Author

David Goggins

Summary

The personal story of former Navy SEAL David Goggins who overcame traumatic experiences to become a successful soldier and athlete.

Takeaways

Most people do not know what they are truly capable of and resist challenging themselves physically and mentally to stretch the limits of their potential.

Unlocking this potential requires hard work and dedicated exposure to uncomfortable experiences and pain to “callous” the mind and become mentally strong.

Quotes

“By the time I graduated, I knew that the confidence I’d managed to develop didn’t come from a perfect family or God-given talent. It came from personal accountability which brought me self-respect, and self-respect will always light a way forward."

“A true leader stays exhausted, abhors arrogance, and never looks down on the weakest link. He fights for his men and leads by example."

“Starting at zero is a mindset that says my refrigerator is never full, and it never will be. We can always become stronger and more agile, mentally and physically. We can always become more capable and more reliable. Since that’s the case we should never feel that our work is done. There is always more to do."

Author

Carl Anderson

Summary

A blueprint to create a data-driven and analytics focused organization.

Takeaways

Data-driven organizations are more successful and generate more value through better decision making.

For a company to be data-driven it must have the right culture and talent in place to use data effctively along the so called analytics value chain. Sponsorship from high profile positions in the organization is needed to implement a culture that values testing and experimentation to derive insights that can give a competitive advantage.

In a data-driven organization, relevant data of high quality feeds reports and stimulates deeper analyses that are presented to decision makers who incorporate them in their decision making to influence the direction of the company.

Quotes

“A data-driven organization will almost certainly be choosing among future options or actions using a suite of weighted variables. Resources are always finite, and there are always pros and cons for different reasonable courses of action. One should gather data for each of the set of variables that are of concern or interest and determine weights among those to generate a final leading decision."

“Data is the raw, unprocessed facts about the world. Information is captured, processed data, while knowledge is a set of mental models and beliefs about the world built from information over time."

“This pseudo-progression is often labeled as analytics maturity. If you do a Google image search for ‘analytics maturity’, you will see what I mean; that many BI vendors and practitioners present this as set of stepping stones with unidirectional arrows pointing from one level to the next. Analytics is not like that: it cuts across levels within an analysis, and different parts of the organization can be engaged in analyses of differing degrees of sophistication at any one time."

“The key here is to start with the question to be answered—be question and decision focused rather than data focused. By setting out the objective clearly and unambiguously, you stand a better chance of defining which questions need to be answered and consequently which data should be collected, which experiments should be run, and what metrics you are trying to drive."

Author

Reed Hastings, Erin Meyer

Summary

The story of establishing a culture of freedom and resonsponsibility at Netflix.

Takeaways

Netflix leadership has identified two key ingredients for a creative and innovative culture: candor and talent density. Employees are empowered to contribute their opinions and ideas. They need to get enough context about the business priorities to take ownership and make informed decisions without the burden of a buerocratic approval process. Netflix aims to attract top talent and rather pays for one highly capable employee than for ten mediocre ones.

Quotes

“If you can’t afford to pay your best employees top of market, then let go of some of the less fabulous people in order to do so. That way, the talent will become even denser."

“When you succeed, speak about it softly or let others mention it for you. But when you make a mistake say it clearly and loudly, so that everyone can learn and profit from your errors. In other words, ‘Whisper wins and shout mistakes.'"

“These are all ways of controlling people rather than inspiring them. It’s not easy to avoid chaos and anarchy as you remove these controls, but if you develop every employee’s sense of self-discipline and responsibility, help them develop enough knowledge to make good decisions, and develop a feedback culture to stimulate learning, you’ll be amazed at how effective your organization can be."

“What we’ve learned is that in order to integrate your corporate culture around the world, above all you have to be humble, you have to be curious, and you have to remember to listen before you speak and to learn before you teach. With this approach, you can’t help but become more effective every day in this ever-fascinating multicultural world."

Author

Ed Catmull, Amy Wallace

Summary

Practical advice on how to establish and maintain a culture of creativity and innovation in an organization

Takeaways

Running a large organization requires dealing with great complexity, and high uncertainty and instability. It is easy for managers to lose sight of the problems of their employees. The only way managers can avoid this is to encourage candor and open feedback, and to actively work on uncovering and understanding anything that is hidden.

Leaders need to embrace a mindset of humility, admit mistakes and course-correct when new evidence comes to light. Being too fixated on goals and stability is ill-advised as change and failure is unavoidable. Leaders should hold on to their ethics and values, but re-balance priorities and adjust goals as they learn.

Quotes

“I will discuss many of the steps we follow at Pixar, but the most compelling mechanisms to me are those that deal with uncertainty, instability, lack of candor, and the things we cannot see. I believe the best managers acknowledge and make room for what they do not know—not just because humility is a virtue but because until one adopts that mindset, the most striking breakthroughs cannot occur. I believe that managers must loosen the controls, not tighten them."

“Creative people must accept that challenges never cease, failure can’t be avoided, and ‘vision’ is often an illusion. But they must also feel safe -always- to speak their minds."

“Unleashing creativity requires that we loosen the controls, accept risk, trust our colleagues, work to clear the path for them, and pay attention to anything that creates fear. Doing all these things won’t necessarily make the job of managing a creative culture easier. But ease isn’t the goal; excellence is."

“Do not accidentally make stability a goal. Balance is more important than stability."

Author

Jocko Willink, Leif Babin

Summary

A set of leadership principles from the Navy Seals and how to apply them to the business context.

Takeaways

Successful leaders need to take ownership to the next level. “Extreme Ownership” includes owning up to mistakes, believing in the mission, and providing enough context for subordinates and supervisors. The best leaders keep their egos in check and critically assess how they can contribute to the team’s success.

Quotes

“On any team, in any organization, all responsibility for success and failure rests with the leader. The leader must own everything in his or her world. There is no one else to blame. The leader must acknowledge mistakes and admit failures, take ownership of them, and develop a plan to win."

“In order to convince and inspire others to follow and accomplish a mission, a leader must be a true believer in the mission. Even when others doubt and question the amount of risk, asking, “Is it worth it?” the leader must believe in the greater cause. If a leader does not believe, he or she will not take the risks required to overcome the inevitable challenges necessary to win. And they will not be able to convince others—especially the frontline troops who must execute the mission—to do so. Leaders must always operate with the understanding that they are part of something greater than themselves and their own personal interests."

“Ego clouds and disrupts everything: the planning process, the ability to take good advice, and the ability to accept constructive criticism. It can even stifle someone’s sense of self-preservation. Often, the most difficult ego to deal with is your own."

“Simplifying as much as possible is crucial to success. When plans and orders are too complicated, people may not understand them. And when things go wrong, and they inevitably do go wrong, complexity compounds issues that can spiral out of control into total disaster. Plans and orders must be communicated in a manner that is simple, clear, and concise."

Author

Mik Kersten

Summary

A practical guide to developing a product focussed management framework that allows competing in the Age of Software.

Takeaways

We are at the turning point of the digital revolution. Companies need to transform their business practices to effectively leverage software development and technology. Many companies realize the need for transformation but rely on management practices that are not adequate for the task.

Products differ from projects in multiple ways. Products have a longer life cycle and receive incremental funding based on business results. The direct mapping to business results enables transparency into the delivery progress and the impact a product has. The Flow Framework is a way to track and visualize the network of product value streams of an organization and identify bottlenecks that require attention.

Quotes

“Software delivery concepts near and dear to technologists, such as technical debt and story points, are meaningless to most business leaders who manage IT initiatives as projects and measure them by whether they are on time and on budget."

“The problem is not with visualizing the information; the problem is that, at a business level, we have not come up with a compelling set of abstractions for what to visualize. Contrast this with the DevOps team, who knows the exact telemetry to show, such as deploys per day and change success rate. Or contrast it with the development team, who uses Scrum or kanban boards to make work in progress visible to the entire team. In other words, the work should already be visible at the specialist and team level. It’s the business-level visibility that organizations lack. This is what flow metrics provide."

“In contrast, the key aspect of tracking business outcomes using the Flow Framework is that they are tracked continually for each product-oriented value stream. This is in contrast to many existing approaches, which track metrics according to project or organizational structures. It is this shift in what we measure that is key to accomplishing the move from project to product, as accurate feedback at the right level of granularity is essential to supporting decision making."

Author

Philip Reeve

Summary

The fictional tale of traveling cities and their residents that battle for survival in a distant future.

Takeaways

Devotion to an ideology can be a strong motivator but also a destructive force. The actions of the characters are driven by their dedication to their way of living and their role in a world that leaves little room for exploring alternative ideas.

Quotes

“But he mustn’t feel sorry for them: it was natural that cities ate towns, just as the towns ate smaller towns and smaller towns snapped up the miserable static settlements. That was Municipal Darwinism, and it was the way the world had worked for hundreds of years, ever since the great engineer Nikolas Quirke had turned London into the first Traction City."

“You aren’t a hero, and I’m not beautfiful, and we probably won’t live happily ever after,” she said. “But we’re alive, and together, and we’re going to be all right."

Author

Peter Thiel

Summary

Practical advice for founders how to build a successful startup and create something new.

Takeaways

Competition is a concept that has a high value in our educational system and economic thinking. The emphasis on competition leads to a uniform approach to development and only incremental improvements. Innovation and success come from avoiding competition and focusing on individual strengths and believes that set yourself apart from others.

If we believe the future to be something definite, we can create bold plans and see them through completion. An indefinite attitude leads to a lack of specific plans, missing innovation, and prevents us from shaping the future.

Quotes

“Competition means no profits for anybody, no meaningful differentiation, and a struggle for survival. So why do people believe that competition is healthy? The answer is that competition is not just an economic concept or a simple inconvenience that individuals and companies must deal with in the marketplace. More than anything else, competition is an ideology –the ideology– that pervades our society and distorts our thinking."

“If you treat the future as something definite, it makes sense to understand it in advance and to work to shape it. But if you expect an indefinite future ruled by randomness, you’ll give up on trying to master it. Indefinite attitudes to the future explain what’s most dysfunctional in our world today. Process trumps substance: when people lack concrete plans to carry out, they use formal rules to assemble a portfolio of various options."

“Instead of pursuing many-sided mediocrity and calling it ‘well-roundedness’, a definite person determines the one best thing to do and then does it. Instead of working tirelessly to make herself indistinguishable, she strives to be great at something substansive–to be a monopoly of one."

Author

Jack Welch

Summary

The life and professional career of Jack Welch, Chairman of General Electric from 1981 to 2001, described in his own words.

Takeaways

Leadership requires more than the knowledge to make sound business decisions. It is equally important to establish the right culture with a focus on people that allows for differentiation and development, and that empowers everyone to contribute ideas (“boundaryless”).

Being able to react to changes trumps a well thought out longterm strategy. Speed and decisiveness are important to remain competitive in changing circumstances even if not all decisions or judgment calls stand the test of time. The characterization of some associates who receive high praise in the book but were later on criticized for their leadership (Jeff Immelt, Bob Nardelli) or general conduct (Roger Ailes, Matt Lauer), is one example that appears to not have aged well.

Quotes

“We learned the hard way that we could have the greatest strategies in the world. Without the right leaders developing and owning them, we’d get good-looking presentations and so-so results."

“Business success is less a function of grandiose predictions than it is a result of being able to respond rapidly to real changes as they occur. That’s why strategy has to be dynamic and anticipatory."

“Informality isn’t about first names, unassigned parking spaces, or casual clothing. It’s so much deeper. It’s about making sure everybody counts–and everbody knows they count."

“Your back room is somebody else’s front room … Don’t own a cafeteria: Let a food company do it. Don’t run a print shop: Let a printing company do it. It’s understanding where your real value added is and putting your best people and resources behind that.”