Leadership Reading

Book Summary: Jack Welch, ‘The’ Man Who Broke Capitalism?

June 23, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The Man Who Broke Capitalism (2022) by New York Times columnist David Gelles contends that the pernicious greed spawned by former General Electric CEO Jack Welch is exceptionally responsible for exposing the structural failings of capitalism in recent decades.

The danger inherent in any ideology grows stronger when it starts to thrive because it swiftly morphs into temptation—a voracious appetite for ever better “returns” in the present case. Welch was indeed the most visible catalyst and a much-imitated champion of brutal capitalism. But Gelles’s narrative draws his book’s lengthy subtitle (“How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America”) excessively, thrusting ad nauseam the well-founded thesis against Welch’s ploys and “the personification of American, alpha-male capitalism.” See my previous articles (here, here, and here) about how the faults of Welch’s strategy become evident many years after his retirement.

Gelles does an agreeable job of outlining the socioeconomic paradigm that has made modern western capitalism’s shortcomings ever more apparent. Starting with influential economist Milton Friedman’s decree in the ’70s that the one and only social responsibility of a business is to maximize profits, Gelles explains the revering of Welch’s “downsizing, deal-making, and financialization” strategy. Without balance, it provided short-term benefits for shareholders, but the long-term well-being of corporations and society lost out. A sense of restraint is most pertinent to the power of capitalism.

Capitalism isn’t irretrievably bound to fail, as Gelles rightly argues, but it needs to be rethought. It’s morally incumbent upon the social order to inhibit the embedded incentives that create powerful tendencies towards short-termism. Gelles offers no more realistic, objective insights than the familiar solutions prescribed by our career politicians.

Overall, Gelles’s pro-Fabian polemic falls short of a fair-minded assessment of the epoch’s economic forces. Indeed, many of Welch’s tactics were timely and necessary, but he pushed them farther and longer. Too, Gelles fails to study counterexamples of many corporate leaders who’ve thoughtfully copied Welch’s playbook and helped their businesses and communities prosper, not least because they were restrained enough to avoid Welchism’s blowbacks.

Recommendation: Speed Read The Man Who Broke Capitalism for a necessary reappraisal of the legacy of Jack Welch. There isn’t much eye-opening here, but author Gelles affords a relevant parable about the power of restraint and the time- and context-validity of ideas.

Nuts! The Story of Southwest Airlines’ Maverick Culture // Book Summary

May 30, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Kevin & Jackie Freiberg’s Nuts! Southwest Airlines’ Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success (1996) is a popular tome about the history and culture of Southwest Airlines and the fun-loving antics of its colorful co-founder and CEO Herb Kelleher (see my tribute.)

Despite its Pollyannaish tone and repetitive narratives, Nuts| is a very enjoyable cheerleaders’ account of how an underdog overcame roadblocks and thrived in a competitive industry.

Nuts| focuses on the people-oriented culture that Herb and his secretary Colleen Barrett established based on Herb’s well-known dictum, “The business of business is not business. The business of business is people.” To Herb, Southwest was a cause—never just a company. The Freibergs write,

If there is an overarching reason for Southwest Airlines’ success, it is that the company has spent far more time since 1971 focused on loving people than on the development of new management techniques. The tragedy of our time is that we’ve got it backwards. We’ve learned to love techniques and use people. This is one of the reasons more and more people feel alienated, empty, and dehumanized at work. Many organizations today would be surprised at how much more people would be willing to give of themselves if only they felt loved.

Nuts| is dreadfully out-of-date. Southwest and the airline industry have changed a lot since the mid-90s. Southwest even stopped handing out peanuts to protect passengers from peanut-related allergies.

The miracle at Southwest Airlines could keep on only so long. As long as Herb was the CEO, employees would go the extra mile for the sake of Herb. Until his retirement in 2001, Herb preserved Southwest’s unique cost structure and work rules. Kelleher’s successor, Jim Parker, presided over mounting labor tensions and quit after just three years. CFO Gary Kelly replaced Parker in 2004. Bob Jordan became CEO in 2022.

The going has not been smooth for Kelly. Southwest has become more like the other carriers regarding employee relationships and cost structure. The rehabilitated legacy airlines and a new breed of ultralow cost carriers have chipped away gradually at many of Southwest’s apparent competitive advantages. Yes, customers still rave about Southwest’s friendly staff, unpretentious service, and flexibility in travel planning. However, Southwest hardly ever has the lowest fares on most routes. In fact, Southwest’s average fares have outpaced the industry by 12% since 2009.

Recommendation: Speed-read Nuts! … it’s full of original insights, upbeat stories, and concrete suggestions for principle-centered leadership and how to inspire people to achieve incredible results. Here are the key takeaway lessons:

Even a little respect goes a long way. Give employees responsibility and entrust them to take that responsibility.
Set the ground rules—and let employees be creative. “Culture is one of the most precious things a company has, so you must work harder at it than at anything else.”
Give your employees some skin in the game, and they’ll go the distance. Southwest claims, “We have credibility because we tell people what we’re going to do and then we do it.”
Empower workers to make decisions at the customer level. Employees who feel they have leeway in their jobs to make the “right decision” depending on circumstances are happier, more confident, and more productive. They’ll even give extra—because they believe their work has special meaning and is not just a job.
Make sure people feel they can be themselves and have opportunities to express individuality.
See yourself as a motivator and a positive force. When things go wrong, accentuate the positive and focus on a path to a solution. It’s an approach that employees will admire and want to emulate.
Build a sense of community. Foster the feeling of a “family” in which employees can count on each other professionally and personally.
Recognize that employees have lives outside of work. Celebrate every milestone to establish and strengthen relationships. The walls of Southwest’s headquarters are covered with pictures and commemorative plaques of picnics, community service awards, customers’ commendation letters, service employee milestones, and tributes to important cultural events.

General Electric Blame Must Be Shared: Summary of Ex-CEO Jeff Immelt’s ‘Hot Seat’

March 4, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Leadership is tough. Some things work out, and some don’t. Other things end up epic failures. But no company gets anywhere without trying.

In the fullness of time, when the company does well, as suggested by its stock price, such leadership attributes as optimism and foresight are heralded as brilliant. But when things go wrong, these very attributes are the first to get the blame.

“More complete telling of the truth”

Hot Seat: What I Learned Leading a Great American Company (2021) is former General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt’s response to the allegations that his ineffectiveness led to the collapse of the once-mighty company. It’s an engaging book that must be studied after Wall Street Journal reporters Thomas Gryta and Ted Mann’s worthwhile postmortem, Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric (2020; my summary.)

My legacy was, at best, controversial. GE won in the marketplace but not in the stock market. I made thousands of decisions impacting millions of people, often in the midst of blinding uncertainty and second-guessed by countless critics. I was proud of my team and what we’d accomplished, but as CEO, I’d been about as brilliant as I was lucky, by which I mean: too often I was neither.

Confluence of bad luck, bad timing, leadership mistakes

I’ve previously written a dissertation on what happened at General Electric (GE.) Immelt had a tough act to follow. Under the previous CEO, the exceptional Jack Welch, GE got spoiled by greed and got away with a lack of transparency.

Over the years Jack Welch had collected a group of idol worshippers and sycophants around and outside the company who fostered an unrealistic view of GE and of Jack himself.

Immelt was saddled with Welch’s doomed legacy, but Immelt failed to right-track it in his 16 years at the helm.

Early in his tenure as CEO, Immelt realized the scope of a potential disaster in GE Capital but couldn’t break its bad habits swiftly. In fact, Immelt went about pivoting the company around slow-growth industrial products. Still, as he did so, his strategy entailed relying on GE Capital to deliver easy profits. It was a hard addiction to break, and Immelt couldn’t discard GE Capital easily.

In the short term, GE Capital was our strategy. We had no other engines of growth. We had to keep our heads down and weather the scrutiny. … We would let the rest of GE Capital grow so that we could keep earnings on a steady path, while the industrial businesses could catch up.

On top, Immelt overpaid for acquisitions, most prominently for the French power generating equipment company Alstom. At the same time, his bet on fossil-fuel-based power equipment was spectacularly mistimed because market conditions deteriorated quickly.

In the final years, Immelt’s misfortunes, even in such previously thriving businesses as healthcare and transportation, piled on. When Immelt called Jack Welch after stepping down, Welch told him supportively, “We both know you never caught a break.”

Jeff Immelt Admits He Let Everybody Down.

Immelt’s Hot Seat is a fascinating account of what it takes to lead a significant global business in times of rapid change.

Immelt owns up his many mistakes with a certain self-awareness. He rebukes a few people while acknowledging he should have been more accountable for everything that happened under his watch. But Hot Seat is primarily a then-in-time rationale of his significant decisions.

Interestingly enough, Immelt doesn’t offer insightful misgivings for the lack of transparency in GE’s financial statements, his outsized compensation, and the mischaracterization of insurance charges and pension liabilities.

Be advised, though, there’re so many details in Hot Seat that are unknowable without a first-rate knowledge of GE’s people and business model, starting with the Welch era.

“Every job looks easy (until you’re the one doing it)”

Read Hot Seat: What I Learned Leading a Great American Company (2021.) General Electric’s fall is a complicated story. It deserves to be heard from insiders such as Immelt as it does from journalists and stockholders.

Hot Seat should leave you with a fair-minded assessment of General Electric, Jack Welch, Jeff Immelt, financial engineering, the conglomerate business model, and Wall Street-oriented capitalism itself. These, sadly, many people don’t understand or know completely.

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.

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.

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

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.”

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 1 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.”

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.

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.

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.”

Leadership Reading

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“More complete telling of the truth”

Confluence of bad luck, bad timing, leadership mistakes

Jeff Immelt Admits He Let Everybody Down.

“Every job looks easy (until you’re the one doing it)”

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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 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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