Quiet

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Cannot Stop Talking by Susan Cain reflects strongly on our Western ideals. It successfully challenges the assumption that extraversion equals success. In her bestselling book, Cain argues for a more reflective and thoughtful world. About a third to half of the people in the world are introverts but are often overlooked according to Cain. Although the book takes some time to really take of it, it should be the next on your list, both for introverts and extroverts alike.

Beginning this review, it should be stated that Cain takes a quite liberal view of introversion. She both combines definitions from the MBTI and OCEAN (FFM, Big Five) but also includes characteristics that are related to the concept of sensitivity. She argues that introverts are people who need less stimulation to be aroused, and are therefore uncomfortable in large groups and open-plan workspaces. Throughout the book, she uses many examples (both anecdotal and research papers) to demonstrate the effects she describes. In this particular case, she explains that most technical innovations have come forth at moments when introverted geniuses worked all night long, totally alone. Noted should be that she acknowledges that one should have a stimulating environment, but maybe not all the time.

A large part of the book is dedicated to disproving the extrovert ideal. Cain states that people who are the first to speak up, are in fact not the smartest (there is actually no correlation). In our culture we have come to respect people who speak up more and more. In a study into minorities in America, she finds that they find it hard to make promotion or to be taken seriously. Chinese Americans for instance, believe that you only should speak up when you definitively know something. Americans (and Dutch alike) are more prone to speak whatever comes to mind. As most psychology research finds, a careful combination of both worlds is probably the best. To maybe first think about what you know and report accordingly.

The introversion-extraversion spectrum is, according to Cain, as much a core of our identity as our gender. It affects the people we choose to be with, the kinds of environments we find ourselves in, and the way we resolve conflicts. As an integral part of our lives, it is useful to reflect on your own style. It is not that one is better than the other, it is just that they both require another way of expressing yourself. Maybe you love to have small talk with many people (extrovert) or you rather talk philosophy with one person (introvert), both are excellent ways of expressing the true you.

Cain ends with (or rather argues throughout the whole book) that we should take introversion more serious. We are to look more towards the true value of people, not how loudly they speak. The setup of the book may be a reflection of this style. In the beginning it takes some time to take of, it misses a certain catchiness to grab the reader. But when you have committed yourself to the book, you will be pleasantly surprised by the richness of its content.

The Book:

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Cannot Stop Talking – Susan Cain – ISBN-10: 9780307352156 | ISBN-13: 978-0307352156

More on Quiet:

http://www.thepowerofintroverts.com/about-the-book/ – About Quiet

http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_cain_the_power_of_introverts.html – TED Talk by Susan Cain

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/mar/22/quiet-power-introverts-susan-cain-review – Review by The Guardian

http://dapschronicles.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/quiet-the-power-of-introverts-in-a-world-that-cant-stop-talking-susan-cain.pdf – PDF of Quiet

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140218125055-69244073-5-myths-about-introverts-and-extraverts-at-work – Adam Grant on 5 Myths about Introversion

The Human Factor

The Human Factor; Revolutionizing the Way We Live with Technology by Kim Vicente is one of those books that excel at explaining something very difficult and technical in laymen terms. As our world grows more and more technically entangled Vicente looks at the way we can integrate technology and design. His book The Human Factor is a beautiful insight into the mechanisms behind the technological world. The book covers exciting (and dangerous) fields like nuclear installations, and also more accessible systems like cockpit designs, hospital machines and even the design of your stove. It is a book that will stay relevant for many years to come.

Technology is mostly designed by engineers and other technical staff. Push-buttons are put together on basis of the shortest distance between cables and are designed to the cheapest classifications possible. This is what Vicente (successfully) tries to counter. He argues that in a technological-driven world we should look at how we can use it, not at how it is made in the cheapest way possible. One excellent example is the redesign of the cockpit. At first, all buttons were the same, and a pilot had to remember every function by heart. Nowadays it is much easier to fly a plane, every control has its own characteristics. The landing gear feels like wheels, the throttle is something you have to push forward, and all other functions have their distinct feeling.

Vicente does an excellent job in explaining that we need to look at the functionality of technology. Through design, we can adjust technology to match with our mental capabilities. In critical situations, it is important to incorporate double-checks. In a situation where there are lots of functionalities, each should be distinct from the others. Intuition is a vital part of how we deal with technology. This is reflected in the design of a stove; something that has yet to be implemented. Vicente states that we should lower the two right pitches just a little bit to validate that the controls are for top-left, bottom-left, top-right, bottom-right. The Human Factor emphasizes that technology should be designed to fit our thinking patterns, not the other way around.

Kim Vicente has been hailed by TIME magazine as one of the 25 Canadians under 40 who will reshape Canada. He is the Hunsaker Distinguished Visiting Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT and has been a consultant at NASA, NATO, Honeywell, and Microsoft, among others. His work in Human Factor Engineering has transformed the sector and has made the topic more accessible to the general public. The topics covered in The Human Factor range from toothbrushes to nuclear reactors, and enlighten the reader on all things related to Human Factors.

Related: The Design of Everyday Things (TBD)

The Book:

The Human Factor; Revolutionizing the Way We Live with Technology – Kim Vicente – ISBN-10: 0676974902 | ISBN-13: 978-0676974904

More on The Human Factor:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_factors_and_ergonomics – Wiki on Human Factors (and the related Ergonomics)

http://www.humanfactors.com/home/usability.asp – Human Factors organization

http://medicalhumanfactors.net/what-is-hfe – What is Human Factor Engineering

What Money Can’t Buy

What Money Can’t Buy; The Moral Limits of Markets by Michael Sandel is the second masterpiece by the renowned Harvard professor. In a world driven by capitalism, he urges us to reflect on the morality of money. He asks what we can or cannot buy with money, and where we have to draw the line.

Nowadays we can pay for someone to stand in line for us. We can pay extra to have a doctor stand ready for us within minutes instead of months. And we can pay extra to sit in the sky-box at the next game of our favourite teams. With money, we can get a competitive advantage over others, but is this morally justifiable?

Sandel argues that money has had a negative effect on many social interactions. Were we once all on the same level when going to a baseball game, now the bankers and lawyers sit in their sky-boxes and the blue collar worker sits in the rain down below. One other example is that of a Springsteen concert. Sandel argues that they can easily charge much more for the (always sold out) concert. But the philosophy of Springsteen is to have the concerts available for everyone, and not only the people who can afford it.

Markets have also infiltrated other aspects of our normal lives. Incentives for reading books have been monetized. But by giving kids the reward of money, their incentive will become extrinsic, and lose its intrinsic value. Further on in the book, Sandel argues how markets crowd out morals, how markets work in life and death, and naming rights. All of these topics make you think hard about the difference between practicality, capitalism and morality.

The book does an excellent job of giving you the tools to ponder the examples. It lets you think about the morality of choices and how you think people should act. Sandel does in no way give his own opinion on the topics discussed and allows you yourself to judge (like he does in his previous book, Justice). Anyone interested in the morals of markets, or just morals in everyday life should read the book.

The Book: What Money Can’t Buy; The Moral Limits of Markets – Michael Sandel – ISBN-10: 0374533652 | ISBN-13: 978-0374533656

More on What Money Can’t Buy:

https://floriswolswijk.com/justice/ – Michael Sandel’s book on Justice Review

http://www.justiceharvard.org/about/about-what-money-cant-buy/ – Site of the book

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvDpYHyBlgc – Michael Sandel on What Money Can’t Buy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBdfcR-8hEY – The legendary course on Justice (taped in 2005)

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/may/17/what-money-cant-buy-michael-sandel-review – Review of What Money Can’t Buy

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/04/what-isnt-for-sale/308902/ – Michael Sandel in The Atlantic

Nudge

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein teaches you all there is to know about choice architecture. With the use of excellent, real world, examples the power of choice architecture is displayed. In the book, both authors also give compelling arguments for libertarian paternalism. A comprehensive read on how choice architecture defines our everyday choices.

The book starts with an introduction about the way choice architecture works. A common paradigm that is used consists of two concepts; opt-in and opt-out. They respectively mean that you actively have to check a box to 1) a box to enter 2) or exit a choice. Not too much trouble right? It turns out that it is. When people in different European countries were presented with an organ donor form with either an opt-in (no donor is standard) or opt-out (donor is standard) form, the first group only participated 10-40% percent of the time (after much campaigning), the latter had a 90% donor rate! Just as in Predictably Irrational, we see that our answers can be swayed by the way the question is asked.

The libertarian paternalism argument is defended in two ways. People should be free to choose for themselves, and not be forced into doing A or B. And at the same time, they should be defended from ‘bad choices’ and no effort should be withheld to offer the best choices. Thaler and Sunstein propose nudging as the perfect way to accomplish this. A nudge, they describe, alters peoples behaviour in predictable ways, without forbidding any options or significantly changing their financial incentives. The opt-out form for organ donation is a perfect example of a nudge.

Humans and Econs are two of the main characters, or groups, in the book. As opposed to Econs, Humans do not make perfect rational choices. We lack the control to inhibit making short-term gains against long-term losses. We cannot process all the information we are given. And we have personal opinions about almost every topic we can think of. Through choice architecture, we can nudge people into making better choices, without constraining them in any way.

Also see Thinking: Fast and Slow

Thaler and Sunstein have done a great job in describing and defending nudges and libertarian paternalism. In the latter chapters, they take down arguments against the policy. Reviews, however, question to which extent this has worked and whether an even more rigid (or looser) policy would be more effective. It is up to the reader to judge the application on a governmental level, on the individual level it cannot be denied that is has some very interesting implications.

The Book:

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness – Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein – ISBN-10: 014311526X | ISBN-13: 978-0143115267

More on Nudge:

http://nudges.org/ – Nudge’s blog!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_(book) – The Wikipedia that summarizes the book

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_paternalism – Libertarian Paternalism

http://danariely.com/tag/choice-architecture/ – Dan Ariely on Choice Architecture

Lying

Lying by Sam Harris is a short thesis on being honest. Summary will follow someday.

Try to be honest. This entails almost no lying. Also not to kids. And you can refuse to say something (option C) instead of lying.

Justice

Justice: What’s The Right Thing To Do? by Michael J. Sandel is the book about moral philosophy. To be exact, the very best introduction to moral philosophy. In a book of no more than 300 pages, Sandel describes all of the main theories about moral justice both in full and objective as can be. Born from his most popular course at Harvard, and a lifetime of work, Justice is your way into moral reasoning.

Central questions posed in the book relate to moral judgement both on a large and small scale. Is it wrong to lie? How much personal freedom should we have? What do we owe one another? To answer these questions Sandel takes the reader on a journey through many of the factions of moral reasoning. The book starts with utilitarianism, the greatest good for the greatest number, discusses libertarianism, Kant, Rawls, and Aristotle.

The chapter on Aristotle starts with a story about a disabled cheerleader. The individual in question is kicked off the squad, after a year of great cheering. From a real-life example, the book takes a step back and contemplates on the merit of cheer-leading (or any profession in that matter). Sandel explains that Aristotle is concerned with the theological aspect of justice; the purpose of an activity.

The beauty of the book lies in both the examples and how they are presented. Each chapter is not ended with a closed conclusion about what is right but leaves the judgement (or moral reflection) over to the reader. By this process, the book stops being a passive information source and engages the reader to really think things over.

Michael J. Sandel is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government at Harvard. His Justice course at Harvard has been one of the most attended courses in the history of the University (15.000 and counting). He has been an influential political philosopher and has written multiple books. To introduce yourself to moral reasoning and get a better grasp on the big questions of life, Justice should be the next book on your list!

The Book:

Justice: What’s The Right Thing To Do? – Michael J. Sandel – ISBN-10: 0374532508 | ISBN-13: 978-0374532505

More on Justice

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBdfcR-8hEY – The Legendary Course (taped in 2005)

http://www.justiceharvard.org/ – Online Environment for the Course

http://www.gov.harvard.edu/people/faculty/michael-sandel – Harvard Bio

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reasoning-moral/ – Moral Reasoning

The State in the Third Millennium

The State in the Third Millennium by Prince Hans-Adam II is a political theory at its finest. The central question of the book is: What kind of state do we need in the third millennium? Through historical analysis, a broad view on current affairs, and a peek into the future, Prince Hans-Adam II answers this questions to the fullest extent. Central to his work is the hypothesis that people should not be servants of the state, but that the state should become a service enterprise for the people.

After a thorough description of the development of the state, and in particular democracy, the book turns towards a distinction within democracies. It states that in most Western countries, we are engaging in an indirect democracy, one in which we vote for a party, which then puts forward people in parliament. It is a government that is centralized and has little feeling of what is really going on in different municipalities. The power lies in the hands of an elite few, and votes are won by being the most popular candidate. Prince Hans-Adam II proposes to give most of the power to municipalities, to govern on a level that is comprehensible for the people to understand, and participate.

Prince Hans-Adam II is a wonderful writer. Through eye-opening revelations, hard truths, and a call to action, he engages you to actively think about the structure of governance. As an economist, monarch, politician, historian, and businessman, he takes on many different angles that will make for a successful state in the third millennium. Although the author of this article is no political studies (or public administration) student, he has had the pleasure of meeting Prince Hans-Adam II. A wise old man, that has written down his insights and knowledge in a book you should read when convenient!

The Book:

The State in the Third Millennium – Prince Hans-Adam II – ISBN-10: 3905881047 | ISBN-13: 978-3905881042

More on The State in the Third Millennium

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AXBX3e1T64 – Interview with Prince Hans-Adam II

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governance – Wikipedia on Governance

The Tipping Point

The Tipping Point; How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell is a marvellous book that takes will give you a new insight into the spread of epidemics. Epidemics referred to here do not constitute the flu (but do include it), but are about the spread of social and interpersonal events with unprecedented speed and power. The book takes a dive into the three main factors behind the spread; The Law of the Few, The Stickiness Factor, & The Power of Context. Based on a large body of science, and with quirky examples, this first book by Malcolm Gladwell is a pearl.

We all have a friend that knows everything about a certain topic, maybe he is a grandmaster chess-player, he knows everything about owls, or he can tell you all the international airports in the world. Gladwell describes such a person to be a Maven, someone that shares information, but also loves to learn more, to be a teacher and student at the same time. Next to the Mavens, there are the Connectors and Salesmen. These are the people that respectively know everyone, and can sell you anything. Taken together all three kinds of people can spread an epidemic. The first will be a trustable source, the second will get the message around, and the third will be able to convince people of the message.

Making a message stick sounds easy, repeat it often enough and emphasize the product you are trying to sell. Gladwell proposes that it is not about a set formula, but about finding the right Stickiness Factor for you specific product. He highlights the brilliance behind the Sesame Street, and its mission to teach children literacy. More important is the context in which you will find the Mavens, Connectors and Salesman with a sticky story. The Power of Context states that we have a limited amount of cognitive capacity and only when multiple factors from the environment are combined an epidemic can spread. Interesting examples from crime in New York City and the W. L. Gore and Associates really bring the story to life. The rest of the book describes two more cases in which all three factors come to light. If you want to know how a fashion trend gets started, or how to prevent suicides, you should definitely read it.

Malcolm Gladwell has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996 and has written four books over the last two decades. All of his books have hit the best-selling lists and not without reason. He takes a problem, or social phenomena, and turns it upside down. He will not take an easy answer and be done with it, but finds the hard truths and in the process breaks some myths along the way. To understand social epidemics, and to successfully grasp the process The Tipping Point is a great read.

The Book:

The Tipping Point; How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference – Malcolm Gladwell – ISBN-10: 9780316346627 | ISBN-13: 978-0316346627

More on The Tipping Point:

http://gladwell.com/ – Malcolm Gladwell’s official Site

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_Gladwell – Malcolm Gladwell Wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tipping_Point – The Tipping Point Wiki

http://www.fastcompany.com/3006693/fifty-percent-of-the-tipping-point-is-wrong-jonah-berger-shows-you-which-half – Jonah Berger’s criticism on the first part of The Tipping Point

The Art of War

The Art of War by Sun Tzu is a classic in every way possible. It not only stood the test of time, being written more than 2000 years ago. It also has surpassed the constraint of domains, being applied in a range of professions, from war general to business leader and sports professional. The book is relevant to, and discusses, not only battlefield manoeuvres, but also economic, psychological, and political factors.

The book consists of a large collection of essays on different, but complementary, war tactics. One of them is on strengths and weaknesses. Here Sun Tzu encourages the reader to look for the weaknesses of the opposing party. You yourself, on the other hand, should appear strong where you are weak, and weak where you are strong. He states ” If I am able to determine the enemy’s dispositions while at the same time I conceal my own then I can concentrate while he must divide. And if I concentrate while he divides, I can use my entire strength to attack a fraction of his.”

Other chapters show excellent knowledge on topics such as; energy, manoeuvres, secret agents, and terrain. The last one can very easily be translated to the business world. Here it is of utmost importance to know who your competitors, suppliers, clients, government, etc., are. Not all of the book is about brutally conquering the enemy. One of the more political statements is “For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.”

Sun Tzu lived around 500 BC, not much is know about his life. He wrote The Art of War from experience as a military general. A story that has survived the test of time is about his audience with the King of Wu. Here he was asked to show that his strategies can be applied to all kinds of people. The King give him 180 concubines to his train, making two of them the leaders. After explaining how to hold halberds and to turn left, right, front and back five times he beat the drum signalling right. All concubines laughed, they were not used to getting orders like that. When this happened a second time, Sun Tzu ordered the two leaders to be beheaded, everyone listened.

Strategists should definitely read The Art of War to familiarize themselves with the lessons from the essays. Many scholars state that the book has stood the test of time, and has shown to be influential even in the modern world. That is certainly true. What the book misses is, however, a conceptualization to the modern world, examples that make more sense outside of the military world. The way the book is written makes it really easy to consult, but not so fluent to read.

The book might also miss some of the benefits of cooperation (it’s about war), but it never hurts to read The Better Angels of Our Nature, too. 

The Book:

The Art of War – Sun Tzu – ISBN-10: 9780195014761 | ISBN-13: 978-0195014761

More on The Art of War:

http://classics.mit.edu/Tzu/artwar.html – The Art of War (digital edition)

http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/3200649—s-nz-b-ngf – Quotes from the book

http://12most.com/2011/12/05/12-lasting-leadership-lessons-art-war/ – Leadership lessons from The Art of War

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jessicahagy/2013/10/03/sun-tzus-the-art-of-war-illustrated-chapter-2/– The Art of War Visualized