I was listening to this Harvard professor’s Ted Talk on the difficulties of having engaging conversations and how to overcome some of them. Picked her book up which is essentially a research into what makes conversations interesting and what does not. A lot of the input is from simulated exercises of speed dating.

There are some interesting things to pick up from the book no doubt. Some of the pointers, I am sure, we are all aware of but the book serves as a good reminder. To finish the whole book though, you really need to be interested in the science behind conversations. Which can quickly turn to be fairly dry.

Some interesting things I learnt:

1. Most of us think our conversations are worse than they actually are!
2. A good conversation is usually devoid of “strong opinions”
3. Conversation, at the end of the day is a huge coordination game that requires a staggering amount of simply guessing the other party’s mind.
4. The name of the book is actually an acronym for what the author says makes for a good conversation – Topics, Asking, Levity, Kindness
5. Topic : The author says prepping for conversation is the best option. Most would object to this might becoming rehearsed but she cites a lot of research to prove otherwise. If not anything else, it helps, per her, in switching up when the conversation gets stuck or go “up” and “down” in the pyramid of familiarity as the conversation progresses.
6. Asking: Even insincere questions is a form of caring. No boomer asking or repeated questions. Follow up questions are most engaging.
7. People who ask more questions are better liked.
8. This is interesting: Researchers never found any evidence that asking sensitive questions is more dangerous than asking benign ones!
9. Levity: Find the fun, rather than trying to be funny. Compliment effusively. Laugh
10. We massively underestimate the positive impact of compliments and overestimate how bothered or uncomfortable they can make somebody.
11. Kindness: This takes work. Speak respectfully and listen responsively.
12. Calling people by their names (or by other preferred forms of address) matters tremendously!
13. Great listening is not to be equated with silence and attention. Great listening is expressed through verbal response.
14. Group Conversations: These are more tricky. There are fluid status hierarchies in topic to topic. Take a stewardship mindset.

I had picked up this book randomly at an airport bookstore. Did not have much expectations. Turned out to be a fairly interesting one. Won’t go to the extent of recommending this book but if you come across one, it is a good read. A few good observations and insights from the author.

This is more of a scientific look at what is optimism and anecdotes of how optimism made a difference in the world. It certainly is not about how you can be an optimist. On that point, the second part of the subtitle is a bit misleading. This is no self help book.

The author starts with his personal tragedy of losing his wife at a very young age after their first and only pregnancy. From there it dives straight into why “Optimism is the only true moral courage” (quote from Shackelton and his incredible voyage of getting lost and yet getting every person back home alive – which included going back to an uninhabited island to retrieve the ones that had to stay back).

An interesting concept is that of “optimism gap”. People tend to be more optimistic about their personal future but far less of that of the society. Even more interesting find is that the richer the country, the larger the gap! Interestingly, we extend that optimism to those close to us but it weakens as we go further. (Lawyers are an exception to this!! They see their futures more closely tied to the world’s futures)

“Optimism bias” is built into most human beings. Our expectations – even when given data on reality – supersedes most all likely scenarios. In fact, we tend to be more optimistic on things that are desirable, mundane or controllable.

So, what is the case for an essentially positive illusion that optimism is? The author argues that while optimism may not make the outcomes better (too many uncontrollable variables), it will make you better able to deal with them without becoming stressed. Upon reflection, I concur with this when I think about friends and colleagues in my life.

Another way of looking at it was articulated by the Italian political theorist Antonio Gramsci who was imprisoned by Mussolini and suffered appallingly. “Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will. The ability to see the world for what it is and press on anyways.”

A few more interesting learnings for me –

(*) We tend to pay more attention to information when it holds positive implications for our futures and less when it has negative

(*) Mark Zuckerberg quote – “Optimists tend to be successful; pessimists tend to be right!”

(*) Research has shown that while, in general, people with higher incomes are happier than poorer people at any given time, they don’t get any happier if there’s any general increase in income. It seems that our happiness is less about how much we make but more about how much we make in comparison to people around us!

(*) “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

Towards the end of the book, the author dives deep about two very relevant topics of today – AI and Climate warming. I am not sure he did a good job of drawing the connection of his discussions to the topic de jure.

P.S. There is an irritating part where a few paragraphs are repeated word for word in two different chapters. Seems like an editing snafu.

This is a near 400 page book that is a must read, in my opinion, for every person. Young or old. One of the better books which takes a stab at trying to make sense of what is going on in the world. Not that the conclusions are going to be any less scary. But it frames all the changes in the world going on in a thoughtful framework.

Of the various systems – fascism, communism and liberalism, only the last had survived. First one died after Second World War. Second died with the collapse of the Soviet Union. But liberalism is also dying now. Ecological collapse and technological disruption (that brought globalization) has out sped liberalism. We know the system is not working but we do not know what the new system will be. Across the whole world, we are seeing this struggle against liberalism. While different people/country are taking different approaches all are agreed on good international relations and are equally against immigration.

The scariest prediction the author makes is that technology will concentrate wealth and power into the hands of fewer and fewer that will create massive new “useless” class. This will lead to social and political upheavals the likes of which we have never seen before.

We are looking at an era where technology changes will need people to continuously retool themselves. In theory, it sounds good. In practice, that is impossible. The emotional cost of realizing one does not have a job and skills are useless and needs to start re-learning… over and over again will give rise to mental issues that is going to throw the society into turmoils it has not seen.

The author gets into another controversial topic. It starts with the theory that democracy is a superior system because it gives everybody a choice to rationally decide what is best for them. And then goes to prove that the “rational” part is overblown. We are not rational at all and certainly most of us are not knowledgeable enough to know what is best for us. Richard Dawkins – the famous evolutionist – when asked about Brexit had asked the interviewer a head scratcher – “why are you asking me to vote? I am not an economist. I am not an expert on this. I want experts to tell me what is good for me.”. In the end, the author says, we vote the way we “feel” not what we “know” to be best for us.

One observation I am personally very aligned with the author is the fallacy in believing in what the media says. I get into regular debates with the TikTok generation on this. Media, as the author points out is not about truth. It is about getting your attention. Getting your eyeballs is what makes them money. The data they gather on you when you are paying attention to what they are saying is what is then sold to advertisers and others. You would do the same if owned a media channel (or were an influencer or had your podcast) – provided you wanted to make money off it.

The big question about AI and super accelerated technology is this… who gets to own “Big Data”? The author suggests both Big Tech and Government are extremely bad choices. Government slightly more so.

And this only concludes the first part of the five part book. If this has intrigued you, you will love the rest of the book too.

By: Geoff Smart, Randy Street and Alan Foster

A big thumbs down from me. The decision to present the book in a Q&A format was an extremely poor decision. The questions are not natural, at times seem extremely contrived, too frequent and severely interrupts the reading. (because those were not the questions that were going thru in my mind.)

I was hoping to pick up some aha moments in getting to understand the complex topic of talent, putting effective teams together and some of the challenges of building culture. These topics tend to be so complex that whenever you try to put a framework to it, they necessarily get dumbed down.

And that is what happened here in this book, to me. Took me less than an hour to finish.

At a high level, the mathematical formula proposed is

Power Score: PxWxR. Each rated 1-10 and the the required score should be higher than 729.
P = Priorities – Are they connected to the mission, are they correct, are they clear?
W = Who – Has the team been diagnosed? Has it been deployed? Has it been developed?
R = Relationships – Coordinated thru communication, Committed to mission and one another and Challenged to accomplish something bigger than themselves

I had picked up this book from a small bookstore in Riverside, CA on my way to Australia and New Zealand last month. Had not expected much but turned out to be a very interesting book. By the way, two weeks back, I was in Boston and while strolling thru Beacon Hill, chanced upon a cute little bookstore with a cafe. Went in and guess what – there were four of these books right there in front of me as I entered!! Never thought I would see another copy of this book.

Well, turns out this book has nothing to do with meditations. Not one word of it. What it is though is about how to make your time in life count. If you read this book, be prepared for a lot of contrarian thoughts. Including why Todo Lists, 4 quadrants and Streaks are actually detrimental to you…

Here are some interesting lines from the book…

1. Once you realize that you will never be able to go thru all your action items – there are indeed infinite of them – and you will never ever get done – a psychological shift happens where you unclench and get relaxed. Perhaps focus on what you are doing now more.

2. The real way to optimize your finite time is not task lists and prioritization schemes. Take the thing that inspires you most and just do it for some time. That which seems like a false step is just the next step.

3. There are no solutions. Only trade offs. You are free to do whatever you want. As long as you are okay paying for the consequences.

4. “One never notices what has been done; one can see what remains to be done” – Marie Curie. One interesting idea – maintain a “done list”

5. Resist the urge to stockpile knowledge. Read like the book/magazine is a flowing river. No need to finish it. Sometimes, it is ok to read just whatever seems fun.

6. “The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook”. Social media / news channels do not care about the news itself. They care about your attention. Most of us have started “living inside the news”.

7. Let the future be the future. Today is the tomorrow you were worrying about yesterday.

8. Driving in the night, you cannot see further than your headlights. And you can go thousands of miles just that way.

9. Every worthwhile goal is supposed to feel hard, unglamorous, unsexy at least some of the time you’re actually putting in the work.

10. “Dailyish” is the best frequency. Do not need to do everyday to grow a habit. You can ignore those apps that advertise “don’t break the chain”

11. Develop a taste for problems. “Beyond the mountains, more mountains” – Haitian proverb. Life is not a race to a state of no problems. Life IS an unending series of complications. Live it.

12. “Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.” – Chuck Close

13. “I only write when inspiration strikes. Fortunately, it strikes at nine every morning.”

14. Act on a generous impulse the moment it arises. Do not wait.

15. Everything that happens in life is either a good time or a good story. “It helps if you can realize that this part of the life when you don’t know what’s coming is often the part that people look back with the greatest affection.” – Ann Patchett

16. Fire your inner quality controller. Set quantity goals. Quality will flow someday from quantity.

17. Not enjoying the present moment in an endeavor to enjoy some future ones is akin to not enjoying time with your cat so that you can enjoy time with the cat’s kittens. Or the cat’s kittens’ kittens.

18. “To treat life as a pilgrimage to a future and better existence is to disown its present value” – W. Somerset Maugham

19. Everyone is screwed up, broken, clingy and scared, even the people who seem to have it more or less together. They are much more like you than you would believe. So, try not to compare your insides with their outsides.

20. You cannot hoard life. Enjoy the moment and let it pass.

The publisher should be taken to task for really atrocious editing. There are words that are unfinished, random letters showing up all over and even paragraphs and pages being repeated. This was very hard to read.

I had bought this book to read the essay “The Gospel of Wealth” by none other than the industrialist Andrew Carnegie who had become the richest person in the world. Not to suggest that I have a problem of wealth that he did, but I am getting more and more curious about how to dispose of a couple of dollars I might have left when I die. A friend from Scotland had mentioned that my philosophies of money matches his and that I should read it. (I did not know Carnegie was Scottish, so my friend might have had a vested interest here 🙂 )

Once I got past the editor’s obvious sleeping at the desk, I absolutely loved the messages Carnegie has.

On making money

First, he establishes that capitalism is the right thing. Socialism cannot work in the long term. He believes there is nothing wrong with only some people making a lot of money thru the dint of their hard work and talent. As long as done ethically and with integrity. The society and community should be structured to let the hard working and talented make a lot of money.

Second, he is dead against being rich thru inheritance. Wealth has to be made by yourself thru hard work, he says. And on this, he feels people born poor have slight advantage that they are likely to strive harder than those who already have money. More on inheritance later.

Third, he is dead against wealthy people showing off or living lavish lives. To him, there are two phases of life – you work hard to make money and then you find the best way to dispose of it. It is not about consuming it yourself in excess.

So, how do you dispose of it?

This is where he believes that with great wealth comes great responsibility. He describes somebody who dies with a lot of money in the bank as “The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced”.

How not to dispose of money

First, he is against indiscriminate charity. To him that is thoughtless and taking the easy way out. He believes the wealthy man has far greater responsibility than throw away money to charity. Also, he is severe in his criticism of how much money given to charity actually reaches the folks for who the charity is raised.

Second, he does not believe too much money should be given to children. Just enough so that they may not come to terrible days. He suggests “moderate sources of income” for the wife and daughters and “very moderate, if any, moderate allowances” for the sons. (Of course, this is set in a society where women had a different place than modern America).

For this reason, he favored heavy taxation on inheritance. To him, the “State (needs to) mark its condemnation of the selfish millionaire’s unworthy life”.

How to dispose of money

To Carnegie, one needs to make the wealth work for greater good of the community. The person needs to take active interest in the utilization of that wealth. It should be a cause for the society or community for a greater good. Above all, it has to be something the person feels passionate about. If one has no particular passion about a greater good for the community, Carnegie considers them selfish for benefitting from the community but having no interest in the community’s good.

His suggestion is to create a trust fund. And then he gives some ideas he personally has. But he leaves it to the individual’s judgment and passion. His suggestions, in order of his personal interests are

(*) University or any institution of education or knowledge
(*) Library
(*) Hospitals (or medical colleges, labs and institutions involved in alleviation of human suffering)
(*) Public Parks
(*) Halls/Galleries for music and art
(*) Swimming baths!! (this was interesting. It seems in England those days, this was common – not so in America). I guess, this would be what we call community swimming pools today
(*) Churches

In summary, in his own words…

“To set an example of modest, unostentatious living, shunning display or extravagance; to prove moderately for the legitimate wants of those dependent upon him; and, after doing so, to consider all surplus revenues which come to him simply as trust funds, which he is called upon to administer, and strictly bound as a matter of duty to administer in the manner which, in his judgment, is best calculated to produce the most beneficial results for the community.”

Now, this book has a few other essays if you want. I was intrigued by his take on “Capital versus Labor” (which is going to be anathema to most all Private Equity firms). He is of the opinion Capital and Labor are not against each other and that the permanent relationship between those two have not been set yet. He is an ardent believer of labor unions and explains why this is a good thing.

There are other essays like “Americanism versus Imperialism” and “Democracy in Europe” if you are interested.

by Margareta Magnusson

I will start with the verdict – Avoid!

One of my pen friends from Down Under had asked if I had read this book. We were talking about how to prepare for the last stage of life. And having watched my brother and sister having to clean up after my parents when they passed away, I want to make sure I have organized myself enough that it would be very easy for my wife and daughters to take care of my stuff when I die.

My friend actually has created his checklist and gives talk on this topic. I found his list to be informative and educational.

This book, on the other hand was a waste of time. It basically is a rambling of some memories the author has and is interjected into the narrative without any lucidity or continuity.

The couple of pearls of wisdoms it does impart – like the fallacy of hoarding stuff and all that – should be fairly evident to anybody who even shows a modicum of interest in this topic to pick up the book.

So, a rare thumbs down from me.

“Why big systems make terrible decisions – and how the world lost its mind”

This is a freshly published book (just came out a few months back) and still not available in the digital version. I had to get my hard copy delivered from Great Britain.

It is a fairly dense and interesting book.

It basically establishes the concept of “accountability sinks”. How post war, certain systems came of being where effective walls were built such that no one could be held accountable. It starts with the story of the airline passenger who got bumped off his seat but cannot talk to any manager because it is not there in their “policies”. By citing something as a “policy”, management can effectively shirk from accountability that is required in exception cases. (Policies are still required for 99.99% of the cases).

It talks of how the financial system has effectively created many accountability sinks which has led it to behave for short term gains till the whole system collapses upon itself – as we have seen in the many financial crises and then the average taxpayer is left with the burden.

It talks about how government and politicians have created accountability sinks – e.g. different agencies, where any economic disaster can be blamed on the Fed (or central banks) whereas people vote their government directly to fix their problems in the economy.

The book shines a particular spotlight on how the Private Equity firms are creating havoc by behaving in a short term way by leveraging debt-laden buyouts. He points to how companies post war went from being a lot more employee and society conscious (they were big then too but short term profit was only one of the motives) to today’s world where shareholder value is the sole motive backed by Friedman’s philosophies.

He also directs a lot of his ire towards economists in general, Friedman in particular, who he says tries endlessly to fit the world into their pre-conceived models rather than the other way round.

He points out how globalization, outsourcing and such constructs completely broke down the information flow and led to further short term behaviors by companies.

Finally, he explains this rise of the investor class has created a deep schism in the society where nobody needs to take accountability for the real challenges of the common person. He points to how this has created a sense of helplessness and anger, how news channels like Fox figured out how to productize that rage and sell it and the eventual rise of populist leaders like Trump or Modi. This, he says is nothing but a cry from that populace for help.

Dan, an ardent student of cybernetics, uses a lot of concepts from the science of cybernetics (which kind of faded away once technology took over) to explain how to think of what is happening in the various systems. I, for one, learnt the contribution of Stafford Beers for the first time. I loved one quote of Beers where he laments that when we discovered fast information processing systems like computers, instead of using that increased information flow to rethink systems (e.g. management structures) that were built in the previous two hundred years, we applied them to do accounting (crunch numbers). He compares this to getting Einstein, Feynman and the likes to a room and see if they can figure out how to count sheep in a field faster than a shepherd can do today – or something like that!

Whether you agree to his views or not, the author will make you think. Again, a fairly deep book and deserving of a second read. But a dense book – especially the concepts of cybernetics needs careful understanding. So, give yourself some time if you pick this book up.

This is one of those books that totally gets me. I cannot possibly overemphasize the importance of reading this book if you are a leader of any kind – business, community, politics or even of your own household. The book, at least for me, articulates eloquently the struggle I have had with simplistic solutions I hear in business world on how to solve problems – “right talent” often being suggested as the panacea. This book – along with a cursory reading of a book like The Drunkards Walk should give a sobering thought to anybody who wants to be a leader.

By the way, I got to know about this book while listening to a Ted Talk by Rory Sutherland. Another guy with some great concepts

I am quoting a few paragraphs together from the book as is but there is simply no substitute to reading the book. And if you do read the book, call me. Would love to discuss your thoughts.

Excerpts:

The success of the physical sciences has encouraged us to believe there might be a science of decision making. All kinds of problems in our business and our financial lives, in the political and personal spheres, could then be managed objectively. Such a scientific procedure would, if done carefully enough, lead every conscientious person to the same answer. As a result, both political and personal disputes could be resolved by applying evidence and rational discourse. The distinction of the great business leader, the measure of financial acumen, would rest only in the ability to arrive at the right answer faster than other people.

Obliquity is the best approach whenever complex systems evolve in an uncertain environment and whenever the effect of our actions depends on the ways in which others respond to them. There is a role for carrots and sticks, but to rely on carrots and sticks alone is effective only when we employ donkeys and we are sure exactly what we want the donkeys to do. Directness is only appropriate when the environment is stable, objectives are one-dimensional and transparent and it is possible to determine when and whether goals have been achieved. The world of politics and business today is afflicted by many hedgehogs, men and women who mistakenly believe the world is like that.