Review: Radical Candor

Radical Candor: Be a Kickass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Malone Scott
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Kim Scott has worked at Google and Apple. The book is the collection of her experiences from there as well as her management beliefs packaged into an advice for managers.

At times, overly simplistic (yes, you need to provide feedback and encourage receiving it; yes, you need to organise and lead well-planned meetings) and repetitive, it nevertheless is a rather good management book in my view. Some of the lessons I take from it:

Radical candor: provide direct feedback and care personally thereby. You need both. Providing feedback without caring is obnoxious. Caring and never challenging directly is ruinous empathy.

How to fire people so that it is right for you, for the person in question and for the others? "When you fire someone, you create the possibility for the person to excel and find happiness performing meaningful work elsewhere. Part of getting a good job is leaving a bad one, or one that’s bad for you." and "Retaining people who are doing bad work penalizes the people doing excellent work. Failing to deal with a performance issue is not fair to the rest of the team."

Driving results collaboratively by "Get Stuff Done" wheel: Listen-Clarify-Debate-Decide-Persuade-Implement-Learn-Listen. Every step needs to be taken separately to ensure the best results.

"Loud listening": the best type of listening and debating culture in organisation is “strong opinions, weakly held”.

A distinction between "Big Debate" and "Big Decision" meetings: sometimes it is useful to have both kinds, separately, in that order.

Managing decision-making: "Don’t grab a decision just because the debate has gotten painful. A boss’s job is often to keep the debate going rather than to resolve it with a decision."

The right way to provide feedback is using technique “situation behavior impact”: 1) the situation you saw, 2) the behaviour (i.e. what the person did, either good or bad), 3) the impact you observed. This helps avoid making judgements about the person's intelligence, common sense, innate goodness, or other personal attributes.

Another useful tip on providing feedback: "Don’t “save up” guidance for 1:1 or a performance review."

Planned think time: "In addition to regularly planned meetings, people are going to want to talk to you about this or that; urgent matters will arise that you must deal with. You need time to clarify your own thinking, or to help the people who work for you clarify theirs. You should not be tyrannised by your calendar."

Review: The Arab of the Future: A Childhood in the Middle East, 1978-1984

The Arab of the Future: A Childhood in the Middle East, 1978-1984 by Riad Sattouf
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A graphic novel by a famous French cartoonist of French-Syrian descent. It is a graphical memoir of his early life in Gaddafi's Libya, then France, then older Assad's Syria. Presented through the eyes of a young child, it catches interesting details of everyday life and sheds the light on cruel and bizarre world of Arab dictatorships of the 1970s-1980s.

Beautiful cartoon art, captivating story, funny and terrifying moments to follow.

Review: Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers

Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers by Gordon Neufeld
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I liked the basic premise of this book: don't leave your kids to mostly socialise with their friends (although it might be tempting for hard-working and tired parents).

The book looks at the parent-child relationship through the lens of the theory of attachment: in order to grow up as self-esteemed and independent individuals, children need safety and predictability provided by the important adults in their lives. Although it might be fun to occasionally be with the friends, the relationships with them are always contingent on pleasing each other, always demanding. Two or more immature individuals cannot give unconditional acceptance to each other.

It was revealing to read this:

"True friendship is not possible until a certain level of maturity has been realised. Until children are capable of true friendship, they really do not need friends, just attachments."

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The book has several flaws: authors are repeating the same points over and over again, are being constantly nostalgic for "good old days when kids obeyed to their parents" and are trying to persuade via fears of children's violence, disobedience etc.

Nevertheless, it is a very good reminder to parents that we need to preserve our ties to our children and don't easily let them go to our smaller "competitors" as authors put it.

I also found useful the tips from the chapter on discipline:
- Use connection, not separation (such as time-outs), to bring a child into line
- When problems occur, work the relationship, not the incident (“This is not good. We’ll talk about this later.”)
- When things aren’t working for the child, draw out the tears instead of trying to teach a lesson (“I cannot let you do that,” “I know you really wanted this to happen.”)
- Solicit good intentions instead of demanding good behaviour (“I know it isn’t what you wanted to happen.")
- Draw out the mixed feelings instead of trying to stop impulsive behaviour (“We are having such a good time together right now. I remember this morning when you weren’t too happy with me.”)
- When dealing with an impulsive child, try scripting the desired behaviour instead of demanding maturity (“This is the time to use your quiet voice.”)

Review: No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram

No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram by Sarah Frier
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"No Filter" is a great dive into the history of Instagram - from how its co-founders Systrom and Krieger started it to how it has evolved into one of the most ubiquitous social networks in the world and how it has been embraced into the social network empire of Facebook.

The book is very well researched, involves the good deal of drama and is a very smooth read.

I loved how the author presented the major dilemmas that Instagram has been part of. Celebration of beauty around us and useful tips and recommendations, yes. The culture of bending the reality and searching for anything "instragrammable too. Instead of reflecting the reality, the reality has started to reflect what was on Instagram (e.g. "popular" food recipes, travel destinations, body shapes).

It was insightful to read how the management of Instagram - and then also Facebook/Meta - has responded to those challenges (and many others too like trolling, cybercrimes, disinformation campaigns) at various points of time.

It is fascinating to think what will Instagram be like in 10 year from now. Will we even have one then?

Review: Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead by Laszlo Bock
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Work Rules!" was written by a former HR manager of Google. It is an excellent overview of how HR management including recruitment, performance review and learning are organised at Google.

There are many lessons to draw from Google. An engineer-dominated company as it is, Google makes most of the decisions based on data. This is something I could relate to a lot: "Don’t trust your gut. Don’t base your judgement on the first minutes of the interview." Instead, using work samples, tests of general cognitive ability, structured interviews.

I also found insightful examples of how to empower people to shape their work and the company. At Google, they run “quick hit” programmes periodically, focused on more targeted issues. For example:
• “Bureaucracy Busters”: asking people about all the annoying little impediments that make life exasperating.
• “The Waste Fix-It”: asking about practices that waste money.

OKR-s is a well-known practice. The book describes it in a detailed manner - how OKR-s of each individual are interconnected.

One very good lesson - instead of extensive 360 feedback sessions...

.Make the peer feedback templates more specific: instead of asking about several things the person does well / can do better, ask for one single thing the person should do more of, and one thing they could do differently to have more impact. If people had just one thing to focus on, they’d be more likely to achieve genuine change than if they divided their efforts.

"Pay unfairly" is another principle I very much agree with. Individual performance follows a power law distribution - the best people's performance is many times higher than average. Why not pay many times more then?

Glad that we implement many of these practices in our company.

Some of the chapters were not very insightful and did not feel that objective, written by one of the top managers of the company. Overall, however, it was great to learn from the example of the outstanding organisational culture.

Review: High Output Management

High Output Management by Andrew S. Grove
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The first edition of this management book was written in 1983, when one of the most successful tech companies in the West was Intel. Its long-term serving CEO Andrew Grove gave some rather timeless management lessons (some other might be dated though).

"In principle, more money, more manpower, or more capital can always be made available, but our own time is the one absolutely finite resource we each have. How you handle your own time is the single most important aspect of being a role model and leader."

One of the most important jobs of a manager is to increase own leverage: by well-prepared and powerful conversations with key people, by well-organised meetings, by giving unique relevant trainings.

Grove dedicates considerable attention to how to run the meetings, because:

"Most expenditures of such cost have to be approved in advance by senior people – yet a manager can call a meeting and commit thousand of dollars worth of managerial resources at a whim. So, even if you’re just an invited participant, you should ask yourself if the meeting – and your attendance – is desirable and justified."

Send agenda beforehand. Dedicate time for "open session". Control the pace of the meeting. Send out minutes and the decisions made. And then:

"A meeting called to make a specific decision is hard to keep moving if more than six or seven people attend. Eight people should be the absolute cutoff. Decision-making is not a spectator sport, because onlookers get in the way of what needs to be done."

Grove also describes the algorithm of an effective decision-making process:
1. Free discussion.
2. Reaching a clear decision.
3. Everyone involved must give the decision reached by the group full support.

When planning, take into account that:

"By saying “yes” – to projects, a course of action, or whatever – you are implicitly saying “no” to something else. People who plan have to have the guts, honesty, and discipline to drop projects as well as initiate them."

There are many more lessons. Many of them seem non-brainers - however, also 40 years after this book is written, I see how large effect these can have in managerial context if followed consequently.

Review: Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It was quite an enjoyable read. First, it was easy to grasp. Second, it is very useful for virtually anyone.

I have learnt over several decades of my life that, in most of the cases, key to success is not being lucky, talented or having the right origin (although it all helps). It is mostly about discipline. It is about establishing good and virtuous habits - and sticking to them.

This is precisely what James Clear is preaching - and providing many good tips on how to do it.

"Improving by 1% isn’t particularly notable – sometimes it isn’t even noticeable – but it can be very meaningful, especially in the long run. It’s about math: if you can get 1% better each day for one year, you’ll end up 37 times better by the time you’re done."

"Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress."

"Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become."

Habit stacking is one of the best ways to build a new habit:
“After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].” For example: "After I pour my cup of coffee each morning, I will meditate for one minute."

Importance of the physical environment as well as other people is discussed in great details in the book. It's easier to create new habits in the new environment.

The habit line:

"Instead of asking “How long does it take to build a new habit?” we need to ask “How many does it take to build a new habit?”. That is, how many repetitions are required to make a habit automatic?"

The power of decisive moments:

"Every day, there are a handful of moments that deliver an outsized impact – decisive moments. The moment you choose between driving your car or riding your bike. The moment you decide between starting your homework or grabbing the video controller. These choices are a fork in the road."

Two-Minute Rule:

“When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do.”:
• “Read before bed each night” becomes “Read one page”
• “Do 30 minutes of yoga” becomes “Take out my yoga mat”

The Goldilocks Rule's effect:

"The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom. We get bored with habits because they stop delighting us. The outcome becomes expected. And as our habits become ordinary, we start derailing our progress to seek novelty. Perhaps this is why we get caught up in a never-ending cycle, jumping from one workout to the next, one diet to the next, one business idea to the next."

And once again - the biggest take-away of the book - and something I can really relate to a lot:

"The holy grail of habit change is not a single 1 percent improvement, but a thousand of them. It’s a bunch of atomic habits stacking up, each one a fundamental unit of the overall system."

Review: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a truly The Big Picture Book. It takes seemingly impossible task - to cover all the major events of the humankind in 500 pages. And it does it surprisingly well - focusing on what has mattered most to humans and the planet, with the good dose of humour and controversy.

Harari makes some unexpected arguments that really make you think and consider history and present. What a sheer intelligence!

He starts with how humans became so special compared to other animals and how big of a role domestication of fire has played in it. Then came the collective myths and collective imagination which later gave birth to larger communities, trade, states, even empires.

A very intriguing is Harari's argument that the varied life of hunters-gatherers was not necessarily all that bad compared to the miserable and dull life of "most of the peasant, shepherds, labourers and office clerks who followed in their footsteps". He argues that it is not humans who domesticated wheat. It really domesticated us - meaning that humans have done all they could to make wheat (or other selected types of plants we use for food) survive and thrive.

Another interesting and sad paradox:

"Domesticated chickens and cattle may well be an evolutionary success story, but they are also among the most miserable creatures that every lived. The domestication of animals was founded on a series of brutal practices that only became crueller."

Harari then breaks the process of internationalisation and globalisation into three elements behind it: trade and capitalism, empires and universal religions. He describes the role all three have played in unification of the humankind, with both good and bad sides related to it.

Scientific Revolution is given a separate large role in the book:

"The Scientific Revolution has not been a revolution of knowledge. It has been above all a revolution of ignorance: the discovery that humans do not know the answers to their most important questions."

Science has fuelled both trade and empires - and vice versa. It both has given humankind countless technological, geographical and biological discoveries, but also massive slave trade between Europe, Africa and America and breakdown of the role of traditional families and communities.

Good writing, good examples, intelligent humour, well-weighted arguments - it was an enjoyable reading I can recommend to anyone.