Dorothy and James are two members of a six-person team. The past few months they have been working on developing a new finance model to be used internally in their company. Both of them are great programmers and have performed very well in their years at the company. But recently Human Resources gave them both a very negative report. Excerpts of this report state: “This team does not know where it is heading” and “The work is not aligned with the goals of our company”. We know that James and Dorothy are great programmers with a good track record, so what has gone wrong? They are missing direction, the compass to guide their efforts.
The team Dorothy and James are in is a so-called self-managing work team (SMWT). That means they do not have a formal leader, but more of a coach. His objective is to let them do the work they do best and give them the challenges that keep both them, and the company, at the highest level of performance. A great leader does not focus (too much) on the day-to-day business. He should constantly be translating the vision and mission of the company back to tangible tasks that align with the former.
These efforts will be difficult on the one hand but pay off on both the short and long term. A leader (especially in a hierarchical organisation) may have trouble letting go of the daily operations. But by giving trust to your employees you empower them to take ownership of their own projects. The latter part is of course about which projects they should be working on. No matter the brilliance of Dorothy and James, if they are working on the wrong projects they (and the company) will perish in the long term.
Giving direction is a four-step process. The first is planning; know what goals you are going to give to your team. The second is do; give your team the freedom to execute the plans. The third step is study/check; see if everything is going in the direction you have intended it to go. And last but not least, act; now that you know the team is doing the right thing, let them flourish and improve both their own professional standing as that of the company.
Two weeks ago the leader of James’ and Dorothy’s team (and quite some other teams) was made aware that he needed to shift his focus. Rather than helping them with programming or interpersonal issues, he is now scouting for resources and communicating the vision of the company down to the lowest level. His teams have become more productive and have been given a new sense of purpose, all they needed was a little direction.
A Brief History of Time; From the Big Bang to Black Holes by Stephen Hawking tackles the big questions in life; where did the universe come from? How did it all start? And how will it end? Without the use of much jargon or hefty equations, Hawking takes the non-science reader on a tour along ground-breaking research in science. If you are standing, please sit down because it is quite the book.
The quest, or intergalactic journey, starts on our own little planet. Hawking explains to us how we have thought about the surface of the earth and the relation to other galactic bodies like the sun and moon. Already here he is very gentle in discussing the role of God and the Catholic church. He also explains what a good scientific theory should entail; it should make predictions that should be testable (and those observations should be similar to what is predicted).
Not before long we leave our own galaxy and explore the whole universe. Hawking, still without the use of any equations, explains concepts like black holes and the big bang. Next to tackling the big parts of our universe he also takes a leap into the very small, to explain quantum physicsand how this affects the large structures in our universe. In this, he is very apt in taking different perspectives and objectively comparing different explanations. He is honest in telling what we currently know and understand, but also blunt in stating that we do not know everything at this moment.
Personally, I found some of the side notes as interesting as the scientific inquiries themselves. Hawking explains how his predecessors experienced conflict amongst each other and how the quest for explaining the start of time has been met with caution (to say the least) by the church. But in the end, we do get to know why it is not turtles all the way down.
Hawking is a brilliant scientist and philosopher. In his many years of researching, he has made significant contributions to human knowledge. In A Brief History of Time, he has opened up this information to a more general public. In September 2005 Hawking, together with Leonard Mlodinow, wrote an even more comprehensive (but maybe less deep) inquiry into cosmology, fittingly named A Briefer History of Time. Even though the impact on your direct life will be less significant, the book is one that you should one day have read.
Opinion: Good book, structured and presents ideas in clear manner.
The Book in Three Sentences Human history has been shaped by three major revolutions: the Cognitive Revolution (70,000 years ago), the Agricultural Revolution (10,000 years ago), and the Scientific Revolution (500 years ago). These revolutions have empowered humans to do something no other form of life has done, which is to create and connect around ideas that do not physically exist (think religion, capitalism, and politics). These shared “myths” have enabled humans to take over the globe and have put humankind on the verge of overcoming the forces of natural selection.
Sapiens summary This is my book summary of Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. My notes are informal and often contain quotes from the book as well as my own thoughts. This summary also includes key lessons and important passages from the book.
Human cultures began to take shape about 70,000 years ago. There have been three major revolutions in human history: the cognitive revolution, the agricultural revolution, and the scientific revolution. Prehistoric humans (2 million years old or so) were no more important and impressive than other mammals. Homo Sapiens means “wise man.” Humans first evolved in Africa about 2.5 million years ago. The author believes it is unlikely Homo sapiens will survive for another 1,000 years. From about 2 million years ago until 10,000 years ago, multiple human species roamed the earth together. The depiction of man evolving from hunched over to upright incorrectly displays human evolution as a linear trajectory. In fact, the species lived simultaneously. Humans have huge brains for their body size. Human brains account for 2-3 percent of body size, but use 25 percent of energy. Human kind was very much in the middle of the food chain until 400,000 years ago and didn’t leap to the top of the food chain until 100,000 years ago. Most animals at the top of the food chain made it there gradually over millions of years. Humans, however, jumped to the top relatively rapidly. This means that the rest of the food chain wasn’t ready and neither were we. Hence we feel anxious and stressed because we aren’t used to being at the top. The advent of fire and cooking food may have opened the way for the evolution of a smaller intestinal track and a larger brain. There are two theories of how Homo sapiens evolved: Interbreeding theory and Replacement theory. The reality is probably a combination of both theories. Perhaps this is why Homo sapiens wiped out the Neanderthals: “They were too familiar to ignore, but too different to tolerate.” The last dwarf species of humans died out 12,000 years ago. Homo sapiens conquered the world because of its unique language. The Cognitive Revolution occurred between 70,000 to 30,000 years ago. It allowed Homo sapiens to communicate at a level never seen before in language. As far as we know, only Homo sapiens can talk about things we have never seen, touched, or smelled. Think religions, myths, legends, and fantasies. The telling of myths and stories allow Homo sapiens to collaborate in large numbers in extremely flexible ways. This separates us from all other animals. Chimps can’t form groups of more than 50 or so. For humans, the group size is usually 150 or so. Beyond that, you can’t rely on gossip and personal communication. You need something more to get large numbers of people working together. Large numbers of people can collaborate by sharing common myths and beliefs. In academic circles, stories are known as fictions, social constructs, or imagined realities. An imagined reality is not a lie because the entire group believes it. Ever since the Cognitive Revolution, humans have been living in a dual reality: the physical reality and the imagined reality. The way people cooperate can be changed by changing the stories as myths we tell. Because Homo sapiens shared myths were not genetically based, they could adapt and change their behavior as soon as they adapted their new belief. They didn’t have to wait millions of years for a genetic change. Homo sapiens are the only animals that conduct trade. As far as we know, the humans of 30,000 years ago had the same physical, emotional, and intellectual capabilities that we have today. Evolutionary psychology claims that most of our psychology was developed during the period before the Agricultural Revolution about 10,000 years ago. The instinct to gorge on high calorie food is wired into our DNA. Ever since the Agricultural Revolution, there hasn’t been one predominant way of life for all humans. There have only been options from a variety of cultures. The dog was the first animal domesticated by humans around 15,000 years ago. In ancient human groups (over 10,000 years ago) there was very little privacy, but also very little loneliness. Most of our ancient ancestors had much wider and deeper knowledge of their physical surroundings than we do. They were not unintelligent at all. The human collective today knows far more overall than the whole population of 15,000 years ago. However, at the individual level we are much more specialized today. Ancient foragers were the most knowledgable and skillful people in history. It is far easier to pass “unremarkable” genes along today than it was 10,000 years ago. Our lack of knowledge about prehistoric religions and beliefs is one of the biggest holes in our understanding of human history. Humans traveling across the sea and landing in Australia was one of the most important expeditions in history. It marked the moment humans cemented themselves at the top of the food chain. Homo sapiens first made it to America about 16,000 years ago. The settling of America – across the Siberian peninsula through Alaska into Canada and the United States down through Mexico and Central America into the Andes and the Amazon and all the way to the tip of South America – was one of the most rapid and incredible invasions by a single species the world had ever seen. Incredibly, the Agricultural Revolution sprang up independently in many different parts of the world. There is no evidence modern humans have become more intelligent with time. The Agricultural Revolution actually didn’t make the life of the average human better at first. It did, however, allow humans to collect more food per unit area and thus the overall population multiplied exponentially. Fascinatingly, the first few thousand years of the Agricultural Revolution actually made life harder for humans by creating more work, less leisure, and a ballooning population that created more mouths to feed. Each individual generation didn’t see how their life was becoming worse because the small changes were so tiny. One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations. Once people begin to enjoy new luxuries they tend to become expected and then count on them. The evolutionary success of the Agricultural Revolution (greater population) was actually cause for much suffering on the individual level. Not just for humans, but for domesticated animals like cows, sheep, and chickens as well. The advent of the Agricultural Revolution marked the time when worries of the future became prevalent: the weather, the crop yield this year, etc. The myths that surround us and make up our lives dictate so much of what we believe and what we do. Like the ancient Egyptians, most people dedicate their lives to building pyramids. It’s just that the names, shapes, and sizes of the pyramids change from one culture to another. In order to change the imagined order, you must first find a group that believes in a current imagined order. New myths must build upon or evolve from previous myths. The main purpose of writing is to record numbers, which our brains did not evolve to manage well. Our brains are much better at remembering biological, zoological, and social information. There is an ancient writing system used by the Incas known as a quipu. They are not written words at all, but a series of knots of different colors and strings that represent words and numbers. Writing has actually changed the way humans think. We can use writing and record keeping to think far more categorically than ever before. Numbers are the world’s most prevalent language. Social hierarchies, inequality, and so on are human inventions. Most rich people are rich because they were born into rich families. Most poor people are poor because they were born into poor families. Unjust discrimination often gets worse, not better, with time. As of 2006, there were still 53 countries where a husband could not be legally prosecuted for raping his wife. When it comes to gender inequality: biology enables, culture forbids. The idea of “unnatural” behaviors is actually a result of Christian theology, not biology. If it is possible biologically, then it is natural. From a scientific perspective, two men having sex is natural. Traveling at the speed of light is not natural. Why are men valued in many cultures more than women? All human cultures are filled with inconsistencies. For example, America currently values individual freedom and equality. But these two ideals don’t always play nicely. It is part of the human experience to reconcile them. These inconsistencies aren’t necessarily bad. They force us to think critically. Consistency is the playground of dull minds. History is moving relentlessly toward unity. The whole planet is moving toward one world culture. The creation of money was purely an intellectual revolution. It doesn’t exist except in our minds. More than 90 percent of all money is just electronic data, not physical money. Everyone always wants money precisely because everyone else always wants money. Empires have been the world’s most common form of political organization for the last 2,500 years. In general, empires do not fall because of uprisings. They almost always succumb to outside invasion or splits from within the empower class. Most of what we firmly believe is part of “our culture” was actually forced upon us by other empires who conquered our ancestors. Despite the obvious negatives of empires taking over a culture, there are many benefits too. Art, music, governance, and more are the result of empires forming. Often, they blended new together with the conquered people to create a new culture. It seems obvious that we are moving fast toward a singe global empire. Global markets, global warming, and commonly accepted concepts like human rights make it clear we all need one collective entity, not man states and countries. Religion is the third great unifier of humankind, alongside money and empires. The Agricultural Revolution was accompanied by a Religious Revolution. Interestingly, polytheism is more open and accepting of multiple beliefs even though we often look at it as more barbarian and uneducated than our current beliefs. Monotheism seems to push away polytheism, but actually is very similar to polytheistic gods with the use of patron saints. Praying to the patron saints of farmers isn’t much different than praying to the god of rain. The central tension with monotheism is how to deal with the fact that there is evil in the world while the omnipoten God is believed to be good and caring. If God is good why would he allow evil things to happen? Even the rich and famous are rarely satisfied. According to Buddhist tradition: the mind naturally craves more in all situations. And all suffering arrives from craving. There are a variety of “natural law religions” that are popular today like communism, capitalism, and liberalism. Over the last 200 years, science has increasingly revealed that human behavior is determined by hormones, genes, and neurological synapses. If this is true, then for how much longer will we ignore that biology does not agree with the concept of free will? To describe how something happened means to reconstruct the series of specific events that led from one point to another. To describe why something happened means to find causal connections that led to this particular series of events to the exclusion of all others. The deeper your knowledge of a particular area of history, the harder it becomes to explain why one particular outcome occurred and not another. It is an inevitable rule of history that what seems obvious in hindsight is impossible to predict beforehand. The are level one and level two Chaotic Systems. Level one does not respond to predictions about it, like the weather and weather forecasts. Level two does respond to predictions about it, like the stock market and analyst reports about rising oil prices. There is no proof that history is working for the benefit of humans or that human well being increases overtime. It’s good for the victors, but is it good for us all? The Scientific Revolution started in Europe around 500 years ago. The last 500 years have witnessed an unprecedented growth of human impact. One difference between religion and science is that science assumes humankind does not know the answers to many of life’s biggest questions. Religion, however, assumes that the important stuff is already known. Science assumes human ignorance. Modern culture has been able to admit ignorance more than any previous culture. Previous cultures and belief systems compiled their theories using stories. Science compiles its theories using mathematics. The story of how Scottish Widows was founded is an awesome example of the power of probability. Scientists generally agree that no theory is 100 percent correct. Thus, the real test of knowledge is not truth, but utility. Science gives us power. The more useful that power, the better the science. The military arms race drives science forward in rapid fashion. The truth is war prompts many scientific discoveries. In the past, the best minds of the day worked on finding ways to give meaning to death. Today, our best minds work on preventing death through biological, hormonal, and genetic means. Science does not take death as an inevitability. The economic, religious, and political interests that impact the flow of money into scientific and technological research have a huge impact on the output of science. It is not enough to consider science in a vacuum. Economic and capitalistic interests, for example, determine what we research and what to do with the research findings. Why did Europeans discover and conquer the Americas? Why not the Chinese or those from India or the Middle East who possessed just as much knowledge and technology as the Europeans? The European ideology to explore the world was the primary difference. For most of human history, per capita production remained the same. Since the launch of capitalism, however, per capita production has skyrocketed. Modern capitalism has exploded the growth of humankind thanks to the creation of credit, which allows you to borrow money now because we collectively trust that the future will be better than the present. Adam Smith’s brilliant insight about capitalism in The Wealth of Nations was that increasing private profits is the basis for increasing collective wealth and prosperity. In other words, by becoming richer you benefit everyone, not just yourself. Both parties get a bigger slice of pie. (Note: this only works if profits get reinvested, not hoarded.) For capitalism to work, profits must be reinvested in new production. The “religion” of capitalism says economic growth is the supreme because justice, freedom, and happiness requires economic growth. All credit is based on the idea that science and technology will advance. Scientists ultimately foot the bill of capitalism. The annual sugar intake of the average Englishman rose from nearly zero in the early 17th century to 18 pounds in the early 19th century. The life expectancy, child mortality, and calorie intake are significantly improved for the average person in 2014 compared to 1914, despite exponential population growth. Until the industrial revolution, human behavior was largely dictated by solar energy and plant growth. Day and night. Summer and winter. Everything was determined by man power and animal power, which were determined by food, which is determined by photosynthesis. “This is the basic lesson of evolutionary psychology: a need shaped in the wild continues to be felt subjectively even if it is no longer really necessary for survival and reproduction.” Harlow’s infant monkey studies from the 1950s (and a variety of followup studies) have shown that animals have strong psychological needs as well as purgative physical needs. Note to self: never disregard your psychological needs. Each year the United States population spends more money on diets than the amount needed to feed all the hungry in the rest of the world. Most people don’t realize just how peaceful of the times are we live in. In recent years, more people die from suicide each year than from war and violent crime. The same can said for car accidents. Live a safe community, drive as little as possible, and love yourself. Violent local crime, car accidents, and suicide are some of the biggest killers of humans. War is at an all time low because the costs of war have increased because of nuclear weapons, the benefits of war have decreased because physical resources drive less of the economy and international trade is more lucrative than conquest, and the tightening of international connections because a worldwide culture is less likely to battle itself. Our view of the past is heavily influenced by recent events. Researchers have investigated nearly all aspects of history, but have rarely have asked whether historical changes have made humans happier. Nietzsche: “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” If happiness is based on pleasurable feelings, then increasing our happiness is a matter of increases biochemical release. If happiness is based on meaning, then increasing our happiness is a matter of deluding ourselves about the meaning of our lives. One uncommonly cited benefit of religion: belief in the afterlife gives meaning to your life in the present. Buddhism has studied happiness for over 2,000 years. Interestingly, Buddhism shares many viewpoints on happiness with science. Most notably, that happiness results from processes within the body and not from the outside world. The Buddhist philosophy of happiness centers around the idea that you are not the events that happen to you, but you are also not the feelings you have. You are not your feelings. They are just feelings. Thus, if you understand this, you can release the needs to keep chasing the need to feel happy or to not feel angry or to not feel sad. In other words, you have to understand yourself. For close to 4 billion years, every organism developed according to evolution. But in recent decades, humans have begun to evolve according to intelligent design. In other words, there are people who would have been selected out of the gene pool millennia ago, but not today. Genetic engineering is allowing humans to break the laws of natural selection. The next stage of human history will not only involve biological and technological changes, but also changes in human consciousness and identity. Changes that are this fundamental will call the very term “human” into question. Many people think the question we should ask to guide our scientific pursuits is, “What do we want to become?” However, because we seem to be on the path to genetically engineering and programming nearly every facets of our wants, desires, and consciousness, the real question we should ask is, “What do we want to want?” In the past 1000 years, humans have evolved to take over the world and are on the verge of overcoming natural selection and becoming gods. Yet, we still seem unhappy in many ways and we are unsure of what we want. Is there anything more dangerous that dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don’t know what they want?
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What if you could compress the history of mankind in one book? That wouldn’t be possible, right? Well, Yuval Noah Harari did his best and wrote Sapiens – A Brief History of Mankind. And he did a very good job indeed.
In the book he follows our species, the Homo sapiens, from inception until the near future. The first revelation for me was the start of our species, I knew there were also Neanderthals, but there were many more species of Homo out there. There might even be (or very probably was) interbreeding between them. But in the end, only the Homo sapiens survived (but some genes of the other branches still live in us, +1 for the selfish gene).
In the book you are presented with three revolutions. The first is the cognitive revolution (about 70.000 years ago) that Homo sapiens went through. Here we started our ability to communicate with symbols (something that no other animal can do effectively). The second is the agricultural revolution (about 12.000 years ago). Here groups of people started becoming larger than the natural limit of 155(ish), trade, empires, religion, and money. The third is the scientific revolution (500 years ago). Here we started to really conquer our environment, produce energy and capitalism.
Harari makes an interesting comparison between religion and capitalism, they both are beliefs. People believe in a God, people also believe that their money is worth something. They trust that God will give them guidance, they also believe that the paper you get from a machine out of a wall will make sure you have something to eat tonight. I need to do some further research into this proposition, but I find the proposition very interesting.
Symbolism is what first got our species started, now it plays a bigger role than ever. We believe in each other, we believe in systems and when we don’t believe in things sometimes things come crashing down (e.g. an economy). Even when you aren’t religious you believe in things that aren’t real, that’s interesting to know.
And what will we believe in when the future becomes the now? What do we want to do with our lives, planet, and history? What legacy will we leave behind and will it do credit to our name? Sapiens means wisdom, let’s hope we use it for the right reasons.
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” background_layout=”light” text_orientation=”left” use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid”] Have you read Sapiens? And what do you think of the theories presented in the book? Does it make sense or is there more to say about the evolution and revolutions Homo sapiens have gone through? [/et_pb_text][et_pb_toggle admin_label=”Toggle” title=”Sapiens – Book Trailer” open=”off” use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid”] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2H9Q92RkfE [/et_pb_toggle][et_pb_toggle admin_label=”Toggle” title=”Sources” open=”off” use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid”]
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi thoroughly describes and explains the process, or mental state, of flow. The key message states that through conscious living we can enhance the quality of life. Not only is this book the accumulation of a lifetime of research, it also offers practical advice and insights into a happier life.
The book has a strong focus on the aspect of consciousness. This is a topic that is discussed in multiple, and very interesting TED Talks like this one. Csikszentmihalyi states that the consciousness should be both differentiated and integrated. Meaning that through learning more complex skills, we will be able to experience new 1) challenges and fields of study. And at the same time 2) integrate different fields of information. He states that through these two strategies we can experience more and more optimal experiences.
Optimal experiences themselves compromise of seven key components. An activity has to have 1) a clear goal, 2) which can be completed, 3) that we can focus on completely, 4) which provides immediate feedback, 5) to which you are engaged, 6) is under control, and 7) makes you less self-conscious. This entails activities in which you become one with the activity you are doing. Great examples can be found in yoga, sports, procreation, games, but also work and family life.
The book describes how we can bring flow to our lives, and to which components of life it applies. This is subdivided into four parts, or chapters, 1) the body, 2) thinking, 3) work, and 4) being alone and together. It concludes with two chapters on keeping psychological entropy (unhappiness) out, and giving purpose to life.
Csikszentmihalyi has done a great job in researching flow. Many years of study and multiple books have made him an expert in the field. Not only has he written about flow itself, but also about the application of flow in daily life, and in work situations. And he too has spoken at TED, see it here.
Reading Flow is a great way to understand optimal experiences, and design your life to have more of these. The only real shortcoming of the book is its length and set-up. After halfway through you understand most of it and more does not add up.
How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog by Chad Orzel is your first, and best, introduction to quantum physics available in book format. Through funny interactions with his (speaking) dog Emmy, Orzel enlightens us on the basics of quantum physics. No previous experience or knowledge about physics required!
The book starts, and later ends, with a conversation with Emmy, the dog. Through this ingenious way, Orzel conjures up a simple, real-life example of actually really technical ideas. Each chapter has approximately one formula or equation. And the chapters all tackle one of the key concepts at a time.
The first chapter is about the particle-wave duality. Here Orzel helps Emmy with the problem of catching squirrels by running around a tree on both sides at the same time. Emmy is familiar with the following rule; material parts have wave nature and can diffract around objects, and she tries to exploit this feature. Some, or actually a lot, of explaining later, however, gives a disappointing conclusion for Emmy, going around an object at two sides at the same time, is only possible at the microscopic level.
Other huge scientific, and non-intuitive, findings are also explained in further chapters in an easy and comprehensive way. Some of the topics include; The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, Schrödinger’s Cat, The Copenhagen Interpretation, The Many-Worlds Interpretation, and Quantum Teleportation.
The beauty of the book lies in the simplicity of its examples and is a sign of a real expert doing the writing. Orzel is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Union College. Not only is he knowledgeable on what quantum physics is, he also devotes the last chapter to what it is not (e.g. subatomic healing). And in a later book (How to Teach Your Dog Relativity), he tackles even more mind-blowing science.
I have no formal education in physics, let alone quantum physics, beyond High School level. But the information is presented in such a comprehensible way that, when interested, this book makes for an excellent read. Read it on your next vacation!
How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie is a classic. That is all there needs to be said. It is a book that you can read, make notes in, and pick up every year. It has had a powerful influence on the way we think about other people, and ourselves. It was way ahead of its time in 1953 and is still topical more than a half-century later. A must-read for anyone interested in making new friends, acquiring new clients and customers, improve your conversation skills, and to win people over to your way of thinking. Brilliant in simplicity, it is the groundwork for self-improvement.
The book begins like no other. Carnegie encourages readers to make notes, to jot down in the book and read every chapter at least twice. By actively engaging in a book, you will be most involved and will remember more. Even before the book engages you to think about personal interactions, you have learned a valuable lesson applicable in all your further reads. The learning continues with chapters on topics like 1) How to interest people, 2) How to get cooperation, and 3) No one likes to take orders. One of the basic techniques featured in the book is to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. This is in total alignment with the fifth principle of leadership by Stephen R. Covey: Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood.
‘You can’t win an argument’ is the clever title of the first chapter in the section about getting people to your way of thinking. After giving a lively example, Carnegie explains what is wrong with arguments. He states that nine out of ten times people will be more opposite towards each other than before the argument commenced. Even when you win, it will be an empty victory, because you will not get the goodwill. The chapter concludes with nine tips on how to prevent a disagreement from becoming an argument. In less than ten pages, a very important aspect of daily interaction has been explained, without jargon or unmanageable ways, but with simple language and clear examples and tips.
Dale Carnegie grew up as a poor boy without any special skills. He learned all the skills written in the book along the way of life. He shows that you can change yourself over the years. He was a firm believer that only 15% of your (financial) success depends on your professional skills, and that 85% is based on interpersonal skills, described as: the ability to express ideas, to assume leadership, and to arouse enthusiasm among people. To date, 16 million people have been influenced by the book. Among them is Warren Buffet, he followed the course related to the book, by Dale Carnegie himself, and to this day has the diploma in his office.
How to Win Friends and Influence People is a straightforward, no-nonsense, go-and-do-it book. It has been a life changer for many people, including the author of this review. Although it does not give much advice about how to implement the techniques, not much is actually needed.
The Lean Startup: How today’s entrepreneurs use continuous innovation to create radically successful businesses by Eric Ries is a game-changer in business. Not only in start-ups, but also for big corporations. The book offers a framework for a new way of innovation. The main focus of the book is on building a product that customers want and need. Through ‘validated learning’ and constant experimentation, this will be achieved in the most efficient way possible.
Starting with a minimum viable product is one of the premises of the book. Ries states that when you have a product that has the core functions, but that needs a lot more work to look good, and function optimally, you have to release it. He states that in this stage you will learn the most from customers, people that actually use the product. In the book, one example is about a feature his company wanted to design. It would take an awfully long time to make, but they thought it would improve customer ratings and sales. But when testing a basic version of the feature, customers showed no interest in it. A large, and costly, development was prevented.
After the initial product launch, there are even more differences with normal product development. It involves continuous development (to speed up cycle times), split testing (giving out different versions at the same time), actionable metrics (versus vanity metrics), and pivot (a structured course correction). Through all these techniques, the cycle of ideas (you build), code (you measure), and data (from which you learn), back to ideas, will be shortened. This technique is not only beneficial for small startups but can also help big corporations develop new products and improve existing ones.
Eric Ries has every right to speak about the lean startup process. After two failed companies he co-founded (and became Chief Technology Officer) of IMVU (a 3D social network). With the company, he would update the product every day, up to 50 times. In 2011 the company has 40 million users and the same amount in revenue. Ries has moved on the work full-time on the lean startup movement and advises many global corporations.
The Lean Startup has a very catchy feel to it. When you read it, you want to go and start a new venture, do some experiments, and tell your friends about the book. It offers a framework for doing business in a new way without boring people with endless jargon. A large bank of examples also helps explain the more technical parts and give you an example to compare to.
Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porrasis the conclusion of 6 years of research by the authors on the best companies out there. They call them ‘visionary’ companies. Among the few that have made the cut, and have survived over decades, are Walt Disney, IBM, and Sony. The book has become an instant management classic and now 19 years after its conception is still ever relevant.
In Built to Last the authors have compared the visionary companies with similar companies that have been operating in the same industry and for the same time. They call them the runners-up or the silver medal winners of the industry. They have good reasons for comparing the two types of companies. Only by comparing the good and the great you can differentiate between what works good and what works better. Without using a control group (the silver medal companies) they could just as easily have stated that buildings (which all of the great companies have) are the determining factor for their success.
What makes the 18 identified companies so great? It is vision, one which has guided most of these companies for up to a hundred years. A vision that is conceptualized in Big, Hairy, Audacious, Goals (BEE-hags). It is a goal that is not achievable in the near future, or even in the next few years. It is a goal that does not have a 100% success rate, but that inspires the whole company none the less. Two examples are from Ford: Democratize the automobile, and Philip Morris: Become the front-runner in the tobacco industry.
Next to the BEE-hags, the book also elaborates on other things great companies do. There is an emphasis on building the foundations, so that your subsequent work can be flexible around a steady core. Make the company itself the ultimate product, not the product. Products all end up obsolete and by having a focus on the company, it will remain standing. Build the company around a core ideology, a purpose beyond making money (eg. 3M’s commitment to innovation). And imprint this culture with all your employees (building a cult-like culture).
There are many more examples in the book, and practices that are as knowledgeable as convenient. But what is most important is that you look beyond the dilemma of the or and embrace the power of the and. Having a steady core and being the most innovative company are not two sides of the same coin, both statements can be true for the same company. This leads me to reflect on the 3rd Alternative by Stephen R. Covey, and note that both books share the same positive philosophy.
On a more critical note, people have taken a close look at the companies that are reviewed in the book. And the conclusions are far from great, some are no longer industry leaders and do not seem to follow a certain ideology or BEE-hag at this time. There have also been doubts about the scientific methods used by the authors and how the companies got selected. But what stands above questioning is the inspirational power that comes forth from the book. Having a vision, a BEE-hag to aspire too and thinking with and can do wonders to starting, established and mega corporations. It gets a 5 out of 6 rating.
The Upside of Irrationality: The unexpected benefits of defying logic at work and at home by Dan Ariely is an excitingly, new and positive view on the irrational behaviour of men. Through several decades of studying the behaviour of people, Dan Ariely has accumulated a vast body of knowledge on the irrational behaviour we showcase every day. He takes us on a journey of the strange findings he and other colleagues have found, and elaborates on how we can think of the positive effects these irrationalities can have.
The book is subdivided into two distinct parts, the first about irrationality at work, the second about irrationality at home. It features grasping aspects of subjects like the topic of big bonuses, why we enjoy work, and why we overvalue what we make ourselves. In the home domain adaption is explained (both to positive and negative events), online dating debunked, and emotions put under the loop. Ariely does a fine job of combining both experiment and real-life examples for all domains that make it easier to grasp the sometimes counter-intuitive concepts and findings.
To give an example is the effect of bonuses on the productivity of workers. In an experiment where they gave people large bonuses (1 day, 1 week, 1 month approximately) most people expected for performance to go up. When you think about it, you would be more motivated to work for more money, and definitively be attracted to a job where bigger bonuses are more common. This conclusion for motivation does hold true, performance, however, did not increase. Not even slightly, it decreased when the bonuses grew bigger. One of the explanations for this effect is the increased pressure from which people start to perform sub-optimal (imagine an inverse U-shape in which the stress level is so high the performance decreases when reaching over the middle level).
Dan Ariely has a right position to be speaking about these irrational phenomena, as a behavioural economist, his field covers everything from business to psychology. As a professor at Duke University, he is an utmost productive researcher and has also written an earlier book about irrationality named Predictably Irrational: The hidden forces that shape our decisions (2008).
When reflecting on reading the novel one comment can be made. The preface makes it look like there is a vast amount of good news, and that the book will summarize all the positive findings about irrationality. It, however, does not shy away from the negative side of irrationality and shows how bad decisions can be made because of irrational behaviour. This does not hinder the quality of the book in any way but may confront us people more with our faults than we might have wanted to have been.
Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely exposes how we, with all our fallibility, make decisions. We, as rational agents, like to believe that we can (and do) make calculated decisions based on reasoning. But at the same time, we know from experience that not all of the time do we act accordingly to this principle. Through both personal stories, illuminating examples, and a new and exciting field of research, Dan Ariely gives the reader an insight into our irrational behaviour.
Irrationality is not random. There are several components that make for irrational decisions. The first is relativity. In evolution, it has been very handy to compare things relative to each other. Seeing if we should take route A or B, only calculation the differences and ignoring all things equal has reduced computing in our brain to only the necessary input. But this mechanism can also easily be hijacked. Imagine for instance route A and B have two attributes they differ on (one being better on attribute 1, the other on attribute 2). When you throw in route C, which is slightly worse on attribute 1 than route A, but equally worse on attribute 2 as route A is compared to B, you will be tempted to choose option A. Route C has acted as a decoy, accentuating route A whilst in fact it was comparable to route B.
As people, we are also disproportionately attracted to things that are free. In a clever experiment, Ariely set up a cookie shop in two malls. In the first, he priced some expensive cookies at 1.10 dollar, the cheaper cookies at 10 cents. In the other case, he decreased the price to make it 1 dollar and FREE. ‘Sales’ of the FREE cookies rose disproportionately. This is the power of free and can have a significant influence on both your buying decisions and businesses. For you, it means you will be more likely to buy that expensive TV if it has a free PS4 that goes with it. For businesses they can expect people to consume much more when you offer something for free.
There are so many topics discussed in the book that an example of each would make this review irrationally large. Some of the topics are; the influence of arousal, the high price of ownership, keeping doors open, the effect of expectations, and beer and free lunches. In a mix of groundbreaking research and real-life examples, Ariely takes the reader on a tour of his lifetime of research. Anyone with an interest in psychology, behavioural economics or our irrationality in general, should read this as soon as possible.
