Leadership Reading

Books I Read in 2020 & Recommend

December 29, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The Coronavirus lockdown and travel restrictions gave me more time for bingeing on books this year:

Leadership: Simon Sinek’s Start with Why (2009) explains that great leaders motivate with the WHY (a deep-rooted purpose) before defining the WHAT (the product or service) and the HOW (the process.) ☍My Summary
Conflict Management: Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers’ commendable I Think You’re Wrong (2019) proposes a framework for having productive conversations with those you love and yet disagree with. ☍My Summary
Self-Management: Tony Schwartz and Jim Loehr’s The Power of Full Engagement (2003) is a persuasive reminder about pivoting to time-management to energy-management. ☍My Summary
Customer Service: Joseph Michelli’s The New Gold Standard (2008) describes how the Ritz-Carlton brand has programmed its organization to foster customer-centric behavior in employees at all levels. ☍My Summary
History & Leadership: Harvard historian Serhii Plokhy’s Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy (2019) is a gripping testimony to the perils of hubris and a poignant monument to the untold misery it imposed upon swathes of people. ☍My Summary
History & Leadership: Captain Sully Sullenberger’s memoir Highest Duty (2009) as a supplement to Clint Eastwood’s Sully (2016,) the overrated drama about the US Airways Flight 1549 incident. Leading authentically starts with being in charge and understanding that your actions can make a difference. ☍My Summary
Self-Care: Susan Jeffers’s self-help classic Feel the Fear … and Do It Anyway (1987, 2006) is a powerful reminder to get on with the things you want to do. The momentum of positive emotions builds up as soon as you start taking action. ☍My Summary
Customer Service: Lee Cockerel’s The Customer Rules (2013) summarizes the many simple—but often overlooked—first principles of building a customer-oriented culture and delivering excellent customer service. ☍My Summary
Customer Service: Tony Hsieh’s Delivering Happiness (2010) on how Zappos’s business model empowers employees, creates a sense of community, and fosters cult-like customer loyalty. Sadly, Hsieh died in an accident in November. ☍My Summary
History: Mark Binelli’s The Last Days of Detroit (2013) is an extensive chronicle of Detroit from the initial days of the French settlers to Henry Ford’s arrival in 1913, the racial unrest in 1967, and the present-day hipster arrivistes who’re trying to resurrect the city. ☍My Summary
Self-Care: Food historian Bee Wilson’s First Bite: How We Learn to Eat (2015) on why you eat what you eat and how you can be persuaded to eat better by changing your habits and removing barriers to change. ☍My Summary
History: Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari’s A Brief History of Humankind (2015) is a brilliant thesis on who we are and how we overcame the most extraordinary odds to dominate the world the way we do at present. ☍My Summary
Self-Care: Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön’s bestselling The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Loving-Kindness (1991) is a poignant reminder that, whatever the circumstances of your life, you can become awake, more mindful, and bring your goodness to the world. ☍My Summary
History & Leadership: Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals (2005) is a fascinating account of how President Abraham Lincoln held the Union together through the Civil War, partially by bringing his political rivals into his cabinet and persuading them to work together. Complement with Steven Spielberg’s remarkable Lincoln (2012; Daniel Day-Lewis’s masterful portrayal of Lincoln.) ☍My Summary
Self-Management: Brian Tracy’s Eat That Frog (2001) is a reminder that you must discover the one momentous task—the most dreaded task or the “frog”—that you need to do. ☍My Summary
Leadership: Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan’s Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done (2002) on setting expectations, holding people accountable, and following through. ☍My Summary
Leadership: Mel Robbins’s The 5 Second Rule (2017) reminds you to take action before your brain can make excuses—or justifications—and gets in the way of acting on that idea. ☍My Summary
Inspiration: Oprah Winfrey’s The Path Made Clear (2019) is a fine-looking coffee table book with an assortment of think-positive sound bites. ☍My Summary
Leadership: Wall Street Journal reporters Thomas Gryta and Ted Mann’s Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric (2020) is a revealing, reasonable, and accessible narrative of how the once-prolific company was humbled by sheer misfortune and poor leadership. ☍My Summary

See also my book recommendations from 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, and 2014.

My reading goals for 2021 are to be ruthless with the books that are not so good and to reread many books that have delighted me previously. The five books I reread every year are Benjamin Graham’s Security Analysis and The Intelligent Investor, Phil Fisher’s Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits, Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, and Peter Drucker’s The Effective Executive.

You may be interested in my article on how to process that pile of books you can’t seem to finish and my article on how to read faster and better.

I wish you enlightening reads in 2021. Recall the words of the American philosopher Mortimer J. Adler, who said, “In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.”

The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln // Book Summary of ‘Team of Rivals’

October 5, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Abraham Lincoln is one of history’s most admired leaders. There’s no better rendering of his leadership approach than historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s fascinating Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (2005.)

In this Pulitzer Prize-winning work, Goodwin chronicles Lincoln’s early life and his surprising rise to the top of the political world. However, Goodwin’s focus is on Lincoln’s presidency.

President Barack Obama, who never shies away from comparisons to Lincoln, was so impressed with the book that he famously created his own “team of rivals”—a cabinet with Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and Tom Vilsack.

Lincoln was a genius for putting his political foes in his cabinet

After Lincoln was elected president in 1860, he knew that people doubted his ability. The country couldn’t be in worse straits. Nonetheless, he was determined to bring together a team of the absolute best people, lead the nation through the Civil War, and put an end to slavery.

And he did precisely that—no matter that those people held very different views or even disliked him personally. Three of Lincoln’s prominent cabinet members were better-known political foes who had campaigned against him in the 1860 election: Attorney General Edward Bates, Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase (he never stopped scheming politically against Lincoln,) and Secretary of State William H. Seward. Contrasting his three rivals, Lincoln had served only briefly in elected office—and he had steered clear of committing himself on slavery apart from asserting that America could not persist under the circumstances.

Lincoln’s political genius revealed through his extraordinary array of personal qualities that enabled him to form friendships with men who had previously opposed him; to repair injured feelings that, left untended, might have escalated into permanent hostility; to assume responsibility for the failures of subordinates; to share credit with ease; and to learn from mistakes. He possessed an acute understanding of the sources of power inherent in the presidency, an unparalleled ability to keep his governing coalition intact, a tough-minded appreciation of the need to protect his presidential prerogatives, and a masterful sense of timing.

Goodwin explains how Lincoln won people over and mobilized them in the face of their disparate abilities, personalities, and motivations. Lincoln created the micro-coalitions necessary to pursue his overall strategy.

Having risen to power with fewer privileges than any of his rivals, Lincoln was more accustomed to rely upon himself to shape events. … Seward, Chase, Bates—they were indeed strong men. But in the end, it was the prairie lawyer from Springfield who would emerge as the strongest of them all.

Lincoln was a genius for putting his political foes in his cabinet

Conflict and inclusion of others’ perspectives can make the sum greater than the parts

Lincoln’s unusual combination of forgiving human spirit and sharp political instincts converted his enemies into (mostly) loyal friends and advisers.

Team of Rivals emphasizes Lincoln’s tactics and small, incremental decisions in aid of his larger purpose. Lincoln understood that the leader’s fundamental responsibility is to procure the support needed to unleash ideas and move them forward.

Goodwin captures Lincoln’s vulnerabilities, patience, intelligence, and fantastic will. Goodwin writes, “Good leadership requires you to surround yourself with people of diverse perspectives who can disagree with you without fear of retaliation.” A good leader takes the time to understand all sides of the issue and embrace alternative perspectives.

Lincoln’s mastery of men molded the most significant presidency in the nation’s history

To Goodwin, Lincoln was a political genius who picked the talent he needed, welcomed dissent, listened to his opponents, sought common ground, and piloted tough choices.

“Once a president gets to the White House, the only audience that is left that really matters is history.” Lincoln understood that leadership isn’t about being right, but doing the right thing. This is particularly obvious in how Goodwin describes Lincoln’s determined course of action on slavery.

Abraham Lincoln is one of history's most admired leaders - Team of Rivals Team of Rivals states that Lincoln was not an abolitionist by any means, but it’s clear that, in his heart, he was against slavery. After all, slavery was protected by the constitution. But Lincoln gained a better understanding and insight as the years went by. “Life was to him a school.”

Lincoln agreed with the abolitionists that slavery was “a moral, a social and a political wrong,” his plan to free the slaves divided his cabinet. He had always made it clear that preserving the Union trumped all other goals. He became increasingly aware of the need for the Union to embrace the end of the institution of slavery without creating further discord within his own administration and in a fractured state.

Lincoln’s political genius was not simply his ability to gather the best men of the country around him, but to impress upon them his own purpose, perception and resolution at every juncture.

For months, Lincoln let his cabinet deliberate about if—and when—slavery should be abolished. In the end, he conclusively made up his mind to issue his historic Emancipation Proclamation. He gathered his cabinet and told them that he no longer needed their inputs on the pivotal issue—but he would listen to their ideas about how best to implement his decision and its timing. When one cabinet member urged Lincoln to wait for a triumph on the field to issue the proclamation, Lincoln took his counsel.

The desultory talk abruptly ended when Lincoln took the floor and announced he had called them together in order to read the preliminary draft of an emancipation proclamation. He understood the ‘differences in the Cabinet on the slavery question’ and welcomed their suggestions after they heard what he had to say; but he wanted them to know that he ‘had resolved upon this step, and had not called them together to ask their advice.’ … His draft proclamation set January 1, 1863, little more than five months away, as the date on which all slaves within states still in rebellion against the Union would be declared free, ‘thenceforward, and forever.’ … The proclamation was shocking in scope. In a single stroke, it superseded legislation on slavery and property rights that had guided policy in eleven states for nearly three quarters of a century. … The cabinet listened in silence … The members were startled by the boldness of Lincoln’s proclamation.

‘Team of Rivals’ is one of the great leadership books

Goodwin’s chunky (750+ pages plus references) book is a serious commitment. The first third of the book is bogged down by particulars of the lives of Lincoln and his three “rivals” in local and regional politics. But these sections are worth plodding through because the backstories paint a richer picture of the personalities, their intentions and motivations, and how they evolved over time.

All four studied law, became distinguished orators, entered politics, and opposed the spread of slavery. Their upward climb was one followed by many thousands who left the small towns of their birth to seek opportunity and the adventure in the rapidly growing cities of a dynamic, expanding America.

Just as a hologram is created through the interference of light from separate sources, so the lives and impressions of those who companioned Lincoln give us a clearer and more dimensional picture of the president himself. Lincoln’s barren childhood, his lack of schooling, his relationships with male friends, his complicated marriage, the nature of his ambition, and his ruminations about death can be analyzed more clearly when he is placed side by side with his three contemporaries.

Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy called Lincoln, “so great he overshadows all other national heroes.” In the closing pages of Team of Rivals, Goodwin quotes Tolstoy (mentioned by Count S. Stakelberg per New York World on February 7, 1909):

Lincoln’s supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character. … We are still too near to his greatness, but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do. His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.

Recommendation: ‘Team of Rivals’ is a Necessary Read

Goodwin’s Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (2005) is a fascinating account of how President Abraham Lincoln held the Union together through the civil war, partially by bringing his political rivals into his cabinet and persuading them to work together. Particularly poignant is Goodwin’s characterization of Lincoln as the stoic head of a family afflicted by death and depression.

What makes Team of Rivals such a rich experience is Goodwin’s powerful lessons on bridging differences of opinion and using diverse perspectives to lead more effectively. These themes on leadership are very relevant outside the historical context.

Complement with Steven Spielberg’s remarkable Lincoln (2012,) which was inspired by Team of Rivals. Actor Daniel Day-Lewis won his third Best Actor Oscar for his masterful portrayal of Lincoln.

An Olympian History of Humanity // Book Summary of Yuval Noah Harari’s ‘Sapiens’

September 10, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Israeli historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari’s bestselling 464-page Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2015) retells the 13.5 billion years-long odyssey of human evolution from the Big Bang to the near-future. Harari accounts for how Homo sapiens (the ‘wise man’) overcame the most extraordinary odds and numerous arbitrary inevitabilities to dominate the world the way we do at present.

Harari’s narratives span the cognitive revolution (70,000 years ago,) agricultural revolution (11,000 years,) scientific revolution (500 years,) industrial revolution (250 years,) and information revolution (50 years.) The first of these epochs, the cognitive revolution, coupled with a genetic mutation, was the real game-changer: Homo sapiens didn’t evolve efficiently from stooping apes to standing individuals. There were previously no less than six distinct homines, of which Homo sapiens came out top.

Sapiens argues that what made Homo sapiens special was our ability to develop networks and communities and tell stories, i.e., to organize and build large, connected communities around “shared fictions” or narratives—religion, nationalism, capitalism, trade groups, social institutions, for example. It was only through such intangible beliefs—not biological realities—that Homo sapiens were able to get the better of the physical world.

Homo sapiens’ talent for abstraction set us apart

Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens: Human Evolution from the Big Bang to the Near-future

Language made it easier to dwell upon abstract matters and flexibly cooperate in ever-larger numbers. Harari’s examples cite how Homo sapiens—from our ancestors all the way up to today—are so willing to create and believe in such conceptual paradigms that have been the key to our success and the key to our problems.

Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths. Any large-scale human cooperation—whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city or an archaic tribe—is rooted in common myths that exist only in people’s collective imagination.

Harari’s inquiry is extensive. His scholarship is rigorous, and his interpretation creative. Yes, most of the book restates familiar facts and theories. Harari does an excellent job synthesizing a lot of information. What makes Sapiens exceptional is it gives culture a starring role in the human drama—something that many in science and sociology are hesitant to do, instead preferring to depict culture as transient, nebulous, and “soft.”

Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind Harari builds on some provocative ideas about Homo sapiens, but sets out his anthropological interpretations with vim and vigor:

The emergence of agriculture—especially livestock farming—is “the greatest crime in history … The domestication of animals was founded on a series of brutal practices that only became crueler with the passing of the centuries.” [Harari has said that he became a committed vegan while writing Sapiens.]
Organized religion is predictably contemptible, “You could never convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas after death in monkey heaven.” The emergence of religion “was one of the most important revolutions in history, and made a vital contribution to the unification of humankind.” But the notion of supernatural being is increasingly inconsequential as humans are acquired divine abilities and relying increasingly upon ourselves for creating life forms and averting death and destruction. Then, “Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don’t know what they want?”
Consumer capitalism is a dreadful prison. “For better or worse, in sickness and in health, the modern economy has been growing like a hormone-soused teenager. It eats up everything it can find and puts on inches faster than you can count.”

Recommendation: Read Harari’s astonishing history of the species, from insignificant apes to rulers of the world

Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2015) is a must-read. It is a brilliantly executed examination of who we are and of our behaviors. Notwithstanding the seeming overstatements and the occasional drift to sensationalism, Sapiens is extremely interesting and thought-provoking. It is written elegantly, in a clear and engaging style, with a skeptic’s eye and irreverent—and sometimes-sarcastic—sensibility.

We are more powerful than ever before…Worse still, humans seem to be more irresponsible than ever. Self-made gods with only the laws of physics to keep us company, we are accountable to no one.

Harari is implacably cold and literal, abstaining from political correctness and pro-Western predispositions. Sapiens concludes with spine-tingling predictions about the future. Perhaps as a cliffhanger to his subsequent Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2016,) Harari contends that we’re the primary destructive force.

Homo sapiens are sowing the seeds for our own destruction. The forthcoming biotechnological revolution, Harari speculates, may signal the end of sapiens. Bioengineered “amortal cyborgs” may replace us. These post-human organic and inorganic organisms won’t necessarily be immortal but, absent an accident, can live forever. Homo not so sapiens?

How to Read Faster and Better

July 20, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Look at the big picture first.

When reading new, unfamiliar material, do not leap directly into it. You can increase your comprehension and retention if you scan the material first.

Skim headings, subheadings, photo captions, and any available summaries.

Sense how the author has organized the key points. With reports and articles, read the first sentence of each paragraph, with books, glance at the table of contents, and chapter introductions. Scan the initial and concluding paragraphs of each section.

All this previewing will help anchor in your mind what you then read.

However, speed-reading doesn’t work if you need to really get to grips with the content of a piece of writing. So much of what’s significant about reading isn’t just about processing words.

Learn to pace your reading as per your purpose:

Read very fast if you’re looking only for a specific piece of information—skimming over revision notes before an exam.
Skim over text rapidly if you’re trying to get just general idea without worrying about details, like scanning a news article.
Read at a moderate pace if you want to comprehend and retain what you are reading. The more difficult the text, the slower you’ll read. Some texts will require rereading.
Read very slowly if you’re probing a text or soaking up its substance. When you just want to sit down and enjoy a good book, what’s the point in rushing anyway? After all, reading is about exploration, appreciating the beauty of a well-crafted sentence, thinking deeply, and following your imagination. Refer to Mortimer Adler’s guide to intelligent reading, How to Read a Book (1972; my summary.)

Idea for Impact: Reading is a skill, and, like any other skill, it’s worth your time to take, master, and enjoy. Skimming will help you cope with the overwhelming amount of text you’ll have to read in this day and age.

How Ritz-Carlton Goes the Extra Mile // Book Summary of ‘The New Gold Standard’

April 13, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Psychologist Joseph Michelli’s The New Gold Standard (2008) describes how luxury hotel chain Ritz-Carlton has programmed its organization to foster customer-centric behavior in employees at all levels.

Ritz-Carlton’s clearly-defined and well-implemented cultural principles, called “Gold Standards,” enable the company’s employees to deliver the exceptional service that its refined customers have come to expect. Ritz-Carlton’s brand recognition is so deep-rooted that such phrases as “ritzy” and “putting on the ritz” have become part of the lexicon.

Values First

Ritz-Carlton propagates its customer-centricity goals by making a compact trifold “Credo Card” part of each employee’s uniform. These cards describe the “ultimate guest experience,” and they are shared with guests eagerly. Michelli writes, “Ultimately the value of the Credo or any other core cultural roadmap is the opportunity it affords those inside the business to realize how the ideal customer and staff experience looks and feels.”

Ritz-Carlton Gold Standards Credo Card - Customer Service Service Principle #10 of Gold Standards states, “When a guest has a problem or needs something special, you should break away from your regular duties to address and resolve the issue.” Irrespective of rank and title, every employee can spend as much as $2,000 per day per guest without a supervisor’s approval to solve a guest’s problem. This distinctive policy not only permits the employees to fulfill their guests’spoken and implied needs but also empowers employees to use their best judgment to create memorable and personal experiences for guests.

While some might think that this type of empowerment is both ill advised and financially irresponsible, leadership at Ritz-Carlton has determined the trust they place in employees is well founded. Rather than being extravagant with the resources entrusted to them, the employees tend to be very cautious … the advantage of the $2,000 staff empowerment is that the employees don’t have to delay a service response by taking it up to the next level in the organization, and they can take the initiative to enhance guest experiences.

Ritz-Carlton Gold Standards of Customer Service

Empowerment through Trust

Guided by co-founder Horst Schulze’s oft-cited business principle, “Ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen,” Ritz-Carlton selects, trains, and cultivates a dedicated workforce of outstanding professionals who are just as deserving of respect as Ritz-Carlton’s upscale guests.

Ritz-Carlton’s customer-centric principles and culture inform its hiring and training processes and preside over the rewards and promotion systems. Managers use every opportunity to go over the company’s values and remind everybody to polish up on caring for guests. For example, at the start of each shift, everyone—from laundry staff to executives—participates in a 15-minute “lineup” to talk about the nitty-gritty of the Gold Standards.

Michelli observes, “When it comes to the Gold Standards, Ritz-Carlton leaders and frontline staff alike can appear, from an outsider’s perspective, to be teetering toward the fanatical.” No wonder, then, that Ritz-Carlton has become a paradigm for the highest level of sustainable customer experience. In the year 2000, the company launched the Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center to offer courses and to consult for anyone interested in its cult of customer service. In 2001, when Steve Jobs and Ron Johnson were preparing to launch Apple Stores, they sent executives to Ritz-Carlton’s leadership program to learn about offering the best customer experience. Apple’s notion of anticipatory customer service and the concept of Genius Bars originated from Ritz-Carlton.

Delivering Wow!

During the “lineup” meetings, Ritz-Carlton managers and leaders also reinforce the customer-service principles by sharing “Wow!” stories of delighting guests. The internal communication department collects such stories each week and publishes them in the in-house newsletters. “Positive storytelling. The ability to capture, share, and inspire through tangible examples of what it means to live the Credo and core corporate values.”

The New Gold Standard includes many anecdotes from hotel guests, employees, managers, and executives to explain how Ritz-Carlton has “going above and beyond the call of duty” embodied in its culture.

A breakfast waiter scurried to a neighborhood grocery store to buy a guest’s preferred grape jelly when the dining room did not have it on hand.
At the Ritz-Carlton Dubai, a manager and a staff carpenter built a temporary access ramp made of wood boards to allow a guest and his wheelchair-bound wife to access the sandy beach, dine by the ocean, and watch the sun go down.
When a guest called the Ritz-Carlton Naples to notify that she had run out of gas, a doorman filled up a few five-gallon gasoline containers and drove 40 miles to help out the stranded woman and her children.
During Hurricane Katrina, employees of the Ritz-Carlton New Orleans pushed laundry carts loaded with luggage and guests through flooded streets to get them to safe locations.

Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center $2000 Empowerment Lest the reader dismisses these as cherry-picked examples of “overdoing it” in Michelli’s laudatory narrative, these cases in point are demonstrative of the Ritz-Carlton DNA. The employees feel thoroughly invested in and trusted by their employers. And Ritz-Carlton recognizes that customer loyalty is dependent upon the frontline employees who administer such sophisticated service daily.

Idea for Impact: Foster a foundation of customer-centricity

Speed-read Joseph Michelli’s The New Gold Standard. It offers ample insights into establishing your own gold standards for achieving excellence in customer service.

Create a customer-centric culture that identifies, nurtures, and reinforces service-excellence as a primary guiding principle. “Leadership often involves fostering the environment in which everyday creativity emerges in response to the needs of specific customer groups.”
Foster a culture where employees take up personal accountability for resolving customers’ problems.
Train employees to anticipate and fulfill the unmet—even unstated—needs of customers.
Reiterate that providing a ‘wow!’ experience should be each employee’s goal during every interaction with a customer.

Books I Read in 2019 & Recommend

December 26, 2019 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Management: Bob Fifer’s How to Double Your Profits in 6 Months or Less (1995) obsesses about cutting costs by any and all means possible. Every corporate resource is a cost-center that must be pared down to the bone—unless it brings in business or improves the bottom line. This obscure book has instigated systematic cost-consciousness in many large firms that have bloated cost structures in today’s hypercompetitive business environment. [Read my summary.]
Leadership: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s Hit Refresh (2017) recounts his remarkable empathy-centric revamp of the culture of a company that had become set in its ways. Nadella is an exemplar of a leader as a sense-maker. His narrative arc shifts from a personal memoir to a management how-to, and then to technological futurism. [Read my summary.]
Self-Help: Greg McKeown’s Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (2014) is an excellent reminder of the wisdom to think through—and act upon—what really matters. “A rich, meaningful life entails the elimination of the non-essential.” A simple life is a good life. [Read my summary.]
Self-Help: Robert Maurer’s One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way (2004) conceives transformative change as a cumulative, gradual process of small improvements. One small step leads to the next, which leads to one more, and so on. “Small Kaizen actions disarm the brain’s fear response … and satisfy your brain’s need to do something and soothe its distress.” [Read my summary.]
Leadership: Singapore Founding Father Lee Kuan Yew’s memoirs are The Singapore Story (1998,) From Third World to First (2000,) and One Man’s View of the World (2013.) Lee is one of the most competent leaders the world has ever seen. He was an autocratic pragmatist—a strong-willed, visionary leader who got it done. While considering Lee’s legacy, one needs to acknowledge his incredible achievements while refusing to close one’s eyes to certain lapses. He once remarked, “We decide what is right. Never mind what the people think.” [Read about the key lessons that Lee had to teach.]
Science History: Richard L. Hills’s Power from Steam: A History of the Stationary Steam Engine (1989) traces the arc of development of the technique to harness the properties of steam. Steam-powered mechanical devices became the driving force of the Industrial Revolution and led to innovations that became the bedrock of modern civilization. [Read this case study about insights into creativity.]
Management: Julie Zhuo’s Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You (2019) chronicles her experiences from ramping-up into management and getting to know herself better. This excellent primer for novice managers offers many hard-earned insights that only time in the trenches can reveal. “Being a manager is a highly personal journey, and if you don’t have a good handle on yourself, you won’t have a good handle on how to best support your team.” [Read my summary.]
Aviation History: Jon Ziomek’s Collision on Tenerife (2018) analyzes the world’s worst aviation disaster caused by small errors that became linked up and amplified into a big tragedy. He provides a comprehensive picture of the importance of protocols and expounds on how some humans can freeze in shock while others spring into action. [Read my summary.]

See, also, my book recommendations from 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, and 2014.

The four books I re-read every year are Benjamin Graham’s Security Analysis and The Intelligent Investor, Phil Fisher’s Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits, and Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People.

You may be interested in my article on how to process that pile of books you can’t seem to finish and my article on why we read self-help books.

I wish you all very enlightening reads in 2020! Recall the words of the American philosopher Mortimer J. Adler, who said, “In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.”

Microsoft’s Resurgence Story // Book Summary of CEO Satya Nadella’s ‘Hit Refresh’

July 10, 2019 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Leader as Sense-Maker and Cultural Curator

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is an exemplar of a leader as sense-maker. He has revitalized how Microsoft’s strategy, mission, and culture connect people, products, and services—inside and outside his company.

Nadella has a success story to tell, and his Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft’s Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone (2017, with two co-authors) highlights how he is a different kind of leader transforming Microsoft into a different kind of company.

Hit Refresh‘s broad objective is to lay out a vision for the future of the company. The book is aimed at people who work at or with Microsoft. Many employees were given a special imprint of book with Nadella’s faux-handwritten annotations in the margins and highlighted snippets.

The book’s narrative arc shifts from a personal memoir to a management how-to, and then to technological futurism. The latter—and perhaps the least interesting—portion features Nadella’s forethoughts on artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and quantum computing, as well as their socio-economic implications.

Satya Nadella Shook Things Up by De-Ballmering Microsoft

Nadella took Microsoft’s reins in February 2014 after long-time CEO Steve Ballmer resigned in August 2013. Under Nadella’s watch, Microsoft quickly became more open and more nimble as an organization. Its cloud computing, Office 365, and gaming platform franchises are all running remarkably well.

Microsoft pivoted its business model around subscription products that produce recurrent revenue. It acquired Mojang (creator of the popular Minecraft videogame title,) LinkedIn, and GitHub. It ditched Nokia and embraced open source software—it’s even including a Linux kernel in a future Windows release.

Today one of my top priorities is to make sure that our billion customers, no matter which phone or platform they choose to use, have their needs met so that we continue to grow. To do that, sometimes we have to bury the hatchet with old rivals, pursue surprising new partnerships, and revive longstanding relationships. Over the years we’ve developed the maturity to become more obsessed with customer needs, thereby learning to coexist and compete.

Satya Nadella and Microsoft's Transformation Story

A Renewed Sense of Purpose: The Leader’s Tone Steers the Organizational Culture

Hit Refresh‘s foremost take-away is how the tone at the top sets an organization’s guiding values. Properly contemplated, propagated, and nurtured, Nadella’s approach became the foundation upon which the culture of Microsoft has been remade.

With “the C in CEO is for curator of culture,” Nadella’s dominant mission has been to recreate Microsoft’s underlying beliefs, values, and expectations in the eyes of its employees, business partners, customers, investors, and the society. This culture is to be consistent within Microsoft and characterize all the discernable patterns of behavior across the organization.

When I was named Microsoft’s third CEO in February 2014, I told employees that renewing our company’s culture would be my highest priority. I told them I was committed to ruthlessly removing barriers to innovation so we could get back to what we all joined the company to do—to make a difference in the world.

Nadella’s playbook has consisted of challenging complacency, instituting a “growth mindset,” being open-minded enough to welcome new technology and collaborate with Microsoft’s traditional competitors (“frenemies,”) and shifting from a “know it all” to a “learn it all” mindset.

I had essentially asked employees to identify their innermost passions and to connect them in some way to our new mission and culture. In so doing, we would transform our company and change the world.

“Driven by a Sense of Empathy and a Desire to Empower Others”

Satya Nadella Says wife Anu and their children's challenges taught him empathy Core to Nadella’s framework is his conviction that individuals are wired to have empathy. “The alchemy of purpose, innovation, and empathy” is indispensible “not only for creating harmony within organizations but also for creating products that resonate.”

Nadella describes how caring for a special-needs child and his wife Anu’s sacrifices for the family made him become conscious of the significance of empathy. Specifically, Anu helped him recast these setbacks as opportunities to expand his worldview.

Being a husband and a father has taken me on an emotional journey. It has helped me develop a deeper understanding of people of all abilities and of what love and human ingenuity can accomplish. … It’s just that life’s experience has helped me build a growing sense of empathy for an ever-widening circle of people. … My passion is to put empathy at the center of everything I pursue—from the products we launch, to the new markets we enter, to the employees, customers, and partners we work with.

The most interesting section of Hit Refresh is Nadella’s personal journey growing up in India, migrating to America, and working his way up the career ladder at Microsoft. The only child of a Sanskrit scholar and a civil servant, Nadella was hooked on cricket (it taught him how to compete vigorously, the virtue of working in teams, and the importance of leadership direction.)

Recommendation: Satya Nadella’s Hit Refresh is a satisfactory first take on his remarkable revamp of the culture of a company that had become set in its ways. Microsoft’s transformation has been nothing short of dramatic—there’s a lot more to be done and written about.

Transformational Leadership Lessons from Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s Founding Father

June 24, 2019 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

Almost all leaders take office with an ambitious vision for their country or their organization, but only a few ever succeed in transforming that vision into reality. Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015,) the architect of modern Singapore, was one of them.

Leadership Lessons from Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's Founding Father

Lee was one of the most competent leaders the world has ever seen. An incorruptible Cambridge-educated lawyer, he was an autocratic pragmatist—a strong-willed, visionary leader who “got it done.” Under his leadership, Singapore metamorphosed itself from a tropical backwater with few natural resources to a first-world metropolis in just one generation. Today, Singapore’s per-capita GDP in terms of Purchasing Power Parity is the third highest in the world.

There is also a darker side to the Singapore story, however. The island-nation’s prosperity came at the cost of a rather authoritarian style of government that sometimes infringed on civil liberties. In a 1986 National Day Rally, Lee defended,

I am often accused of interfering in the private lives of citizens. Yes, if I did not, had I not done that, we wouldn’t be here today. And I say without the slightest remorse, that we wouldn’t be here, we would not have made economic progress, if we had not intervened on very personal matters—who your neighbour is, how you live, the noise you make, how you spit, or what language you use. We decide what is right. Never mind what the people think.

Singapore is not quite a dictatorship, but neither is it a full democracy. Its political system is skewed to let Lee’s party dominate the country’s polity. In an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, Lee asserted, “It is not the business of the government to enable the opposition party to overturn us.”

A vast majority of Singaporeans today will overlook these civil-liberty concerns in the context of the country’s socio-political stability, public security, world-leading and affordable healthcare, free education, good housing for all, and high employment.

Singapore’s spectacular success is accepted as evidence, sometimes lamentably as justification, as with Rwanda’s Paul Kagame, that a vibrant economy and sustained prosperity could blossom only under a totalitarian government. Singapore’s achievement is not likely replicable in its entirety elsewhere.

Over the last several months, I’ve read a few biographies and evaluations of Lee and his political leadership, including the memoirs The Singapore Story: From Third World to First (1998) and One Man’s View of the World (2013.) Here are a few key leadership lessons that Lee had to teach.

Vision, structure, and determination are paramount to efficacious leadership. Lee was a brilliant, clear-eyed, far-sighted statesman. Singapore’s political stability, rapid economic growth, and its raising affluence between 1959 and 1990 were not accidental, but the result of his dynamic leadership and disciplined social engineering. In The Singapore Story (1998,) he writes, “The task of the leaders must be to provide or create for them a strong framework within which they can learn, work hard, be productive and be rewarded accordingly. And this is not easy to achieve.”

Leadership entails tough, unpopular decisions. Lee was not afraid of being out of favor. “I have never been overconcerned or obsessed with opinion polls or popularity polls. I think a leader who is, is a weak leader. If you are concerned with whether your rating will go up or down, then you are not a leader. You are just catching the wind … you will go where the wind is blowing. And that’s not what I am in this for.” He famously forbade the sale of chewing gum to keep Singapore’s streets clean. He maintained capital punishment and caning. Singapore’s vandalism rules drew worldwide attention in 1994 when American teenager Michael Fay was caned for damaging cars and public property, in spite of appeals for clemency from the US media and government, including then-President Bill Clinton.

The litmus test of great leadership is results that matter. Many take issue with Lee’s methods, but few dispute the results he achieved. He was a pragmatist with devotion to no particular ideology. He once contemplated, “I was never a prisoner of any [socio-political] theory. What guided me were reason and reality. The acid test I applied to every theory or scheme was: Would it work?” and “The acid test is in performance, not promises.”

Nurture a meritocracy. Lee’s commitment to meritocracy is a hallmark of Singapore’s national identity—social mobility is rooted in hard work and contribution regardless of ethnic differences. He devoted resources to cultivate an excellent education and health system, and developed a high-quality teacher workforce—all to maximize people’s potential. According to Lee Kuan Yew: The Man and His Ideas (1998,) he wrote, “It is possible to create a society in which everybody is given not equal rewards, but equal opportunities, and where rewards vary not in accordance with the ownership of property, but with the worth of a person’s contribution to that society. In other words, society should make it worth people’s while to give their best to the country. This is the way to progress.” In recent years, though, the debate over rising social inequality has led to some reproach of Singapore’s meritocracy.

Attract and retain superior talent; pay them well. A key contributor to the wealth, stability, efficiency, and cleanliness of Singapore is its civil service—it’s one of the most proficient and least corrupt bureaucracies in the world. The government’s transparent policies have been a powerful enticement for people, businesses, and investments. Singapore has some of the highest paid civil servants in the world. The country is not content to let its top graduates all go straight to the private sector, so it pays what it takes to get them. Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, Lee’s immediate successor, told Singapore’s parliament on 3-Dec-1993, “If we do not pay ministers adequately, we will get inadequate ministers. If you pay peanuts, you will get monkeys for your ministers. The people will suffer, not the monkeys.”

One’s accomplishments become one’s legacy. Having a broad picture of the effect you want to have on the world will help you pinpoint the actions necessary to achieve it. Explaining his legacy, Lee wrote in Hard Truths to Keep Singapore Going (2011,) “I have spent my life, so much of it, building up this country. There’s nothing more that I need to do. At the end of the day, what have I got? A successful Singapore. What have I given up? My life.”

To judge leaders by their methods alone is to underrate their successes. While considering Lee’s legacy, one needs to acknowledge his achievements while refusing to close one’s eyes to certain lapses. Lee’s many critics considered him authoritarian—he imposed media restrictions and used detention without trial and defamation suits to quash critics of his government. Discussing a political opponent in Lee Kuan Yew: The Man and His Ideas (1998,) Lee justified, “If you are a troublemaker, it’s our job to politically destroy you. … Everybody knows that in my bag I have a hatchet, and a very sharp one. You take me on, I take my hatchet, we meet in the cul-de-sac. That’s the way I had to survive in the past.” Lee was unapologetic about his heavy-handed style of governing, seeing it as necessitous to get Singapore to where it got.

Books I Read in 2018 & Recommend

December 31, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Self-Help: David Gelles’s Mindful Work: How Meditation is Changing Business from the Inside Out (2015) provides a remarkable account of the ever-increasing adoption of meditation-based mindfulness. It can promote stress-reduction and produce improvements in one’s overall emotional state and outlook on life. [Read my summary.]
Psychology & Self-Help: Daniel Pink’s When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing (2018) explores chronobiology—how the quality of the decisions we make are correlated with their timing. Our biological clocks influence our cognitive abilities, moods, and attentiveness. [Read my summary.]
Business & Finance: Based on a popular Harvard Business School class on “acquisition entrepreneurship,” Richard Ruback and Royce Yudkoff’s HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business (2017) is excellent manual for prospective entrepreneurs, employees of small businesses, financiers, and value-seeking investors. [Read my summary.]
Psychology & Economics: Cornell economist Robert Frank’s Luxury Fever: Why Money Fails to Satisfy in an Era of Excess (1999) argues that the extravagant consumption of the most affluent in our society has a ripple effect on everyone’s spending. The desire for many to indulge in luxury “possessions” is motivated less by the gratification they may bring than by what others are buying or want to buy. [Read my summary.]
Psychology & Self-Help: Richard Carlson’s bestselling Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff … And It’s All Small Stuff (1997) reminds that there’s always a vantage point from which even the biggest stressor can be effectively dealt with. To deal with angst or anger, what we need is not some upbeat self-help prescriptions for changing ourselves, but simply a measure of perspective. [Read my summary.]
Leadership: John Carreyrou’s Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup (2018) is a remarkable expose on Theranos, the former high-flying Silicon Valley tech startup founded by Elizabeth Holmes. How could the many smart people who funded, endorsed, defended, and wrote about this company never set aside their confidence in Holmes’s persuasions and looked beyond her claim of “30 tests from one drop of blood.” [Read my summary.]
Books & Reading: If you’re interested in sharpening up your ability to read, comprehend, and debate, Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren’s bestselling How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading (1972) is a goldmine of invaluable insights into the art of reading and debate. [Read my summary.]

See my book recommendations from 2017, 2016, 2015, and 2014.

The four books I re-read every year are Benjamin Graham’s Security Analysis and The Intelligent Investor, Phil Fisher’s Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits, and Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People.

You may be interested in my article on how to process that pile of books you can’t seem to finish and my article on why we read self-help books.

Wish you all very enlightening reads in 2019! Recall the words of the American philosopher Mortimer J. Adler, who said, “In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.”

A Guide to Intelligent Reading // Book Summary of Mortimer Adler’s ‘How to Read a Book’

October 29, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

If you’re interested in sharpening up your ability to read, comprehend, and debate, Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren’s bestselling How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading (1972; first published in 1940 under only Adler’s name) is the definitive guidebook.

The book stemmed from Adler’s belief that students of liberal education needed to be grounded in the “great ideas” of humankind, as represented in the canon of Western classic literature. To Adler, the art of reading well is deeply correlated to the art of thinking clearly, critically, and freely.

After the publication of How to Read a Book (1940,) Adler advanced his ideas on educational theory further by starting the Great Books of the Western World program and the Great Books Foundation. His later successes as a University of Chicago philosopher and an educator had an colossal influence on American education in the twentieth century.

Take-away Lesson #1: Active Reading is the Effort to Understand

How to Read a Book is divided into four parts:

Part one discusses the first two levels of reading: elementary reading (the level of reading taught in elementary schools and high schools) and inspectional reading (methodical skimming and cursory reading.)
Part two contains the third level of reading, analytical reading: classifying the author’s arguments and information, coming to terms with the book’s line of reasoning, establishing the author’s implications, criticizing the book, and critiquing the author.
Part three covers the particular nuances of reading various types of literature: practical books, creative literature, stories, plays, poems, history, philosophy, science, mathematics, and social science.
Part four of the book is earmarked to the ultimate goals of reading—viz., expanding one’s mind for further understanding—a goal facilitated by “synoptical reading.” Since, per Carl Jung, “one book opens another,” a determined reader should peruse several works on the same subject with the intention of establishing a broader outlook of the subject matter. According to Adler, syntopical reading is the hallmark of scholarship: “Knowing that more than one book is relevant to a particular question is the first requirement in any project of syntopical reading. Knowing which books should be read, in a general way, is the second requirement.”

The essence of reading’s comprehension and appreciation lies in how best the reader can answer four questions during the course of reading a book:

During elementary reading: “What does the book say?”
During inspectional reading: “What is the book about?” How the author is trying to say it? What methodologies, narratives, substantiations, and examples does he use?
During analytical reading: “What does the book mean?” And, “Are the author’s arguments and claims valid—in whole or part? What is the significance of the author’s theses?”
During syntopical reading: “How does this book compare with other books?” And, “What other sources of knowledge could be pursued?”

How to Read a Book concludes with two appendices: (1) a list of titles in the “Great Books of the Western World” program, and (2) a number of exercises and tests on all four levels of reading.

Take-away Lesson #2: A Reader Must Suspend Judgment Until He Can Express the Author’s Positions

“You must be able to say, with reasonable certainty, ‘I understand,’ before you can say any one of the following things: ‘I agree,’ or ‘I disagree,’ or ‘I suspend judgment.'”
“Students who plainly do not know what the author is saying seem to have no hesitation in setting themselves up as his judges. They not only disagree with something they do not understand but, what is equally bad, they also often agree to a position they cannot express intelligibly in their own words.” As I’ve elaborated on this blog before (here, here, here, here, and here,) you must be able to accurately state—in your own words—the position of those you’re debating, before you can challenge them.
“When you disagree, do so reasonably, and not disputatiously or contentiously.” And, “Most people think that winning the argument is what matters, not learning the truth. He who regards conversation as a battle can win only by being an antagonist, only by disagreeing successfully, whether he is right or wrong.”

Take-away Lesson #3: Reading Well is Better Than Reading Widely

The objective of reading a book is to evolve to the level of the author: “In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.” Additionally, “Enlightenment is achieved only when, in addition to knowing what an author says, you know what he means and why he says it.”
Read a “difficult” book multiple times. Each time you read a specific book, you’ll discover more—new ideas, new concepts, and deeper truths.

“In tackling a difficult book for the first time, read it through without ever stopping to look up or ponder the things you do not understand right away.”
“It is generally desirable to skim even a book that you intend to read carefully, to get some idea of its form and structure.”
“Ask questions while you read—questions that you yourself must try to answer in the course of reading.”

Regarding the “ignorance of those who have misread many books”, Adler asserts that such people, “are, as Alexander Pope rightly calls them, bookful blockheads, ignorantly read. There have always been literate ignoramuses who have read too widely and not well.”

Recommendation: Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren’s How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading is a smart reading that should be on everybody’s library. It is a goldmine of invaluable insights into the art of reading, debate, and persuasion.

Leadership Reading

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Conflict and inclusion of others’ perspectives can make the sum greater than the parts

Lincoln’s mastery of men molded the most significant presidency in the nation’s history

‘Team of Rivals’ is one of the great leadership books

Recommendation: ‘Team of Rivals’ is a Necessary Read

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Homo sapiens’ talent for abstraction set us apart

Recommendation: Read Harari’s astonishing history of the species, from insignificant apes to rulers of the world

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Values First

Empowerment through Trust

Delivering Wow!

Idea for Impact: Foster a foundation of customer-centricity

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Leader as Sense-Maker and Cultural Curator

Satya Nadella Shook Things Up by De-Ballmering Microsoft

A Renewed Sense of Purpose: The Leader’s Tone Steers the Organizational Culture

“Driven by a Sense of Empathy and a Desire to Empower Others”

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Take-away Lesson #1: Active Reading is the Effort to Understand

Take-away Lesson #2: A Reader Must Suspend Judgment Until He Can Express the Author’s Positions

Take-away Lesson #3: Reading Well is Better Than Reading Widely

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