Here are five books I’ve read since November 15, 2019 which I recommend to a broader audience. (I read several I don’t recommend.)

The Moral Sayings of Publilius Syrus

A collection of aphorisms and sayings which influenced Seneca the Younger, Renaissance and Enlightenment writers. Syrus was a Syrian slave who was freed by his master in Italy. He died in 43 BCE.

The Hundred Year Marathon (Michael Pillsbury)

Well-documented account of China’s very long-term strategy of defeating the western hegemony using lessons learned from their Warring States period. Sobering. Insightful.

Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin’s Most Dangerous Hackers (Andy Greenberg)

Reads like a thriller. The new era of cyberwar connects the digital world and physical infrastructure. We’re deeply vulnerable.

The Canterbury Tales (Chaucer — translated by Gerald Davis)

The classic collection of tales of pilgrims journeying together to the shrine at Canterbury. Davis’ translation is readable and enjoyable. I got so much more reading this in my late 50’s than I did when I was 19 years old.

Leadership Strategy and Tactics (Jocko Willink)

Extremely readable and engaging. Jocko recounts personal stories where he learned, and translates combat leadership into strategy and tactics for any and every leader.

The real world is loaded with feedback loops.  They’re a critical part of healthy, constructive systems.  Your organization must build them, listen to them, and exploit them to out-perform the market and competitors.

Many of the greatest works of genius in the past 300 years are based on understanding feedback loops:

• James Watt – the steam engine
• Adam Smith – economics
• Charles Darwin – adaptation to environment
• Claude Hopkins – advertising
• Maria Montessori – education
• John Boyd – warfare (OODA loop)
• Edwards Deming – quality in manufacturing
• US Constitution framers – distribution of government power

You can readily observe the problems caused by feedback loop break-down.  Cancer cells run amuck rather than growth limited by normal feedback signals.  Blood sugar levels spike and stay high because a diabetic doesn’t have insulin levels to direct cells to pull sugar out of the bloodstream.  Predator and prey cycles are amplified when humans take out the predators.  Businesses over-stock inventory because the signals of decreasing demand aren’t received (and acted upon).  Tyranny happens when a political leader has no countering feedback about his plans. 

A common set of runaway problems are fundamentally about breaking feedback loops by introducing a 3^rd party payer.  Student loan debt soared in the US after Congress made federal student loans non-dischargeable (can’t use bankruptcy) and federalized all student loans.  There is the related case of costs of college tuition skyrocketing because of 3^rd party payment systems.  Health care costs explode when an insurance company (or a government entity) pays instead of the patient.  All began with sincere intentions.  None have significantly changed because the bureaucracy won’t embrace feedback or change.

The greatest human-caused disasters have spun from a desire to rule through ideas absent any feedback loops: communism, socialism, fascism, crony capitalism (completely different than free-market economics).  Ideology is considered much more powerful than reality.   

Let me come down to your leadership, rather than the real-but-abstract that you don’t directly influence. 

Your key question should be “Where best to put feedback loops into our business?” 

The key principle: Put the responsibility for designing, collecting, and responding to feedback as low in the organization as possible. 

Operations: Violate this rule and the operational parts of your organization will experience spiraling costs and inefficiencies because there is no feedback loop at levels where things are small and immediate.  The CEO and board of directors getting feedback is much less useful because of the length of the cause and effect loops. 

New products and services: Design feedback early and often is critical to success. It’s a foundation of Lean Startup methodology.

Leading professionals: People management and coaching for performance thrives on immediacy (time and space) of feedback.   Professionals crave it.

Again, build feedback loops, listen to them, and exploit them to out-perform the market and competitors.

HT:  This was inspired by comments from Perry Marshall and Tom Meloche.

Many people are surprised to learn that I’m introverted rather than extroverted, and routinely battle self-doubt and anxiousness. I’ve learned to act in effective ways — stepping forward, starting conversations, boldly publishing and broadcasting, acting counter to the crowd when I disagree.

Most people have doubts. They struggle with occasional bouts of anxiousness. It’s common, and these are valuable. Let me explain why.

Picture your situation like driving a car — you have a brake, an accelerator, and a steering wheel. Self-doubt and anxiousness are brakes on your contribution. Boldness and action are the accelerator. You have choices about where to steer.

Narcissists and psychopaths don’t have any brakes. They constantly stomp on the accelerator. They’re a tremendous hazard to the people around them.

Embrace your doubts and anxiousness as friends to keep you humble and from preventable error. Use your judgment to decide when to accelerate harder or to coast.

I’ve consistently read 2-3 books/week for many years, plus my systematic Bible reading.  Many fine books are published each year, in addition to the long history of great books.  We live in a privileged time when so many books are widely available. I feel a special surge of pleasure when someone asks me about a book and I can say, “Yes, I’ve read that.” 

My strategy going forward:

• Focus 80% of my time re-reading the classics and a set of books I find most significant. Read deeply, unhurriedly – dive deep, and ponder.  I plan to spend the next 10 years going back through the Great Books of the Western World collection, and about 40 other books of enduring value to me.
• Continue my systematic Bible reading – 10 chapters/day, plus periodic read-throughs of the whole Bible.  (Reading about 50 pages/day takes me through the whole Bible in 30-35 days.)
• Intentionally ignore all but the most-compelling new books in leadership, business, and history.

It made perfect sense for me to read widely and rapidly when I was younger.  This adjusted strategy improves my ability to think deeply and wisely about the most significant issues. 

Have you articulated your strategy for book reading and consuming information? 

Every dynamic organization contains some polarization.  Organizational leaders need to be aware of polarized views.  The best leaders can step “up and out” of their perspective to assess the larger picture and decide how to work with this reality.

The pattern is easy to see in contemporary US politics:

People on the right and left are unaware they have the same behaviors, even as they tell themselves completely different stories.  A centrist politician struggles to gain traction because all the money and attention goes to the extremes.  Though the combine extremes are a minority of the population they overwhelm all the communication channels.  The people in the middle aren’t heard.  They find it safest not to care, and not to publicly participate.

This polarization persists and tends to become stronger. Technology options created an environment of a million channels so it’s easy to pick your preferred echo chamber and never hear a contradictory word for years.  Our collective and voluntary choices got us into this situation.  There are relatively few incentives to listening to different perspectives. I’m skeptical that people will come together again, short of an external existential threat. 

(Sidebar:  The printing press expanded information flow, but it didn’t unify masses of people.  The Internet connected a billion people but accelerated fragmented perspectives and worldviews.  Proliferating communication channels has never automatically resulted in greater peace and cooperation.)

This is a general pattern that occurs in many organizational settings, not limited to politics:

I’ve seen this pattern in these instances, and I’m sure there are more:

• Mission strategy and adjustments
• Structuring a support team
• Building budgets (e.g., baseline vs. bottom-up reset)
• Which customers to favor and why
• Product development, “stage gate” decisions
• Defining metrics for a business process
• Deciding how to allocate an unexpected windfall, or blame

The middle view may not be the correct view. The polarization pattern does not inherently identify the correct view of the past or present situation, nor automatically help you decide on the best path forward.  You’ll need information outside of the polarized paradigm. 

Leaders have choices when they recognize this pattern.  Willfully ignoring polarization does not help. You may choose to

• Exploit the power available by aligning with one polar view.
• Help people recognize an alternative to the current state polarization. 
• Selectively elevate “middle” perspectives to keep the polar ends in check.
• Pit the polarized views against one another as a distraction or to buy time while developing alternative scenarios.

No easy answers, no formula, but the first step is always recognizing the polarization pattern.

Momentum is crucial in organization success.  Momentum carries your mission forward.  Momentum solves certain kinds of problems on its own.  Momentum creates powerful narratives that will be told years from now. 

Momentum = mass * velocity

A gunshot delivers momentum because the bullet is moving at high speed.  A big diesel engine pulling a hundred railcars down the track at 40 mph can blow through 3 feet of concrete and barely slow down. 

That same big diesel engine can’t move forward from a standstill if you put a 2-inch block of wood in front of its wheels.  The organization must be moving.  Smaller organizations MUST move fast to have momentum. 

Velocity is both speed and vector.   An organization center going in 6 different directions has very little useful velocity.

Key to remember: Leaders create momentum; Managers solve problems.   [Both are important!]

Sustained energy input is necessary to create momentum.  There are two other aspects of leadership that are critical for momentum:

1. Trust.  More trust, faster decisions, less resistance, more likely to accomplish difficult objectives.
2. Authority.  There are empty words and platitudes.  Then there are words which galvanize a team and unleash energy – it’s not just the words, but the person sharing them who makes the difference.  Truth spoken plainly conveys authority, even if it is not “charismatic” in delivery. 

You can ask a customer (or a prospective customer) or client “What do you need?”  This will give you ideas about products and services.

If you’re listening that can take you forward, depending on your action plan.

I suggest wrestle with this exercise first:

My client/customer values __(short list)__ therefore we should ___(action plan)___.

Example:

My client values speed, quality, and the story that we’re using the latest technology in our delivery.  Therefore we can charge higher price (improving our margins) as we emphasize latest tech incorporated, and strengthen our ability to deliver even faster without sacrificing quality. We should adjust our hiring standards accordingly.

Example:

My client values massive data management speed.  Therefore, we should invest in the hidden-to-them aspects of network bandwidth, compute power, and a superior data architecture. 

Example:

My customer values consistently low price, even if it means waiting an extra 3 days.  Therefore we should segment part of our workflows to optimize for low price for this segment of our customers.

This approach helps you (1) create products and services that your customer hasn’t thought of, or can’t articulate, but will make them happy, and (2) deepen your connection with the customer.  Values are the foundation of wants and needs.

Note: critically important to test your value list to ensure it’s real.  Also, consider that different segments of clients/customers have different value lists.

It’s important to be disconnected when you’re on vacation.  It can be hard to get your mind off of critical work in-flight and unfinished business. Here is a strategy to help.

Before you go on vacation, schedule a 45-60 minute meeting with your direct reports the afternoon of your first day back in the office.  Reserve time in the morning of that day to work through your inbox and digital channels. 

Set these expectations with your direct reports before you depart:

• Each person gets 7 min max for an update
• Crisp comments on key issues, not a list of everything
• Focus on active and open issues, questions that need an answer, and things your boss or peers will want to know or want done
• Save less time-critical items for your next one-on-one meeting

Let your mind relax while you’re on vacation, confident that your team will be on top of the right things.

Done well, this “catch-up meeting” helps you get back to speed quickly with less interpretation of cryptic email messages that are no longer relevant.

Pro tip #1.  Before you leave, create your “cheat sheet” of critical issues and planned events for follow-up queries.  These are things you know you want to ask about.

Pro tip #2. Even if your boss doesn’t schedule something like this, be prepared to give just such an update when she returns.

Relatively new mantra from me:  Think about your vacation time strategically, purposefully.   Far too often many of us let our vacation days get sucked up into the traditional family events, maybe a big trip, and an end-of-scramble to “use up” our allocated time so we don’t lose it.

A leader I admire plans a week of vacation every 3 months.  This frequency keeps him fresh.  He unplugs his connection to work entirely. “I can feel the need again when I get to the end of the 11 week stretch of work.”

Family obligations (relationship opportunities!), the school calendar, and critical seasons of work likely mean you can’t evenly distribute your vacation time.  Still, plan proactively rather than passively or not at all.

2020 is almost here. Consider your upcoming year with these questions:

• Who needs your attention?  
• What are key times when you’re going to burn through more energy and likely to need a recovery period? 
• What can you schedule with intention to experience re-creation, not just “days off”?  
• How could vacations fit into your professional development opportunities?  
• What rhythms of work must you respect more in 2020 than you have in past years? 
• What value could a solid 2+ weeks away provide you?  When could a few 3 or 4-day weekends help you stay fresh and energized?  
• What travel and experience opportunities would give more breadth or depth?

The likelihood of a memorable 2020 is higher when you plan your vacation time strategically.

There is a remarkable detail in the account of the woman caught in adultery who the scribes and Pharisees used to test Jesus: The older men are the first to respond correctly. 

Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them.  The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst they said to him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery.  Now in the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?”  This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.  And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.”  And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground.  But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him.  Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”  She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”  (John 8:2-11, ESV, emphasis mine)

The scribes and Pharisees clearly engineered this public situation to test and hopefully discredit Jesus or embarrass him in some way.  They don’t bring the adulterous man, or anyone to testify in her defense, but no one (including Jesus) disputes her adultery. We aren’t told what Jesus wrote in the dirt.  Perhaps he referenced the Ten Commandments – “Thou shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”  Perhaps he wrote the name of the person who manipulated this woman into adultery.  Perhaps he wrote the names of women these men had slept with at different times.  

Whatever he wrote, it helped each of them recognize their sin and walk away.

Note also how tenderly Jesus deals with the scribes and Pharisees in this public setting.  He knows their thoughts, their sins, their whole life with all it’s ugliness.  He easily could have verbally called them out.  His approach is extraordinarily loving to these men, just as it is loving to the woman – “Neither do I condemn you; go and from now on sin no more.”

I’m not surprised with the order of their departure. “Beginning with the older ones” is simply explained.  We older men are much more aware of our sins, errors, weaknesses, and failings.  We’ve lived enough that some of our youthful righteousness and arrogance has been smashed out of us.  We don’t only see the surface but increasingly sense the larger story and movements.

Today, especially in the Church, we need the older men to recognize what’s going on, the trends and popular ideas which are simply wrong or “within our rights and freedoms but unhelpful for building others up” (see 1 Corinthians 10:23, Galatians 6:1-2), and lead by walking away. 

This my appeal, older men.  Let’s stand with Jesus.  Let’s be men who are the first to walk away from errors of doctrine and judgment.