The Andromeda Strain

I liked this sci-fi book, The Andromeda Strain, by Michael Crichton (who also wrote Jurassic Park) as it’s a short book that explores a new idea in a novel way. The book is about an extraterrestrial virus/life-form that they have to study to know how to deal with it. There is enough tension in the book, enough good thinking, and some good science. The conversation/writing isn’t the best ever but still very decent. Here is some more from Wikipedia.

“The Andromeda Strain is a 1969 techno-thriller novel by Michael Crichton documenting the efforts of a team of scientists investigating the outbreak of a deadly extraterrestrial microorganism in Arizona.

A military satellite returns to Earth. Aerial surveillance reveals that everyone in Piedmont, Arizona, the town closest to where the satellite landed, is apparently dead. The duty officer of the base tasked with retrieving the satellite suspects that it returned with extraterrestrial contamination and recommends activating Wildfire, a protocol for a government-sponsored team intended to contain threats of this nature.

The team of scientists believes the satellite, which was intentionally designed to capture upper-atmosphere microorganisms for bio-weapon exploitation, returned with a deadly microorganism that kills by nearly instantaneous disseminated intravascular coagulation (lethal blood clotting). Upon investigating the town, the Wildfire team discovers that the residents either died in mid-stride or went “quietly nuts” and committed bizarre suicides. Two Piedmont inhabitants—the sick, Sterno-addicted, geriatric Peter Jackson and the constantly bawling infant Jamie Ritter—are biological opposites who somehow survived the organism… etc”

Writing That Works

“If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; If what is said is not what is meant, then what ought to be done remains undone.” – Confucius

Lessons learnt: First things, first. Keep it simple – keep your audience on target. Write with a purpose. And the lessons learnt in writing are as relevant in presentations, talks, emails, and so forth.

Improve your writing, make it easier and give yourself a confidence boost. That is what the back of Writing That Works by Kenneth Roman and Joep Raphaelson promises – and they deliver. In less than 200 pages they take the reader on a journey along the basics of effective writing. First, they tackle the most common mistakes we all make, like mumbling, writing too difficult, or non-specific. After that the book tackles specific areas such as writing for audiences, writing a report that makes things happen, and how to write a resume. If you want to know how to communicate effectively (in business), then this book may be something for you!

“Write. Rewrite. When not writing or rewriting, read. I know of no shortcuts.” – Larry King

Writing That Works was originally written on a typing machine. Still many of the chapters remain virtually unchanged. One that has been added is on writing an email. The authors show that they can get along with Generation X and provide some very useful tips on how to approach this constant distraction we have to deal with:

1. Limit the number of copies (i.e. do not copy unneeded persons on your e-mail)
2. Discuss ideas face to face (and prevent endless conversation threads)
3. Email only when it contains a) relevant new information, b) agrees to a request, c) responds to a question, or d) asks a question or makes a request

The chapter on writing for an audience is very illuminating. One thing to keep in mind is that your reader will always have a limited amount of time and will have other (non-congruent) motives than you. With that in mind Roman and Raphaelson state the following “Decks are a reality, the business tool that gets things done.” A presentation deck should be your tool of choice. It is best to follow this flow of logic: 1) objective, 2) background, 3) facts, 4) conclusions, 5) recommendations, 6) next steps. Consultants may argue to reverse 5, 4 and 3 and luckily the Pyramid Principle (by Barbara Minto, McKinsey) is discussed “The easiest order is to receive the major, more abstract ideas before the minor, supporting ones. And since the major ideas are always derived from the minor ones, the ideal structure of the ideas will always be a pyramid of groups of ideas tied together by a single overall thought.”

Along the chapters, the reader is informed of more specific concepts and general principles are applied to actionable areas. One of these is in writing your CV: the test of what to include is as simple as it is powerful – 1) Is it relevant? 2) Is it true? I myself would like to add a third question – 3) Is it consequent? In the last chapter, the art of making things easily readable is explained. Things like headings, casing and using white space are all explained. All in all the book features great tips and techniques that even the most experienced writer can make use of. A book on writing is important, but not very urgent.

Animal Farm

“Four legs good, two legs bad.”  – George Orwell

Lessons learnt: Without proper checks and balances leadership will always corrupt. A common cause unites. The collective memory is really short, and without language (knowing the right arguments/words) opposition is futile.

Imagine a world where animals can talk. Imagine a world where pigs start a revolution and take over a farm. Imagine a world where the pig’s initial promises and rules are twisted and turned for their own promotion and the domination over the rest of the farm. If you are like me, you might think the first two are for children’s books and that the latter is as plausible as can be. It is sad to realize that the story told in Animal Farm by George Orwell is one that has repeated itself throughout history so many times. At the same time, it also conveys some of the best qualities mankind has.

To give here a summary of the book would not be correct, it is only very short and is easily read in a couple of hours. Much more important, and interesting, is the message(s) it tries to convey. Written in 1945, it leans heavily on the events that happened in (and before) the Second World War. One of the pigs (named Napoleon) is said to represent Stalin and the actions he took in his life. Where he first overthrows the ruthless leader (the farmer), he later becomes corrupted himself. To cover his (and the rest of the leadership – read: communistic government) tracks, the rules (the 7 Commandments) are changed. This is something that we think of happening a long time ago, but when you hear of Russian government officials changing the Wikipedia page of the MH-17 crash, you start wondering if this is really in the past.

“Four legs good, two legs better! All Animals Are Equal. But Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others.” – George Orwell

 

Forbidden until 1989 in the Eastern Bloc, Animal Farm shows how strongly people believe in their own ideas and their right to only broadcast their ideologies. Everyone who is reading Animal Farm should be happy to live in a system where these kinds of things are not happening anymore, and if not to strive to make your country better and use it to recognize where things can go wrong. The book, however, is not for everyone. It requires your attention and you need to be aware of the history the analogies are about. I do believe that it is worth the few hours of reading and then please read some more about it.

Good to Great

“Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice, and discipline.” – Jim Collins

Five years after Built to Last (Jim Collins and Jerry Porras) Jim Collins is back with another extensive research on leadership, management and a basic how to run your company. This time the focus is shifted from the large corporations that have stood the test of time. He now looks at how to become great and stop being ‘merely’ good. Using a very large set of data (1,435 companies) and narrowing it down to 10 great and 10 good companies, the research is not something you can easily ignore. It is a great read and will definitely give you some food for thought!

In the first chapter ‘good’ is portrayed as the enemy of ‘great’. To transfer from the former to the latter he states you should succeed in three areas: 1) disciplined people, 2) disciplined thought, and 3) disciplined action. The first sign of these is found in the second chapter. Level 5 leadership is defined and examined. Level 5 leaders are not the people that usually make the cover of magazines, nor are they the ones that boss around people with great efficiency. They are the people that have the unusual mix of intense determination and profound humility.

5 – Executive – Building enduring greatness through a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will

4 – Effective Leader – Catalyzes commitment to and vigorous pursuit of a clear and compelling vision, stimulating higher performance standards

3 – Competent Manager – Organizes people and resources toward the effective and efficient pursuit of predetermined objectives

2 – Contributing Team Member – Contributes individual capabilities to the achievement of group objectives and works effectively with others in a group setting

1 – Highly Capable Individual – Makes productive contributions through talent, knowledge, skills, and good work habits[/toggle]

Another key concept in Good to Great is ‘first who, then what‘. Only with the right people, in the right place, you can truly achieve greatness. This may mean you need to sacrifice in the short-term, having to hire only the very best can take much longer than taking a suitable candidate. Removing employees from positions where they feel comfortable – but are not actively contributing to your company – can also be a tough thing to do. In the long-term, however, Collins argues it can save you time, effort, and resources.

Doing many things well is good, it is something you may even make a profit with. Doing one thing great (The One Thing), however, makes for a much more compelling story. Collins names this the hedgehog concept. For this he compared the strategy of a fox – who can attack the hedgehog via 100 different strategies – to the hedgehog – who just rolls up. It is about doing one thing better than anyone in the world. To find what your hedgehog concept is Collins proposes three criteria: Determine what you can be best in the world at and what you cannot be best in the world at; 2) Determine what drives your economic engine; and 3) Determine what you are deeply passionate about.

Growing your business can be seen as pushing a log along a road. It is a hard thing to do, but once you get started it can keep on rolling. The flywheel concept is about making this push easier. It is about getting more people behind the log, making the road smoother, rolling along a decline, etc.. Reducing resistance and improving your capability to make your company grow. Many companies, however, do not embrace this thought and keep pushing uphill, get other to push back or push a log that is actually still a three. The flywheel concept turns the hedgehog competencies into positive momentum.

“Visionary companies pursue a cluster of objectives, of which making money is only one—and not necessarily the primary one.” – Jim Collins

In the rest of the book, other concepts are also mentioned. Collins speaks about discipline, technology, confronting the brutal facts, and more. All together they outline a few key things any company should adhere to. With many years of research and as a leading management consultant, Jim Collins has quite the reputation going for him. In Good to Great, he proves his knowledgeability and teaches about how to become a great company. Written five years after Built to Last, it actually features as a prequel, but both books can easily be read independently.

The 80/20 Principle

I just finished reading The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Achieving More with Less by Richard Koch.

The main premise of the book is that 80% of outcomes are produced by 20% of causes. The most common example is that 80% of sales come from 20% of your clients. A more novel example is that 20% of a carpet gets walked on 80% of the time (which one company capitalized on by renting out tiles and reusing the good 80%).

The book can be highly recommended. Not every chapter might be as relevant for yourself, but even this Koch anticipates. He states that you should skip around the book to the parts that are for you.

What I find the most useful is the change in mindset that you have to go through. Not 50% of your activities lead to 50% of your outcomes. You should see your efforts as a logarithmic line, most of the outcomes are from a small part of the time/efforts. What you need to do is identify which are your most productive activities, which ones are least/counter-productive and try to maximize the first and eliminate the second.

Lazy Intelligent

In one of the later chapters, Koch comes up with a novel classification of (working)people. He divides them in lazy vs. hardworking, and dumb vs. intelligent. He states that the most productive people are the lazy intelligent. These are the people who are working in an area in which they know much (have expertise) and will do their best to eliminate all the tasks that they are not perfectly suited for. What I like about his definition is that intelligence is not used as a static term, he states that everyone is intelligent, you just need to work in the area in which you are smart.

The best example of this comes from one of the reviews that is featured in the last chapter of the book. It’s from a person who is now the leader of a school programme that helps children with learning disabilities. The teacher himself sometimes takes hours to find his car in the parking lot or forgets where he leaves things around the house. He himself has trouble with his memory. But he understood this in an early stage. Therefore he delegated all tasks that are remotely related to memorizing things and focus on building the programme from a leadership position (his intelligence).

Question of the day: What is your 20% time and how can spend more time there?

The One Thing

“What’s the ONE Thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”

Let me stick to the philosophy of the book and just quote this one sentence. Here is some more from Wikipedia:

This second section of the book deals with productivity principles like habit-building and benchmarking. For instance, the book suggests that readers should engage in four hours of work on their “ONE thing” each day. The authors cite economist Vilfredo Pareto as one of the inspirations behind this philosophy. Pareto’s principle suggested that 20% of the effort produces 80% of the results (see The 80/20 Principle). According to the book, this means that engaging in the one most important task will be more likely to produce the desired results without any extraneous effort. The book also differentiates between the Big-Picture Question (“What’s my ONE Thing?”) and the Small-Focus Question (“What’s my ONE Thing right now?”). The core idea is that focusing on an excessive amount of tasks will more likely lead to discord and under-performance.

One to read again some day!

Think Simple

“Simplicity is arguably the most potent weapon in business—attracting customers, motivating employees, helping outthink competitors, and creating new efficiencies. Yet rarely is it as simple as it looks.”

It has been a while that I listened to this book but I remember it not being the best ever. With the memory of now and by reading some other reviews, I think the book was too long and I think you’re better helped by books like The One Thing and The 80/20 Principle.

Getting Things Done

What if you could get more done? What if your plans could become a reality without having to wait for years? What if you could free up your mind for important things and store your worries/to-do’s etc, somewhere else? This is what Getting Things Done (GTD) is all about.

GTD is a book for the people that like to make lists, and who would want to get their lives more organised. The process aims to clear your mind, see what’s on your plate and make it easy to decide what to do next. The end goal is to make you work on the most important things (only).

GTD is an organisational system. It’s built on five pillars (or principles).

1. Capture everything – Write down (digitally) everything that comes up. From to-do’s to brain farts, get it on paper and out of your head.
2. Clarify the things you have to do – break everything down into SMART goals. Don’t say “I want to get bread”, better say “Tomorrow at noon I will get one whole grain bread at John’s Bakery”.
3. Organize your actionables by category and priority – put a date on things, reminders, calendar notes, etc.
4. Reflect on your to-do list – see what’s next, and periodically reflect if your priorities are still in the right order.
5. Engage and get to work – choose your next action, and do it.

These pillars are the basis of GTD. You are probably already doing (some of) these steps without having even heard of the GTD method. What GTD brings to the table is a reminder of working with a system and useful tips & tricks on how to best make use of such a system.

Getting Things Done is a useful way to get your life organized. The full system is not for everyone, but I do believe it has something to offer for everyone.

The One Minute Manager

“The best minute I spend is the one I invest in people.” – Ken Blanchard

Lessons learnt: Set goals and check if your behaviour matches it. Catch someone doing something right. Be specific in your reprimands.

Managing people can be overwhelming. Sometimes you are faced with questions about motivation. At other times you are asked to give a critique. And in the end, it may all be an overwhelming experience. The One Minute Manager is the perfect book for the starting manager. It features simple lessons, sticks with one story and does not bother with difficult explanations or hefty theoretical basis. At the same time this is its weakness and for further lessons in leadership please consult some other classics like The Effective Executive.

The story in The One Minute Manager follows a man who wants to work for (and eventually become) a great manager. In the second chapter, we meet this man. He is quick with his words, does not repeat himself and seems to have it all figured it out. At the end of the meeting between the two characters, he corrects the visitor one last time. When thanked for giving him answers he replies “I did not, you solved it yourself. I just asked questions”. In fact, here lies the first lesson of the book, enable other people to think, to take command and become less reliant on you.

In the book three things are discussed: 1) goals, 2) praisings, and 3) reprimands. Here is a summary of the lessons on praising:

1. Tell people up front that you are going to let them know how they are doing
2. Praise people immediately
3. Tell people what they did right – be specific

There are 4 more points, but I leave it to you to go and read those. As with more management books, the lessons may seem generic and too simplistic. At the same time, I believe that more people do not exhibit behaviour that reflects these lessons and that mastering them will be hard – for any executive.

“Take a minute: look at your goals, look at your performance, see if your behavior matches your goals.” – Ken Blanchard

 

After the one or two hours, it takes you to read the book, you are left 50% satisfied. As with the ‘questions’ mentioned above, the book does not tell you how to go about and implement the lessons mentioned. Of course, we can think for ourselves and it is up to you to go and become an effective executive.

The Miracle of Self-Discipline

This one of the (small) books that Brian Tracy has written. I guess that it’s good to learn these things when you start with goal-setting. But please read Triggers instead. I believe that it’s about building the right systems and that self-discipline as a skill or as a mental habit that you can will into existence is overrated.

Seeing the points below I do think that most are valid and with only about 1,5 hours of audiobook, he doesn’t beat around the bush.

Here are some points from another review:

Nine disciplines:
1. Clear-thinking
*** Fast decisions are usually wrong decisions
*** Chunk off large amounts of time for thinking
*** Think on paper; write it all out
*** Wisdom = Experience + Reflection (Confucius)
*** Keep your thinking open

2. Daily Goal-Setting
*** Focus and concentration are indispensable to success
*** If you cannot focus and concentrate, then you will have to work for someone else… who will make you focus and concentrate, who will supervise you.
*** Never work on less than 10 goals per year.
*** Write these goals in a spiral notebook every morning and reprogram your mind every day.

3. Daily Planning
*** Every minute spent in planning saves 10 minutes in execution
*** Just keep working your plan
*** Discipline yourself not to do things of low-value
*** Daily eliminate/delegate any task which does not have serious consequences that only you can do
*** Start your A-1 task first every morning and stay with it until that task is done

4. Courage
*** Force yourself to do what you know you should do
*** Practice courage whenever courage is required

5. Excellent Health
*** Start off with a clear picture of your perfect body
*** Exercise every day

6. Saving & Investing
*** “Compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe.” – Albert Einstein
*** 2/3 of success in investing and business is avoiding making mistakes

7. Hard work
*** Work all the time you work. Don’t waste a single minute.

8. Continuous Learning
*** Read in your field daily
*** The more you learn, the more you earn

9. Persistence
*** Drive yourself forward to complete your tasks 100%
*** Persistence is self-discipline in action
*** “Persistence is to the character of a man like carbon is to steel.” – Napolean Hill
*** Your persistence is your measure of your belief in yourself.