A Review of Two Must Read Books for All Parents and Educators

For twenty-five years Jonathan Kozol has followed the lives of many inner-city children and documented their struggles, tragedies and successes in his new book Fire in the Ashes: Twenty-Five Years Among the Poorest Children in America. These are children who live in horrid condition and are placed in disadvantaged educational institutions. The most disturbing part of these stories is that these kids have grown up in the United States.

Meanwhile, conventional wisdom believes that cognitive development and stimulation in children, especially before school age, is the major factor in determining their future educational success. In How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, author Paul Tough has challenged these thoughts and provides awareness of the important role that character plays in the development of children.

Both of these books provide valuable lessons and insight into actions we need to take to ensure all children are able to reach the full potential of their natural abilities.

The (Honest) Truth about Dishonesty by Dan Ariely

The good news is that I only recommend Dan Ariely’s new book The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone---Especially Ourselves to those of us who lie or cheat. The bad news is that this immoral group includes all of us, yes even you… and your family… and your co-workers… and your elderly neighbors… and your academic instructors, politicians (how shocking!), dentists, doctors… you get the idea.

While Dishonesty will certainly not be considered the “feel good” book of the summer, it represents a very important work in the field of behavioral economics which is the culmination of dozens of experiments and studies that have been performed by the author and his fellow researchers.

For the very few of you who may not be familiar with Ariely, he is the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavior Economics at Duke University and the author of two past best sellers; Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality .

In Dishonesty, Ariely answers some very difficult questions such as; why/how do people act dishonestly and how can we prevent these acts. He starts by exploring the Simple Model of Rational Crime (SMORC) which attempts to explain the how we decide if and when we will act dishonestly. The premise of the book is that many factors and situations need to be taken into account to understand when and why people are dishonest and the bulk of the chapters are dedicated to exploring specific situations.

City of Scoundrels by Gary Krist

Ever had one of those weeks when it seems like everything that can go wrong did go wrong? I am sure most, if not all of us, can answer yes to this question, but it would be very difficult to identify when as many situations went wrong as they in Chicago during July, 1919. These situations are all recounted in Gary Krist’s new book City of Scoundrels: The 12 Days of Disaster That Gave Birth to Modern Chicago. Krist is the also the author of The White Cascade: The Great Northern Railway Disaster and America's Deadliest Avalanche.

Krist opens the book with the dramatic retelling of the crash of the Wingfoot Air Express on July 21^st of 1919. The author provides personal accounts of several victims and survivors and how they came to their fate on that day, including the tale of the unfortunate Carl Otto. As the book unfolds we are taken inside the courtroom during the coroner’s inquiry as representatives from Goodyear arrive to take financial responsibility as they defended against charges of negligence.

Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson

For all dedicated macro economists and anyone who wants some good news as to the future of the United State’s economy, Why Nations Fail is a book that I highly recommended for you. Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty is a new book by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson. Daron Acemoglu is the Killian Professor of Economics at MIT and James Robinson is the David Florence Professor of Government at Harvard University.

This delightful book is the most extensively researched and easy to follow ‘pure’ economics book that I have read. I classify this as a ‘pure’ economics books as opposed to the recent and popular behavioral economics books, such as those by Steven Levitt (see Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything), which themselves are also well researched and written but focus on topics more familiar to a larger number  of readers. The goal of Why Nations Fail is to explain just that; why some nations fail while others succeed. This goal is obtained by providing very simple concepts supported by an abundance of historical and modern day case studies.

Don’t worry if you are an economics novice, Why Nations Fail does not require any pre-requisite degrees, classes or knowledge of economics!

The book opens with a brief account of the recent events in Egypt. As we are all aware, the citizens of Egypt have not been happy with their plight and have recently risen up to precipitate changes within the government. The interesting question that only time will answer is will a regime change in Egypt lead to any increased prosperity for its citizens? This book explores the factors that will determine the fate of Egyptians.

The Man Without a Face by Masha Gessen

As the 2012 Presidential elections are gearing up consider this scenario; the sitting US Vice-President leaves office and is replaced by an obscure government official about which little is known. The President then steps aside and the relatively unknown VP is now sitting on the Oval Office. The new President begins to methodically revert the country back to less democratic days; say by removing women’s right to vote and eliminating the direct election of Senators until more and more power is concentrated at 1500 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Does this sound like the farfetched plot of a bad movie? Unfortunately not. An eerily similar scenario has played itself out in Russia starring Vladimir Putin according to the new book The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin by Masha Gessen. Gessen, a well-established author and journalist and citizen of both Russia and the United States, has written what is likely her most aggressive and controversial work.

Admitting to myself that I am not at all familiar with the former and now again President of Russia I was interested in learning how unlikely his rise to power truly was. The one shortcoming of the book is that Gessen is not able to fully explain, which is likely due to a lack of clear, reputable information, Putin’s rise from humble beginnings to the leadership of the country. This shortcoming is quickly overlooked because the book paints a very vivid and frightening picture of recent developments in Russia during the Putin regime.

The Start-Up of You by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha

Are you an entrepreneur? Yes you are, or should be thinking of yourself as an entrepreneur if not already doing so is the case that Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha make in their new book The Start-up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career.  Hoffman, a former employee of Google and Paypay, is more widely recognized as a co-founder to Linked-In, the largest professional social network on the internet. Ben Casnocha is an accomplished author and entrepreneur.

The authors open the book by describing how much the world of work has changed in the last generation. Because company pension plans are now rarer then unassisted triple plays, more and more senior employees are postponing retirement which ultimately results in fewer opportunities for managers to continue their climb up the corporate ladder. Additionally fewer companies are able to provide their employees with training they need to make them more marketable.

Island of Vice by Richard Zacks

Who is “Ted-dy” Roos-e-velt?

First in war, first in peace.

First to reform the New York Police.

This is how Theodore Roosevelt, then a New York City Police Commissioner, was greeted by a thousand University of Chicago students before giving a speech on George Washington’s birthday. The ironic revelation of this greeting, as noted by Richard Zacks in his new book Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt's Doomed Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York, is that at this time Roosevelt was more popular outside New York City than within the city he was cleaning up. Zacks is the author of several books including; The Pirate Coast: Thomas Jefferson, the First Marines, and the Secret Mission of 1805 and The Pirate Hunter.

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

How much thinking is involved when you get into your car and drive back out of your driveway? Unless it is one of your first few times performing this activity then you are not likely to be pulling up memories of other times you have backed out of your driveway nor are you consciously making various decisions such as opening the car door, turning the key, pressing on the break and so on. Instead our brains are running on auto-pilot because these activities have become habits. This is one of the most important concepts regarding habits that readers will come across in The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, which is the highly acclaimed, bestselling book by Charles Duhigg.

Grow: How Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the World's Greatest Companies by Jim Stengel

Grow: How Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the World's Greatest Companies is a new book by Jim Stengel that provides a detailed review of how creating a stong brand ideal is correlated with long term organizational success, along with providing steps for implementing and maintianing a strong brand idea. I found this book to be an intriguing meeting of Jim Collins’ Good to Great (business success factors) and Martin Lindstrom’s Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy(study of neuromarketing). Unlike the Collins’ “Great” series of books which identify successful companies and then draws conclusions on what made them great, Stengel set out to prove that building a strong brand ideal is correlated to organizational success. The author approaches this goal by providing results of his research and several case studies which show the dramatic impacts of building or re-building a strong brand ideal.

The 5 Levels of Leadership by John C. Maxwell

The Five Levels of Leadership: Proven Steps to Maximize Your Potential is the latest book by John C. Maxwell. Maxwell is the author of many books on communication and leadership including Everyone Communicates, Few Connect and How Successful People Think: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life.

In 5 Levels, Maxwell provides an overview of his five levels of leadership, which are:

1. Position
2. Permission
3. Productivity
4. People Development
5. Pinnacle

The book begins with an assessment that can be used to determine at which level of leadership you are currently performing. It includes questions for yourself and others to answer about your leadership skills. The bulk of the book covers each of the steps in separate sections. Each section contains a detailed review along with both the upsides and downsides of each level.

A Quiet Book Review: Susan Cain’s Extraordinary Look into the Importance of Introverts

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking is a new book by Susan Cain which delves deeply into the world of introverts. After reading many very positive reviews of the book I, being an introvert myself, had high expectations for this book. Without a doubt Quiet met my high expectations and much more. This is a must have book for anyone who is an introvert or needs to interact with introverts including; spouses, children or co-workers. This wonderful book provided many insights into my own behaviors but also provided me with a practicable guide to working with project teams. Additionally, my wife, a special education teacher, finds the material very appropriate for teachers with introverted students in their class – which in reality would be any teacher.

The book is divided into four parts:

Part 1: The Extrovert Ideal – Covers the rise and myths of extrovert leadership in our society

Part 2: Your Biology, Your Self? – Reviews the biological difference between introverts and extroverts and the resulting impacts

Part 3: Do all Cultures Have an Extrovert Idea? – Explores the differences in views of the extrovert ideal in American and Asia

Part 4: How to Love, How to Work – Provides life lessons for dealing with introverts

What follows are just some of the highlights from each section.

Part 1: The Extrovert Ideal
One of the most interesting aspects of this section is how extroverts came to be seen more prominently in the American society. Cain expertly traces the rise of extroverts in America and offers insights into why other countries view extroverts less prominently.

We are then allowed to follow the author as she visits the extrovert havens of a high energy Anthony Robbins seminar and Harvard Business School. Not surprisingly we don’t tend to find many introverts at either gathering. Along the way Cain lets us in on some research that does surprise us – group brainstorming sessions are less productive, in terms of idea quality and quantity, than individual brain storming. These findings have significant implications for business and project managers.

Cain also shows the impacts of the new open office layouts which are becoming more popular in business settings. The impacts are not the anticipated positive ones to increase collaboration but are found to instead increase anxiety and employee turnover. Oops!

Part 2: Your Biology, Your Self?

Part 2 is where we jump into the biology of introverts and extroverts and resulting ramifications of not listening to introverts. This section begins with a clarification of the difference between temperament and personality. Cain reveals how research has shown that our introvert/extrovert temperaments as teenagers and adults can be predicted when we are only four months old.

Of more consequence we begin to understand the situations where introverts can be both better leaders and negotiators than their extroverted counterparts. Cain also explores the Winner’s Concept which plagues many extroverts and had a hand in the financial recession of 2008. This section makes me want to make sure an introvert is managing my financial investments!

Most importantly for introverts we learn how to better deal with the made for extrovert situations we dread so much; such as when we need to make small talk with groups and give presentations. Quiet contains wonderful tools to help introverts survive these challenging situations.

Part 3: Do all Cultures Have an Extrovert Idea?

In this section Cain provides a brief but informative comparison between the American and Asian cultures. This section and chapter is a helpful guide for creating better relationships with Asian co-workers.

Part 4: How to Love, How to Work
Cain saves the best for last! In the final section, we learn how can better live, love and work as, and with, introverts and importantly for teachers and parents, how to best facilitate young introverts in their learning and development.

For me this section explained why I have a hard time following my wife’s conversation at dinner and why I should never refer to my daughter, or anyone for that matter, as being ‘shy’. In addition we learn how to assist our introvert children with noisy settings such as play dates.

The insights into questions that parents should and should not ask of their kids after school, such as never ask the general question ‘How was your day?’, can also be applied to my work as a project manager when interacting with team members.

Conclusion

Simply put, Quiet is a very well researched and written book about the life of introverts. It is a must read for anyone who is or associated with introverts. I expect in some cases this book could be a life changer for many introverts.

Many kudos and thanks to Susan Cain for writing such a helpful and thought provoking book. Keep up the excellent work and championing for us introverts!

Situations Matter by Sam Sommers: A Review

Situations Matter: Understanding How Context Transforms Your World is a new book by Sam Sommers whose goal is to demonstrate how situations influence our thoughts and behaviors. The book more than accomplishes this goal by also providing techniques to interpret situations that are influencing behaviors and providing techniques to better respond to these situations.

The author starts by recounting an experience in which he and his wife missed a connecting flight and how he interpreted the situation to negotiate a hotel voucher from the airlines customer service agent. In this case the author explains how he considered the situation in which the agent was operating to successfully frame his request. The lesson is that the agent is not a heartless ogre who did not want to assist the stranded travelers but instead an amicable person who was put in a tough situation by the airline. This discussion is very well aligned with the powerful negotiation techniques presented by Stuart Diamond in Getting More: How to Negotiate to Achieve Your Goals in the Real World.

Sommers then discusses why, when presented with three game show hosts to tutor our child, we would immediately pick a certain one since he is viewed as more knowledgeable based on the game show that he hosts.

The remainder of the book covers several specific situational topics as I outline below.

WYSISYG – What you see is what you get. In this chapter, Sommers explains how we respond to what we see and discusses why we do not typically analyze and interpret the specific situation. In particular there is a discussion on how westerners will focus on a main object in a picture while those from eastern cultures look at the entire picture- frame and all! The most interesting analogy I found in this section was comparing the 2006 Olympics Opening Ceremony in Atlanta with the 2008 Olympics Opening Ceremony in China. As you may recall the 2008 games in China opened with 2008 people playing the drums while the 2006 games in Atlanta opened with a single performer – Celine Dion. Interesting insight indeed!

Help Wanted – In this chapter Sommers explores the perplexing reasons of why people in crowds will not assist those in need. Many real life examples along with results of studies (including the famous Good Samaritan study conducted at Princeton University) demonstrate that we will shirk responsibility when we are in the mix of a crowd as opposed to being alone.

Sommers also provides his insights onto the infamous lack of crowd response to the extended assault on Kitty Genovese in Queens during 1964. This is the classic case study of crowds which analyzed in many other books include Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point. Overall this chapter is an impressive synopsis as to why crowds affect our responses and behaviors.

Go with the Flow – This section introduces the Crows Whisperer aka ‘Super Fan’. This is the guy at sporting events who gets you to break out of the norms and scream passionately for your team. The most important take a ways from this chapter are techniques that can help you break yourself and others from the crowd affect that paralyze us during emergencies.

You are Not Who You Think You Are – In this section, Sommers presents evidence that we not only view others differently given the situation, but we also view ourselves differently. The results of several research experiments show that depending on our location and context we will identify ourselves differently. The author also gives great advice on how we should view ourselves as opposed to how many ‘self help’ experts try to convince us to view ourselves. Overall this is a well written and very insightful chapter for understanding how we view ourselves.

Love and Hate – The final two chapter address how and when we love and hate are both influenced by situations. In the love section Sommers outlines the situational influences that affect who we end up choosing to date and marry as opposed to the traits we seek in a mate.

In my opinion, the chapter on Hate is the most important in the book. Finally, someone has addressed why we have a hard time initially distinguishing people within different ethnic backgrounds. This is a critical concept for anyone to understand when they interact and work with people who we do not classify within one of our ‘in groups’. This section also provides useful lessons for Project Managers who need to manage a team that consists of different groups, organizations or backgrounds.

My conclusion is this is a great book for helping to remind us that when viewing and judging the actions of others we need to consider their situation. It’s main strength is that it also provides insights and strategies for dealing with the potential harm of crowd affects along with overcoming biases, both our own and others.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who interacts with other people. For further reading on these topics I also recommend reviewing the author’s blog.

Check out other reviews on Amazon<<<

Your ‘One Click’ Review of Richard Brandt’s Amazon.com book

One Click: Jeff Bezos and the Rise of Amazon.com is a new book by Richard Brandt which delivers an overview of Amazon.com and its founder Jeff Bezos. Although this is a well written overview on both subjects, in my opinion these are both amazing stories that deserve their own more complete books.

Brandt starts with an overview on the background and upbringing of Jeff Bezos. It was interesting to learn of the technical achievements that Jeff attained during his younger years. I did not realize that Jeff is a technical whiz; I always assumed he was an expert on retail or book selling!

Are you "Great By Choice"? A review of the new Jim Collins book

Great by Choice is the latest book by Jim Collins author of Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't and How the Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In and Morten Hansen. In this book the authors take a look at how companies have achieved superior performance in the face of chaos and uncertainty. For example one case study examines how SouthWest has maintained superior performance in the face of all the hurdles encountered by the airline industry.

If you are familiar with any of Collins’ previous books you will be familiar with how the book is organized. The authors begin by defining their goals; to identify and analyze companies that were high performers through turbulent times with a twist being they achieved this success during a period of vulnerability. As usual Collins picks highly successful companies and then finds comparison companies in order to analyze the differences in how the companies were managed. The authors use an interesting analogy of the Roald Amunden and Robert Scott expeditions as they both raced to be the first to the elusive South Pole. Both expeditions faced the same set of circumstances with the result being one succeeded while the other…., well you need to read the story. As an aside, for more on the race to the South Pole, I recommend An Empire of Ice by Edward Larson.

The authors then present the key behaviors for surviving in chaotic time. These behaviors being:
· Fanatic Discipline
· Imperial Creativity
· Productive Paranoia
· Level 5 Ambition (the only holdover from previous books)

The authors suggest looking at the first three as the three tips of a triangle with the last being the inside of the triangle. The remainder of the book provides a more in-depth look at these behaviors using the identified successful companies and their comparisons.

Fanatic Discipline (the 20 mile march). The key concept for this section is that companies which have sustained long term success, especially during uncertain times, remain consistent in their pace and practices during both good times and bad. This behavior includes having the discipline to hold back in good times, keeping to you original plan but also make sure to keep up the pace during the tough times. Why hold back in the good times? So you do not get ahead of yourself and lose control. Say you plan to grow by 20 employees a year. You stick to this plan for a couple of years and then have the opportunity to grow by 100 employees in a given month, do you take it? The authors would say the analysis suggests no, stick to your march – you may not be organizationally ready to grow that rapidly and the book provides real life examples from the unfortunate comparison companies.

Imperial Creativity (Fire bullets then cannonballs). The biggest eye opener from this chapter is that the successful companies were not the big innovators. Think mp3 players, which were introduced first, compared with the IPod today. Most of the successful companies in this study built on other’s major innovations and then applied consistent processes to add to these
innovations incrementally. A case study used is South West airlines, detailing how they were modeled from Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA) and how they continued to succeed long after PSA was gone.

The catch phrase used in this chapter is “Bullets before Cannonballs”, the meaning being that you have to fire many ideas on a small scale (bullets) to see what is successful before firing a huge cannonball. Success with un-calibrated cannonballs can lead to firing more un-calibrated cannonballs which can lead to disaster. When one of the successful companies fired and unsuccessful un-calibrated cannonballs they don’t follow up with another, instead they went back to firing bullets.

I thoughts this section was particularly insightful and was very well aligned with the principles found in Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure by Tim Harford.

Productive Paranoia (Zoom Out then Zoom In). Be afraid, be very afraid. This section is all about Risk Management and the paranoia of successful companies. The authors start by defining three types of risk:
· Death Line – can kill the organization
· Asymmetrical – there is more to lose than gain on a risk
· Uncontrollable – taking a risk where you have no control on the outcome

It is also noted that the perceived timing of the impacts of the risks should be considered. When analyzing risk one needs to consider timing so you do not react too quickly; act fast when you must but slowly when you can.

An appropriate analogy used in this section details the events leading up to the 1996 Mount Everest accident which claimed the lives of several expert climbers.

I found it interesting to note that both Imperial Creativity and Productive Paranoia revolve around Risk Management, obviously an important process that all companies should embrace.

Next the authors review the concept of a SMaC recipe – and the need to keep this recipe as consistent as possible. The successful companies in the study try new things on a small scale before changing SMaC recipe. The successful companies remain steady and don’t react too severely to risks or opportunities.

Finally the authors attempted to determine if good or bad luck plays a part in determining long run success.

An important note to keep in mind is that the authors do not claim there is a causal relationship between these behaviors and success. Instead they admittedly are only able to show a correlation. Although it is intuitive that the behaviors discussed in this book would put a company on the right path for long-term success, but that is not to say success is guaranteed. Nor should we assume that only by following these behaviors can a company sustain success. My advice is to use the book to learn the practices of other companies and decide for yourself which you should be implementing.

There are some camps that have critiqued the methods and conclusions drawn by Collins in his previous book. The thoughts being that we need to consider how randomness plays a role in company outcomes, and how we tend to think that everything a successful company has done is brilliant. If you are interested in another side of this story I recommend The Halo Effect by Phil Rosenzweig. I believe that both sides make strong points and again readers should decide for themselves.

If you have read Collins’ other books you will want to pick this on up as well, since the authors have done a fairly good job at not repeating material. If you have never read his previous writing you can start with any of his books if interested in learning the behaviors of successful and unsuccessful companies.