Conquering Crisis by William McRaven

CONQUERING CRISIS by best-selling author and retired Admiral William McRaven (Sea Stories and Make Your Bed amongst others) is subtitled “Ten Lessons to Learn Before You Need Them.”  McRaven once again shares insightful advice based largely on his varied military career where he says, “I learned early on what actions must be taken to resolve the crisis quickly and come out with one's professional and personal reputation intact.” In this new collection he describes what he sees as five phases of a crisis: assessment, reporting, containment, shaping the outcome, and managing. For example, his first lesson is “First Reports Are Always Wrong,” and he notes that in a chaotic crisis there frequently is early inaccurate or misleading information, using both the WWII Battle of the Bulge and a 1983 exercise near Chile to illustrate the point. Subsequent lessons include ideas like “Bad News Doesn't Get Better with Age” or “Weaponize the Truth.” In addition to the memorable examples (McRaven is a great storyteller), each chapter/lesson is summarized with a few key points. Publishers Weekly says, “leaders looking for an edge in high-pressure situations will find value here.” I concur.

Spark by Chris Mettler and Jon Yarian

SPARK by Chris Mettler and Jon Yarian Offers “24 Concepts to Ignite, Unstick or Supercharge Your Work Life.”  With numerous short chapters, it is written in a relatively informal way “in everyday language and offers examples that real people can relate to.” Overall, this seems like a text which would be especially interesting to younger and mid-career workers, with advice like, “I learned to ask dumb questions, risk embarrassment, and embrace failure for the gift of knowledge it offers.” Both authors have extensive start-up business experience. Mettler has founded several companies and is currently Founder and Chairman of Sovereign, a marketing technology company; Yarian, described as a writer, speaker, serial entrepreneur, and performance coach, is Sovereign’s Senior Vice President of Operations and Strategy. They encourage readers to put aside preconceived notions and to be open to new ways of thinking and acting. For example, they define leadership as “the relinquishment of the illusion of control.” That, in turn allows people to see “your commitment to them and your vision for what is possible for you to accomplish together.” Isn’t that a terrific description of the best boss(es) you have had? SPARK is “a (mostly) modular book” with three main sections: the first involves concepts to work on within yourself, the second focuses on partnerships, teams, and interpersonal skills, and the third section looks more broadly across entire organizations and company culture. A final section suggests combinations and sequences. This relatively short (about 200 pages) but powerful book would be a fascinating text to read and discuss as a group.

System Error and Masters of Scale

Our students and social workers have been enthralled by The Wall Street Journal investigative project titled “The Facebook Files,” particularly sections about the known negative impact of Instagram on teenage girls. If you are, too, then look for SYSTEM ERROR by Rob Reich, Mehran Sahami, and Jeremy M. Weinstein which outlines “Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot.” The text is divided into three sections: Decoding the Technologists, Disaggregating the Technologies, and Recoding the Future. The authors, three professors from Stanford, have kept the last section the shortest and most broad. But, as the Wall Street Journal review explains, “the book’s contribution … is to spell out what needs to be fixed” and there are numerous references to digital surveillance, biased algorithms, toxic content, and impact on democracy. Containing illustrative examples of unethical practices and misplaced values, SYSTEM ERROR offers extensive notes and a helpful index for researchers; it received a starred review from Publishers Weekly.

MASTERS OF SCALE by Reid Hoffman (with June Cohen and Deron Triff) will certainly interest our Business students. Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, offers “Surprising Truths from the World's Most Successful Entrepreneurs,” based on interviews with seventy entrepreneurs including the inventor of Spanx, founders of Shake Shack, Airbnb, and Canva, plus Bill Gates, Howard Schultz, and Arianna Huffington, to name just a few.  Hoffman references the Masters of Scale podcast and notes “we believe scaling is not just a science but also a mindset – a journey that requires equal measures of faith and a willingness to fail.”  There are ten key themes related to the entrepreneurial journey and Hoffman devotes an entire chapter to the value of hearing “no” and learning from feedback.  Other themes he discusses include finding the big idea and learning to unlearn, with each chapter ending in a boxed summary section. Our students do a project each year involving business leaders and these stories and insights offer valuable information and discussion prompts for them. 

Robots and Artificial Intelligence

DANCING WITH ROBOTS by Bill Bishop offers “The 29 Strategies for Success in the Age of AI and Automation.” Bishop, a Canadian entrepreneur and futurist, argues that machine learning algorithms, automation, and artificial intelligence are increasingly important and pervasive elements and that it is essential that humans develop and hone effective interactions. Basically, he writes, “We won’t be able to beat them, and we can’t ignore them. We need to learn how to embrace and dance gracefully with them.” Generally optimistic about humans’ competitive edge, he summarizes “Five Human Superpowers: embodied pattern recognition, unbridled curiosity, purpose-driven ideation, ethical framing, and metaphoric communication.” Next, he outlines strategies such as Ask Purpose-Driven Questions or Facilitate Flow or Connect with Nature. These ideas challenge our fundamental assumptions, moving from “an economy predicated on assembly lines and assembly-line thinking to an economy structured as a network… of relationships mediated by technology.” As a result, Bishop contends that we need new skills, attitudes, and ways of being. While these strategies may not be original, they clearly have profound implications for what and how we teach in an effort to prepare students for the future. I look forward to discussing this accessible text with others.

RULE OF THE ROBOTS by Martin Ford (Rise of the Robots) describes “How Artificial Intelligence Will Transform Everything.” Ford encourages readers to view AI as “not as a specific innovation, but rather as a uniquely scalable and potentially disruptive technology.” He compares it to electricity and data to the new oil in a series of chapters which deal with topics like deep learning, disappearing jobs, and China and the role of the surveillance state. Roughly fifteen percent of the text encompasses a set of footnotes which have been extremely helpful to the student researchers who have repeatedly requested this text.  Ford concludes by saying that we need to “begin by solving the problem of income distribution while maintaining a strong incentive for people to educate themselves and pursue meaningful challenges.” No simple task.  

Those looking for an even more scholarly text should turn to WORK by James Suzman which is subtitled “A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots.” Suzman, an anthropologist by training, now applies those methods to solving contemporary social and economic problems. In this work, published about a year ago, the self-described advocate for taking “a far more relaxed approach to work,” argues that the “principle purpose, however, has been to loosen the claw-like grasp that scarcity economics has held over our working lives, and to diminish our corresponding and unsustainable preoccupation with economic growth.” WORK received a starred review from Kirkus, plus positive feedback from Adam Grant, Charles Duhigg, Seth Godin, and Susan Cain (author of Quiet) who describes Suzman’s text as, “An incisive and original new history that invites us to rethink our relationship with work -- and to reimagine what it means to be human in an ever-more automated future.” 

You're about to Make a Terrible Mistake by Olivier Sibony

YOU'RE ABOUT TO MAKE A TERRIBLE MISTAKE by Olivier Sibony focuses on biases in business decisions and strives to address business leaders’ growing acknowledgment of the need to address this issue. In part one of his text, Sibony argues that we are predictably irrational and outlines “nine decision traps into which our biases drive us.” In the second part, he states that collaboration and process are essential to help organizations “produce choices that are less biased and more rational than our individual decisions would be.” And, in the third section, Sibony explores a leader’s role as a “design architect” and offers over three dozen practical techniques to consider applying. A key idea: give some thought to deciding how you will decide. 

Sibony’s writing is actually quite entertaining and even humorous at points.  After all, he has so many failed strategic decisions from which to draw! There is also plenty of critical thinking to take into consideration – one pattern is the “storytelling trap” where executives may believe that are checking the facts, but are actually seeking to confirm (instead of disprove) a story presented to them. In other cases, psychology students will be interested in examples of terms like “halo effect,” a “anchoring,” or “risk perception.” Each of the nine decision traps is explained in a chapter with case studies and then summarized in a “thirty second” one or two page overview.  

YOU'RE ABOUT TO MAKE A TERRIBLE MISTAKE is recommended by authors of business and psychology works such as Thinking, Fast and Slow, Grit, and Loonshots; consider pairing it with one of those (by Kahneman, Duckworth, and Bahcall, respectively) or with another leadership text -- maybe What’s Your Problem? by Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg.