Elon Musk - Book Review

 Book Review #29

A new book on the mercurial Elon Musk and that too by Walter Issacson (Spielberg movie release moment of the book world 🙂) means I had to read it in the first month itself.

These 620 pages of intimate, unbiased peeks into the life, motivations and toxic flaws of Elon is an output of Issacson's two years of shadowed meetings, factory walks and hours of interviewing Elon, his family, coworkers, and adversaries. Here, I pull out a few big themes as usual.

1> Fearlessness from a Scarred Childhood: Growing up in South Africa he was bullied physically by thugs and emotionally by his father. He grew into a person who doesn't understand fear so much so that he put his 180 million from PayPal in SpaceX, Tesla and Solar City and slept on factory floors. After his 3rd rocket launch failed and when Tesla roadster couldn’t be launched in 2008, he was bankrupt

2> Driven by Vision: Elon believes in preserving human consciousness sees real threats due to climate change and AI. Hence he wants to build sustainable electric cars, build colonies in Mars, preserve free speech & make AI safe so cars and robots can work symbiotically for us on Earth and Mars. Hence, he leads Tesla, Optimus, SpaceX, Starlink, Twitter, Boring Company, Neuralink and X.AI

3> Demon mode and Factory Hell: Elon places Humanity over Humans. And that means he doesn't care about burning out people who work with him. He creates crises, extreme deadlines, and wild surges of work. Such created factory hells are usually preceded by a 'Demon mode' where he goes dark and retreats inside the storm in his head. And then he prescribes the factory hell that causes a lot of chaos but gets shit done. But these bold bets have led to legendary outcomes

4> Drama Seeking: Thriving on crisis mode means he is a man-child with craving for storm and drama at work and in romantic relationships

5> Contrarian thinking: Musk still doesn't have a secretary, takes no vacations and has 11 children through 3 women as he says that a collapsing birth rate is civilization's biggest danger. He believes in engineering focus & asks his teams to question every requirement, simplify, eliminate (delete till you need to addback) and automate.

6> Shifting Political beliefs: Triggered by his daughter Jenna's (nee Xavier) transition he started battling the excesses of political correctness and the woke culture of the progressives. The hypocrisy of the left made him swing from Obama campaign donor to develop right leanings. He claims to be a centrist and says "I support the left half of the Republican Party and the right half of the Democratic Party!"

Episodes on failed rocket launches, repeat marriages with Talulah Riley, the Twitter saga are really entertaining.

But in Issacson's own words “Do the audaciousness and hubris that drive him to attempt epic feats excuse his bad behavior, his callousness, his recklessness? The times he’s an a——hole? The answer is no, of course not.”

#bookreview #ElonMusk #biography

Humanocracy - Book Review

Book Review #28

CEOs and senior execs often lament that people generally dislike change. Gary Hamel & Michele Zanini in their book 'Humanocracy' argue that this is managerialist rubbish and argue that humans have an insatiable appetite for changes and for new things – they are rather resilient, creative and passionate and it is organizations (and not individuals) that resist change due to bureaucracy. They make a case for Humanocracy to replace bureaucracy by placing humans (not structures or processes) at the center of organizations. Bureaucracy is debilitating and instead of building human-shaped organizations we are hammering out bureaucracy-shaped human beings. A Bureaucratic Mass Index (BMI) survey can help measure how bad it is in your organization

The path to humanocracy is different for every organization and hence more than specific practices it is important to focus on the seven Principles of Humanocracy

1) Power of Ownership – Companies have a wealth of talented employees. So, give up authority, empower them and grant ownership

2) Power of Markets – Harness the capacity of the organization's human wisdom by reducing central planning & mandates; keep only essential regulatory structures and let internal opinion markets test the merits of initiatives

3) Power of Meritocracy – Build natural hierarchies that are competency based and not on title or tenure. Increasingly tie compensation to peer-based competence and performance ratings

4) Power of Community – Human beings are programmed for community, and we are most engaged when we feel that we are part of something bigger than ourselves. So, build a mission that emotionally resonates with every team member

5) Power of Openness – Encourage diversity of thought, background and culture and most importantly everyone should feel free to voice different options and not have a compulsive need to agree with the boss

6) Power of Experimentation – Don't let only a crisis warrant a change. In good times and in bad, allow a high level of experimentation across to humanize the organization and constantly keep evolving

7) Power of Paradox – Paradoxes make life interesting. Keep an open mind whether you should explore or exploit, enable freedom or hold control and resist the urge to standardize trade-offs and eliminate organizational biases

Examples from Nucor, Haier, 3M and Michelin show how these principles can be practically implemented.

Hacktivism: Anyone who changed the world did not wait, didn't assume they’re helpless - they saw a problem, built a community and built solutions. They are hackers & activists or rather hacktivists. Organizations can’t change fast unless every employee is trained to think like an activist, knows how to build prototypes and build communities around them to try something new.

Overall, an inspiring book that makes a compelling case to bust bureaucracy and instill humanocratic DNA in modern organizations

#transformation #bookreview Gary Hamel Michele Zanini

Breathe In Breathe Out - Book Review

Book Review #27

Do you want to reduce stress, make better decisions, improve digestion, sleep better, improve stamina or heal from emotional trauma. The answer to all of these may lie just in "Breathing"!

Stuart Sandeman's personal journey healing from the loss of a loved one led him to learn breathing traditions like Chinese Qi, India's Prana, Egypt's Ka, Hebrew nefesh/ruah and Greek psuchē/pneuma. With Dr. Norman Rosenthal, his research helped understand fascinating breath techniques that seem mystical but make scientific sense.

Our Nervous System is made up of Central, Peripheral and Autonomous Nervous System (ANS). ANS is controlled by your unconscious mind and manages all internal organs. The way you breathe influences your ANS and makes you move between 2 states: Sympathetic (active handling threats, dangers & stress) and Parasympathetic (rest handling rest, digest, repair). Modern life's high stimuli (10+ hrs daily screen time) makes us over-activate the Sympathetic state and struggle to sufficiently rest, digest and repair ourselves

Here are some great breathing techniques

- First & foremost, always breathe through your nose (even when talking) and make sure to activate your diaphragm in the process

- When in stress BREATHE IT OUT. Breathe in thru your nose for a count of 4, feel your belly rise. Hold your breath for a count of 4, staying calm. Breathe out through your mouth for a count of eight. Repeat until you are relaxed

- The 4-7-8 technique to fall asleep. Gently place your tongue-tip behind your front teeth. Breathe in through your nose for a count of 4. Hold for a count of 7. Breathe out through pursed lips, keeping your tongue in place, for a count of 8. Repeat for 10 rounds or more

- To digest food properly before a meal, breathe in through your nose for a count of 5. Breathe out through your mouth for a count of 15. Repeat 5 rounds

- INFINITY BREATHING for emotional health. Start a 5 min timer. Breathe in through your nose for 3 seconds. Without pause, release your breath for 3 seconds, thru your nose. Without a pause, breathe in again. When the timer rings, drum your hands on your knees making humming sound. Repeat the drumming/humming for 3 rounds. Return back to the infinity breath practice for another 5-min round. If emotion bubbles, let it flow and let go

- Before making big decisions make sure both right and left nostril breathing are balanced. Breathe in thru your left nostril for four. Breathe out thru your right nostril for four. Now breathe in thru your right nostril for four. Breathe out thru your left nostril for four. Repeat several times

- Deliberate breath-holding can help body's defense mechanism against oxidative damage

Research shows the greatest indicator of lifespan isn’t genes, diet or exercise but lung capacity and respiratory health. So take control of your breath to take control of your life.

As a Sudarshan Kriya practitioner, I endorse this book whole heartedly.

#bookreview #wellbeing

Invent & Wander: A collection of Jeff Bezos's writings and speeches - Book Review

 Book Review #26

When I’m eighty and reflecting back, I want to have minimized the number of regrets that I have in my life. Most of our regrets are acts of omission—the things we didn’t try, the paths untraveled. Those are the things that will haunt us.

This is Jeff Bezos "Regret minimization" framework. In the book "Invent & Wander": a collection of Jeff Bezos's writings and speeches there are several more and here are a few that made a strong impact on me

Customer Obsession: In contrast to focusing on our competition, the advantage of being customer focused is that customers are always beautifully, wonderfully dissatisfied, even when they report being happy and business is great. Even when they don’t yet know it, customers want something better, and a constant desire to delight customers drives us to constantly invent on their behalf — even before we have to

Day one thinking: Operate with the mindset that it is still Day 1. Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. Essentials for Day 1 defense: customer obsession, a skeptical view of proxies, the eager adoption of external trends, and high-velocity decision making

Three lessons on Decision making: 

i) Senior executives are paid to make a small number of high-quality decisions. Warren Buffet says he’s good if he makes three good decisions a year

ii) Disagree and commit - In business and life, there will times when we have to say "Look, I know we disagree on this, but will you gamble with me on it?" or alternatively "I disagree with this, but we’re going to do it your way. And I promise I will never tell you I told you so.”

iii) When decisions need to be made in companies, you need check if it is Type 1 (reversible/two-way door) or Type 2 (irreversible/one-way door). Decision-making for type 1 can be left to the lowest level permissible but for type 2, be careful, because that is where slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

Invent & Wander: Wandering is an essential counterbalance to efficiency. Outsized discoveries —the “nonlinear” ones— require wandering. While Customer obsession is critical, the big needle movers will be things that customers don’t know to ask for. We must invent those. 

High Standards culture: People are drawn to high standards—More subtle: a culture of high standards is protective of all the “invisible” but crucial work that goes on - the work that no one sees, the work that gets done when no one is watching

Trust: The way you earn trust, and develop a reputation is by doing hard things well over and over. It is both simple and complicated. It’s integrity, and also competence. 

Space missions: If this generation builds the road to space, the infrastructure, thousands of future entrepreneurs will build the real space industry and that's the vision of Blue Origin.

Overall, a fantastic peek into the mind of a great modern entrepreneur.

#strategy #vision #amazon #bookreview

A More Beautiful Question - Book Review

 Book Review #25

A few days ago, I finished reading "A More Beautiful Question" by Warren Berger. Berger defines "a beautiful question" as an ambitious yet actionable question that can begin to shift the way we perceive or think about something—and that might serve as a catalyst to bring about change.

My Key takeaways from the book are as follows :-

1) In the Generative AI era, questioning is more important today than it was yesterday—and will be even more important tomorrow—in helping us figure out what matters, where opportunity lies, and how to get there. We’re all hungry for better answers. But first, we need to learn how to ask the right questions.

2) “Known answers are everywhere, and easily accessible.” and since we’re drowning in all of this data, “the value of explicit information is dropping”. The real value is in “what you can do with that knowledge, in pursuit of a query.”

3) As a child we all have "The Question Instinct" and ask many many questions but as we grow up, we get silenced because our school system looks for answers, because questions are seen as "inefficient" and because questions challenge authority organizations fail to get enough of them

4) The 'Art of Questioning' can be learned. To ask better and powerful questions you must:

 - Step back
 - Notice what others miss
 - Challenge assumptions (including our own)
 - Gain a deeper understanding through contextual inquiry
 - Question the questions we’re asking
 - Take ownership of a particular question

 5) Asking better questions has the power to change organizations and also our lives. Peter Drucker says about his consulting projects that “his job wasn’t to serve up answers,”. His greatest strength was “to be ignorant and ask a few questions.” Often those deceptively simple questions like 'Who is your customer?', 'What business are you in?' leads to the eventual answers coming from his clients themselves.

Berger has also created a useful question index at the end. Overall great book that will help you reflect on your ability to ask better questions.

#questionsandanswers #leadership #inquiry #warrenberger

Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy - Book Review

Book Review #24

"Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy" by Henry Kissinger dissects six post World War II leaders who rose up from society's lower strata through meritocracy.

Konrad Adenauer - Humility: Elected Chancellor of Germany at its lowest point after World War II, he helped Germany heal by driving Christian ideals and democratic values. His strategy of humility was composed of four elements: accepting the consequences of defeat; regaining the confidence of the victors; building a democratic society; and creating a European federation that would overcome historic divisions. This eventually led to German re-unification and democracy prevailing.

Charles De Gaulle - Will Power: When Germany invaded France in 1940, De Gaulle was a decorated army officer serving as Under Secretary to the French PM. Disagreeing with idea of surrendering he fled to England and resisted the occupation. No one knew him till then, but he won Churchill's confidence as leader of 'Free France' and eventually gets to lead France. Rebuilding the economy, getting women to vote, resolving the Algerian crisis and building universal healthcare he revived France. He even warned Kennedy not to go to Vietnam.

Richard Nixon - Equilibrium: Nixon is infamous due to Watergate but has his share of achievements. China is where it is today, thanks to Nixon reaching out to Mao Zedong to bring them in to the international fold. He played a crucial role in ending the Vietnam war, stopped gold-reserve based backing of US dollar and was at the helm during NASA's moon landing.

Anwar Sadat - Transcendence: This Egyptian President succeeding Nasser, rose from humble backgrounds, went against conventional ideas and almost secured lasting peace in the middle east. He understood the civilizational identity of Egypt and deliberately planned the Yom Kippur war to bring Israel and Syria on the negotiation table and with US help brokered peace. Unfortunately, it did not last due to his assassination by radical Arabs.

Lee Kuan Yew - Excellence: Singapore's founding PM saw his city state expelled from Malaysia and resisted invasion by a covetous Indonesia. Lee set up a system of true meritocracy, invested heavily on education, covertly built a National Service based defense scheme (with Israel) and opened up his country when socialism was the popular model. His vision and knowledge made him an advisor for so many world leaders.

Margaret Thatcher - Conviction: The Iron Lady was Britain's first woman PM who led the country out of severe economic perils privatizing oil, steel, gas and aerospace companies. After recapturing Falkland Islands from Argentina, she brought the idea of engaging Gorbachev ending the cold war and influenced the US approach towards Saddam Hussein that saved Kuwait's sovereignty.

Overall, a great book and Happy 100th birthday Mr. Kissinger on 27th May 2023. It is fun to watch YouTube/Netflix videos to further absorb these life stories.

#history #leadership #bookreview

The Vedas and Upanishads for Children : Book Review

 Book Review #23

Apparently, the Mughal Prince Dara Shiko was fascinated by the Upanishads and translated 52 Upanishads in Persian and believed the Upanishads was the ‘hidden book’ of wisdom – Kitab al-maknun in Quran. Dara was killed by his orthodox brother Aurangzeb, but his French physician, Francois Bernier, translated his work and eventually the German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer declared that the Upanishads were the literature most worthy of being read in the entire body of world literature.

The Vedas and Upanishads for Children is a book I wish I read 20 years ago and avoided a lot of meandering and west leaning. Here is a humble attempt to summarize the key lessons from this book

- We cannot ascertain how old the Vedas are as hundreds of generations passed them only through recitation/memory without any written form (they are at least 3500 years old)

- Vedas show high level of scientific temper. E.g., the Purusha Sukta in Rig Veda postulates an expanding universe theory tracing back to an uniamginably dense & hot initial tiny point aligned with the Big Bang theory

- Brahman (not to be confused with Brahmin) is the metaphysical concept of pervasive eternal truth, consciousness, energy & bliss. The mahavakyas or great sayings are aham brahmāsmi (I am Brahman), tat tvam asi (You are Brahman), Prajnanam Brahma (Knowledge/Consciousness is Brahman) and Ayam Atma Brahma (This Self is Brahman)

- The concepts of cycle of rebirth, karma (action), moksha (liberation), atma (soul) and your body is just a costume that changes every life explains why there is so much suffering despite God being all merciful

- The four Vedas (Rig, Yajur, Sama & Atharva) are made up of Samhita (hymns), Brahmana (prose explanation), Aranyaka (interpretations) and Upanishads (narratives)

- Bhagavad Gita is the condensed form of all teachings of Vedas + Upanishads

The Prinicipal Upanishands are 

- Isha (you are divine as the supreme being lives within you)

- Kena (it is difficult for the limited human intellect to understand brahman even when brahman is in front of us)

- Katto (the body is not the Self and when the body dies, the Self remains – untainted, unchanging, eternal)

- Prashna (six questions ranging from origin of life to sleep and meditation)

- Mundaka (rituals and good deeds can get us only to lower level of knowledge, only detachment can get us to the higher level)

- Mandukya (whole world you can see, feel, perceive, and understand, is the imperishable sound, the cosmic vibration – AUM)

- Taittiriya (pure consciousness is your innermost core and layers of physical body, vital body, mind & personality are merely sheaths)

- Aitareya (The Self is Brahman, it is all the gods and the earth, wind, space, water & light)

- Chandogya (Brahman is the answer to fundamental questions like where did the universe come from and how everything works?)

- Brihadaranyaka (We are nothing but our deepest desire)

A book worth every penny #bookreview #philosophy #vedas