the best scenario is to find one accountability partner who can help you and whom you can help.”

 

“The problem with sharing accomplishments on social media (aka bragging), however, is there’s no tone or body language to help convey your meaning, and that means it’s very easy for people to lose the context and not get your intention right.”

 

“After conducting years of research on the most effective and least effective traits of leaders, Bell advised leaders to “listen like children watch TV.”

 

“People in general don’t want advice even when they ask for it. They just want to feel heard.”

 

“There’s no better way to show that you care about the person you’re meeting with than to genuinely, authentically ask her what you can do to help.”

 

“It’s not my job to teach you. It’s your job to learn. I’m just here to coach you along the way,” Doc would say to us on a typical day. He was one part teacher, one part coach, and one part cheerleader—always positive, helpful, and encouraging.”

 

“Many people are so afraid to get a “no” that they don’t ask for a “yes.” The ironic thing here is that they’re virtually guaranteeing getting a “no” by not asking for a “yes.”

 

My Take

The Art of People is a modern update of the classic How to Win Friends and Influence People, which I found to be an extremely useful book.  Like that classic how-to, The Art of People contains numerous tips and sound advice on how to interact with others in a genuine way to create win-win situations.  Some of it is common sense, but there were enough new suggestions for me to recommend this book.

 

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208. Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Author:   Simon Sinek

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Psychology, Business, Self Improvement

256 pages, published October 29, 2009

Reading Format:  Audio Book on Hoopla

 

Summary

In his bestselling book Start with Why, Simon Sinek explores the question of why  some people and organizations are more innovative, influential, and profitable than others.   Why do some command greater loyalty from both their customers and employees? Why are so few able to repeat their success continuously?  Sinek answers these questions by developing the thesis that successful people and organizations start with “why” rather than “what” or “how.”  Why is not money or profit; those are always results.  Why does your organization exist?  Why does it do the things it does?  Why do customers really buy from one company or another?  Why are people loyal to some leaders, but not others?  As evidentiary support for his idea, Sinek profiles individuals Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Jobs, Gandhi and the Wright Brothers and organizations Apple, Starbucks, and Southwest Airlines.

 

Quotes 

“People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe.”

 

“Leadership requires two things: a vision of the world that does not yet exist and the ability to communicate it.”

 

“There are only two ways to influence human behavior: you can manipulate it or you can inspire it.

 

“Very few people or companies can clearly articulate WHY they do WHAT they do. By WHY I mean your purpose, cause or belief – WHY does your company exist? WHY do you get out of bed every morning? And WHY should anyone care?”

 

“We are drawn to leaders and organizations that are good at communicating what they believe. Their ability to make us feel like we belong, to make us feel special, safe and not alone is part of what gives them the ability to inspire us.”

 

“For values or guiding principles to be truly effective they have to be verbs. It’s not “integrity,” it’s “always do the right thing.” It’s not “innovation,” it’s “look at the problem from a different angle.” Articulating our values as verbs gives us a clear idea – we have a clear idea of how to act in any situation.”

 

“Happy employees ensure happy customers. And happy customers ensure happy shareholders—in that order.”

 

“Leading is not the same as being the leader.  Being the leader means you hold the highest rank, either by earning it, good fortune or navigating internal politics.  Leading, however, means that others willingly follow you—not because they have to, not because they are paid to, but because they want to.”

 

“Some in management positions operate as if they are in a tree of monkeys. They make sure that everyone at the top of the tree looking down sees only smiles.  But all too often, those at the bottom looking up see only asses.”

 

“You don’t hire for skills, you hire for attitude. You can always teach skills.”

 

“Great companies don’t hire skilled people and motivate them, they hire already motivated people and inspire them.  People are either motivated or they are not.  Unless you give motivated people something to believe in, something bigger than their job to work toward, they will motivate themselves to find a new job and you’ll be stuck with whoever’s left.”

 

“Trust is maintained when values and beliefs are actively managed.  If companies do not actively work to keep clarity, discipline and consistency in balance, then trust starts to break down.”

 

“All organizations start with WHY, but only the great ones keep their WHY clear year after year.”

 

“The role of a leader is not to come up with all the great ideas. The role of a leader is to create an environment in which great ideas can happen.”

 

“When you compete against everyone else, no one wants to help you.  But when you compete against yourself, everyone wants to help you.”

 

“All organizations start with WHY, but only the great ones keep their WHY clear year after year. Those who forget WHY they were founded show up to the race every day to outdo someone else instead of to outdo themselves. The pursuit, for those who lose sight of WHY they are running the race, is for the medal or to beat someone else.”

 

“Great leaders and great organizations are good at seeing what most of us can’t see. They are good at giving us things we would never think of asking for.”

 

“Working hard for something we do not care about is called stress, working hard for something we love is called passion.”

 

“Henry Ford summed it up best. “If I had asked people what they wanted,” he said, “they would have said a faster horse.”

 

“Charisma has nothing to do with energy; it comes from a clarity of WHY. It comes from absolute conviction in an ideal bigger than oneself. Energy, in contrast, comes from a good night’s sleep or lots of caffeine. Energy can excite. But only charisma can inspire. Charisma commands loyalty. Energy does not.”

 

“Put bluntly, the struggle that so many companies have to differentiate or communicate their true value to the outside world is not a business problem, it’s a biology problem. And just like a person struggling to put her emotions into words, we rely on metaphors, imagery and analogies in an attempt to communicate how we feel. Absent the proper language to share our deep emotions, our purpose, cause or belief, we tell stories. We use symbols. We create tangible things for those who believe what we believe to point to and say, “That’s why I’m inspired.” If done properly, that’s what marketing, branding and products and services become; a way for organizations to communicate to the outside world. Communicate clearly and you shall be understood.”

 

“If the leader of the organization can’t clearly articulate WHY the organization exists in terms beyond its products or services, then how does he expect the employees to know WHY to come to work?”

 

“There are only two ways to influence human behavior: you can manipulate it or you can inspire it.”

 

“Studies show that over 80 percent of Americans do not have their dream job. If more knew how to build organizations that inspire, we could live in a world in which that statistic was the reverse – a world in which over 80 percent of people loved their jobs. People who love going to work are more productive and more creative. They go home happier and have happier families. They treat their colleagues and clients and customers better. Inspired employees make for stronger companies and stronger economies.”

 

“Innovation is not born from the dream, innovation is born from the struggle.”

 

My Take

Start With Why is a fascinating and inspiring book that explores how “why” we do something is so much more important than “how” or “what” we do.  While it is geared towards businesses, I found Simon Sinek’s principles translated to individuals.  We should all have a “why” in our lives, otherwise we will get to the end and wonder if our time here on earth was the most it could be.  For me, my why is “to live a full, connected and meaningful life with no regrets.”  Everything I do should flow from that “why.”  I highly recommend this book, especially if you have a business.

 

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