by Thomas Stanley, William Danko
Narrarated by: Cotter Smith
Publisher: Sound Ideas
Total Length: 8 Hours, 50 Minutes
Date Published: June 24, 2008
Publisher: Taylor Trade Publishing
ISBN: 978-1589795471
Number of Pages: 258
Date Published: November 16, 2010
Each time I interview someone for an opening that I trying to fill, I almost always throw out the question, "What book have you read most recently (other than a technical manual), and what did you learn from it?" It helps gauge a person's analytical skills on something other than a purely technical problem (gives them the opportunity to identify an issue or area of interest and prove that they put some thought into it). It was during one of these interviews that a candidate mentioned The Millionaire Next Door (TMND). I ended up sending that candidate a job offer, and I am grateful for the recommendation for my reading list.
Surprised?
- What kind of car do you drive?
- What neighborhood do you live in?
- What is the most you ever paid for a pair of shoes?
- How much did you spend on a college education?
- Are you an entreprenuer?
- Do you believe that hard work pays off?
Danko and Stanley surveyed millionaires with these types of questions and many, many more. This book is a distillation of the metrics that they found correspond to the success of millionaires. "In the course of our investigations, we discovered seven common denominators among those who successfully build wealth."
- They live well below their means
- The allocate their time, energy, and money efficiently, in ways conducive to building wealth.
- They believe that financial independence is more important than displaying high social status.
- Their parents did not provide economic outpatient care.
- Their adult children are economically self-sufficient.
- They are proficient in targeting market opportunities.
- They chose the right occupation.
Wealth Accumulation
Income does not equal wealth. Stanley and Danko make it a point to distinguish between current income, total net worth and expected net worth. They provide an interesting calculation to see where you stack up.
"Multiply your age times your realized pretax annual household income from all sources except inheritances. Divide by 10. This, less any inherited wealth, is what your net worth should be."
Based on this formula, if you are close to the expected value, then you are considered an Average Accumulator of Wealth (AAW). The ones that have at least twice the expected net worth (Age * Income / 10 * 2) are considered a Prodigious Accumulators of Wealth (PAW). At the bottom end of the calculation, you are an Under Accumulator of Wealth (UAW) if you have less than half of your expected net worth (Age * Income / 10 / 2).
"Big Hat, No Cattle"
The primary reason that so many people do not achieve the levels of wealth accumulation that they should is because they are too busy trying to appear well off, at the expense of sacrificing true financial security for the façade of keeping up with the Jones'. The truly affluent are more worried about how many cattle they have, not how big their cowboy hat is.
Education
The wealth accumulation formula is interesting because it takes into account how many years
a person has to build their wealth. One of the major factors that
contribute to the time spent building wealth is whether that person pursues post secondary education. Michael Bloomberg gave a graduation speech last month that mentions this fact (which some criticized him for), but Stanley and Danko's research supports this fact. The time spent in college, is time lost in terms of accumulating wealth, plus the money spent on college tuition and expenses (see denominator #7 above).
Budgeting Is Like Exercise
There probably aren't many people that really "enjoy" sitting down and going over all of their expenses and categorizing them and analyzing income and spending trends, but that is was the majority of these PAWs do on a regular basis. Do you know how much you spent on gasoline last month? How about eating out? How about household utilities? TMND relates this routine practice to that of exercise. Who is more likely to have a regular exercise routine, those who are in shape or the less than healthy types?
You might think, why would someone who is rich need to worry about keeping track of all these details? But that is precisely the point. They don't keep track of them because they are wealthy; they are wealthy because they took the time to keep track of their budget.
Economic Outpatient Care
Economic Outpatient Care is defined in the book as relying on income from your parents when you should be at a point of providing for yourself (see denominator #4 and #5 above). Some of the best lessons I got from TMND was the sections dealing how to help your children be successful. What it really comes down to is that teaching children how to be self sufficient and provide for themselves is much more beneficial than continually investing in their bad spending habits.
Reflections
I originally listened to the audiobook first, but then ended up getting a copy of the paperback to be able to review all of the tables and charts in the book. I have since loaned out my copy of this book to several friends and they have all be appreciative of the recommendation as well. Take the time to read this book. It is definitely an eye opener.
Breakpoint by: Richard A. Clarke
Narrarated by: Robertson Dean
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Total Length: 8 Hours, 19 Minutes
Date Released: September 20, 2007
It has been a while since I've enjoyed a recreational novel, or so I thought. (I don't count The Phoenix Project since that more or less is a text book on DevOps, ToC, Lean, and VisibleOps disguised as a novel). But then I saw this quote from the author,
"Fiction can often tell the truth better than nonfiction. And there is a lot of truth that needs to be told."
The Internet links between North America and the rest of the world severed. Research facilities blown up by hackers gaining access to SCADA devices. The heads of DARPA, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health blown up by a suicide bomber. The evolution of a new human species... This cloak and dagger story is filled with twists and turns. The FBI, CIA, DHS, NSA and every other government agency is trying to figure out who is behind these attacks, but it is up to a NYPD detective and an analyst with the 'Special Projects Office, Intelligence Analysis Center' to really crack the case. As far fetched or implausible as the plot line seems, Clarke lays out some very clear reasoning for combining these particular elements and other into Breakpoint.
Questions to Ponder
Given the news articles throughout the past year or so, I wasn't surprised by all the references to China hacking into university research centers or SCADA systems. But had I read this book when it came out back in 2007, I probably would have been fairly surprised by and skeptical of all these vulnerabilities gaping holes in the safety of the everyday life that I take for granted as an American.
Throughout the book, Clarke presents several conflicts of ethical debate, the biggest of which is the question of what it means to be "human". Would genetically engineering someone to have several extra chromosomes change whether they were still human?
Clarke makes an interesting reference to Plato's republic, by bringing up the class system of gold men vs bronze men. Are the changes and advances in technology widening the gap between the haves and the have-nots?
For all the advances that we claim technology has made for us, are we really any better off in terms of happiness or quality of life?
by Leo Tolstoy
Translated by L. and A. Maude
Originally Published: 1885
Project Gutenberg: June 13, 2009
I love this short story, a great lesson in Time Management and Social Responsibility...
- How can I learn to do the right thing at the right time?
- Who are the people I most need, and to whom should I, therefore, pay more attention than to the rest?
- And, what affairs are the most important, and need my first attention?
Three Questions
It once occurred to a certain king, that if he always knew the right time to begin everything; if he knew who were the right people to listen to, and whom to avoid; and, above all, if he always knew what was the most important thing to do, he would never fail in anything he might undertake.
And this thought having occurred to him, he had it proclaimed throughout his kingdom that he would give a great reward to any one who would teach him what was the right time for every action, and who were the most necessary people, and how he might know what was the most important thing to do.
And learned men came to the King, but they all answered his questions differently.
In reply to the first question, some said that to know the right time for every action, one must draw up in advance, a table of days, months and years, and must live strictly according to it. Only thus, said they, could everything be done at its proper time. Others declared that it was impossible to decide beforehand the right time for every action; but that, not letting oneself be absorbed in idle pastimes, one should always attend to all that was going on, and then do what was most needful. Others, again, said that however attentive the King might be to what was going on, it was impossible for one man to decide correctly the right time for every action, but that he should have a Council of wise men, who would help him to fix the proper time for everything.
But then again others said there were some things which could not wait to be laid before a Council, but about which one had at once to decide whether to undertake them or not. But in order to decide that, one must know beforehand what was going to happen. It is only magicians who know that; and, therefore, in order to know the right time for every action, one must consult magicians.
Equally various were the answers to the second question. Some said, the people the King most needed were his councillors; others, the priests; others, the doctors; while some said the warriors were the most necessary.
To the third question, as to what was the most important occupation: some replied that the most important thing in the world was science. Others said it was skill in warfare; and others, again, that it was religious worship.
All the answers being different, the King agreed with none of them, and gave the reward to none. But still wishing to find the right answers to his questions, he decided to consult a hermit, widely renowned for his wisdom.
The hermit lived in a wood which he never quitted, and he received none but common folk. So the King put on simple clothes, and before reaching the hermit's cell dismounted from his horse, and, leaving his body-guard behind, went on alone.
When the King approached, the hermit was digging the ground in front of his hut. Seeing the King, he greeted him and went on digging. The hermit was frail and weak, and each time he stuck his spade into the ground and turned a little earth, he breathed heavily.
The King went up to him and said: "I have come to you, wise hermit, to ask you to answer three questions: How can I learn to do the right thing at the right time? Who are the people I most need, and to whom should I, therefore, pay more attention than to the rest? And, what affairs are the most important, and need my first attention?"
The hermit listened to the King, but answered nothing. He just spat on his hand and recommenced digging.
"You are tired," said the King, "let me take the spade and work awhile for you."
"Thanks!" said the hermit, and, giving the spade to the King, he sat down on the ground.
When he had dug two beds, the King stopped and repeated his questions. The hermit again gave no answer, but rose, stretched out his hand for the spade, and said:
"Now rest awhile-and let me work a bit."
But the King did not give him the spade, and continued to dig. One hour passed, and another. The sun began to sink behind the trees, and the King at last stuck the spade into the ground, and said:
"I came to you, wise man, for an answer to my questions. If you can give me none, tell me so, and I will return home."
"Here comes some one running," said the hermit, "let us see who it is."
The King turned round, and saw a bearded man come running out of the wood. The man held his hands pressed against his stomach, and blood was flowing from under them. When he reached the King, he fell fainting on the ground moaning feebly. The King and the hermit unfastened the man's clothing. There was a large wound in his stomach. The King washed it as best he could, and bandaged it with his handkerchief and with a towel the hermit had. But the blood would not stop flowing, and the King again and again removed the bandage soaked with warm blood, and washed and rebandaged the wound. When at last the blood ceased flowing, the man revived and asked for something to drink. The King brought fresh water and gave it to him. Meanwhile the sun had set, and it had become cool. So the King, with the hermit's help, carried the wounded man into the hut and laid him on the bed. Lying on the bed the man closed his eyes and was quiet; but the King was so tired with his walk and with the work he had done, that he crouched down on the threshold, and also fell asleep--so soundly that he slept all through the short summer night. When he awoke in the morning, it was long before he could remember where he was, or who was the strange bearded man lying on the bed and gazing intently at him with shining eyes.
"Forgive me!" said the bearded man in a weak voice, when he saw that the King was awake and was looking at him.
"I do not know you, and have nothing to forgive you for," said the King.
"You do not know me, but I know you. I am that enemy of yours who swore to revenge himself on you, because you executed his brother and seized his property. I knew you had gone alone to see the hermit, and I resolved to kill you on your way back. But the day passed and you did not return. So I came out from my ambush to find you, and I came upon your bodyguard, and they recognized me, and wounded me. I escaped from them, but should have bled to death had you not dressed my wound. I wished to kill you, and you have saved my life. Now, if I live, and if you wish it, I will serve you as your most faithful slave, and will bid my sons do the same. Forgive me!"
The King was very glad to have made peace with his enemy so easily, and to have gained him for a friend, and he not only forgave him, but said he would send his servants and his own physician to attend him, and promised to restore his property.
Having taken leave of the wounded man, the King went out into the porch and looked around for the hermit. Before going away he wished once more to beg an answer to the questions he had put. The hermit was outside, on his knees, sowing seeds in the beds that had been dug the day before.
The King approached him, and said:
"For the last time, I pray you to answer my questions, wise man."
"You have already been answered!" said the hermit, still crouching on his thin legs, and looking up at the King, who stood before him.
"How answered? What do you mean?" asked the King.
"Do you not see," replied the hermit. "If you had not pitied my weakness yesterday, and had not dug those beds for me, but had gone your way, that man would have attacked you, and you would have repented of not having stayed with me. So the most important time was when you were digging the beds; and I was the most important man; and to do me good was your most important business. Afterwards when that man ran to us, the most important time was when you were attending to him, for if you had not bound up his wounds he would have died without having made peace with you. So he was the most important man, and what you did for him was your most important business. Remember then: there is only one time that is important; now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power. The most necessary man is he with whom you are, for no man knows whether he will ever have dealings with any one else: and the most important affair is, to do him good, because for that purpose alone was man sent into this life."
by Josh More
Publisher: Syngress
ISBN: 978-0124096073
Number of Pages: 95
Date Published: May 10, 2013
As I've noted in several previous blog posts, I believe the concept of Vendor Management is one of the weaker links in the security chain at many organizations. While this book doesn't necessarily show you everything you need to know to fix this problem, it does provide solid advice on proper due diligence for selecting vendors and products that you want to build a relationship with.
Josh More lays out a very practical framework for finding vendors that provide technology (products and/or services) that address the needs of your situation. More's Vendor Assessment process contains nine phases to help those responsible for evaluating and recommending solutions in Information Technology and InfoSec. The process is designed to help these individuals in fairly and quickly evaluating vendors, understanding how the vendor/sales atmosphere operates, and getting more value out of vendor contracts.
One of the biggest lessons I got out of the book was in properly defining the criteria used to assess and compare various solutions. By selecting specific criteria to measure each vendor, you are ensuring a fair and systematic evaluation so that the final decision can be based on a true apples to apples comparison and backed up with data. On page 17, More provides some great advice for deciding how many different criteria should be used in this process:
The limit is going to be the number of dimensions that you can hold in your head at any given time. This way, as you assess systems, you don't have to bounce between modes of thinking too much. This process, called "context shift," is a very common source of time loss when doing analyses. If you are running down a large list for each candidate, you have to constantly change your mode of thinking and every time you do, it will cost you a little bit of time. If your list is too short, you will be losing time thing of real-world scenarios that could be concerning but cannot be captured in your limited system.
More provides several examples to address this issue, ranging from the C-I-A triad to the CISSP 10 Domains. But I really liked the reference to the Parkerian Hexad on page 18, which is a short enough list to easily remember, but comprehensive enough to cover the majority of vendor/product assessments you will run into.
- Availability
- Possession/Control
- Confidentiality
- Utility
- Integrity
- Authenticity
I have to admit, this isn't the most exciting IT book out there, but I'm glad I read through it. All in all, this one is a quick read weighing in at just under 100 pages, but sheds some light on what can sometimes be a very ad-hoc selection and purchasing process.
by Josh More
Publisher: RJS Smart Security
Number of Pages: 24
Josh More over at RJS Smart Security obviously had some fun putting this together. Lean Security 101 is a neat little info-graphic that looks an awful lot like a comic book.
Percy the Protection Pangolin
I'll admit it; I had to look up what a Pangolin actually was (+1 for originality). The Pangolin is Josh's sidekick throughout the story.
The 80x5 Rule
The biggest insight I got out of this comic was the 80x5 Rule. So you've probably heard of the "Pareto Principle", commonly referred to as the 80/20 rule. Well the 80x5 rule builds on this idea using concepts from Lean.
The 80/20 rule is often quoted by business managers and executives as a rallying cry to take some action or get started with some new project by trying to justify quick returns with minimal effort. But hidden within this management standard is an implicit acknowledgment that getting a project to 100% perfection (meeting all of the requirements on time and within budget) becomes increasingly difficult. The law of diminishing returns takes over and additional effort is needed just to make incremental progress towards the goal.
When applied to Information Security, this concept is just as true. There is no silver bullet for protecting your digital assets, so no single project or technology or defense mechanism is ever going to be 100% effective at keeping your data safe.
The 80x5 rule is designed to help you get the most value from the least amount of effort, and while maximizing your defensive posture.
The 80x5 rule says that instead of spending all of your effort trying to implement a single defensive measure (that will never reach 100% effectiveness), it would be much more productive to add complementary layers of security. After you have spent the first 20% of your effort on that defensive measure (and reached 80% of the results), any further effort on that task could be considered waste (based on Lean). In terms of opportunity cost, if you took the remaining unspent effort (you still have 80% left at this point) and divide that into four more blocks, you could potentially get 80% results from each of another four projects. This is obviously a much better ROI than spending that remaining 80% and only obtaining at most 20% benefit from your current task.
Assuming each layer is 80% effective (based on the Pareto Principle), eight layers could give you up to 99.999% effective security. Yes, there can and will be various exceptions to this line of reasoning. But why spend all your effort on fixing things that should be considered "good enough" when there are other more productive security measures you could be working on (like building up your incident response team and testing your IR plan)? I see this as an important tool for helping to prioritize competing projects and assessing those final inches toward the goal line.
The book goes into more detail, but hopefully you get the idea. Go download a free copy for yourself, http://www.rjssmartsecurity.com/Lean-Security-101-Comic/, and give them a call about a free Lean Security Assessment.
by Dan ArielyNarrated by: Simon Jones
Publisher: Harper Audio
Total Length: 7 Hours, 24 Minutes
Date Published: April 2, 2009
I first heard about Predictably Irrational on NPR while listening to the show Marketplace by American Public Media. Dan Ariely had a segment each week where he would discuss something from one of his experiments and how the results defy the general assumptions held by most people. I found Dan to be very entertaining to listen to, especially amid the context of the Great Recession. So, I decided to download Predictably Irrational to see if I was missing out on any other great insights in the world of Behavioral Economics.
The Decoy Effect
R
elativity is all about how we compare things. The example of the subscription to the Economist shows how most people don't really know what anything is worth, but when comparing two similar items it is easier to see the relative value of each. I love how it points out that, "Thinking is difficult and sometimes unpleasant." This is a vulnerability just waiting to be exploited.
The take away here is when you want to persuade someone towards a particular choice, one effective way to do so is by adding a similar, but less attractive option. When given this situation, Option A, Option B, and Option -B, most people will choose Option B.
"Free"
Here's a less than obvious calculation (well it wasn't obvious to me anyway). When given the choice between two products, I should compare the perceived value of each to the stated price and if the benefit of the higher priced product is worth the higher price to me, then I should choose that product. The difference in the price should be the difference in value (to me) of the two products. But, when one of the products is "free", the difference in value becomes much harder to justify. Ariely provides several examples of experiments where they offer a premium chocolate for $0.25 and an average chocolate for $0.01. If I value the premium chocolate by $0.24 more, then I should still be willing to pay the $0.24 for the premium chocolate even if the average chocolate is priced at "free".
Social Norms vs Market Norms
I found the topic of comparing social norms and market norms very interesting. It seems to me that there are many untapped solutions to everyday problems that are obfuscated by the fact that we are looking at the problem through only one of the possible lenses (social or market norms). Based on the research presented in Predictably Irrational, it can often be difficult to make the shift from one point of view to the other, or difficult to return to a particular point of view once that shift has been made.
Price of Placebo
"Before recent times, almost all medicines were placebos. Eye of the toad, wing of the bat, dried fox lungs, mercury, mineral water, cocaine, an electric current: these were all touted as suitable cures for various aliments. When Lincoln lay dying across the street from Ford's Theater, it is said that his physician applied a bit of 'mummy paint' to the wounds. Egyptian mummy, ground to powder, was believed to be a remedy for epilepsy, abscesses, rashes, fractures, paralysis, migraine, ulcers, and many other things. As late as 1908, 'genuine Egyptian mummy' could be ordered through the E. Merck catalog... We may think we're different now. But we're not. Placebos still work their magic on us."
Chapter 10 was one of my favorite chapters. The Placebo Effect has long been a fascination of mine, and Ariely's research puts some hard data to this question. The results show that when people pay more, they claim to receive greater benefits. This bias is extremely unfortunate, given that alternative solutions may actually be more effective and more holistic, but are excluded because they don't fall within popular opinion.
Reflections
Overall, I really enjoyed this audio book. It is chock-full of great examples and data from experiments on behavioral economics (many, many more than the ones I mentioned here). I have gone back and listened to several of the chapters over again in the past couple of years, as it provides some interesting alternate view points and topics of debate to insert into other research projects I've been working on. My only disappointment with it, I might have preferred the audio book more if it was read by the author.
by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford
Publisher: Information Technology Process Institute
ISBN: 0975568612
Number of Pages: 100
Date Published: June 15, 2005
VisibleOps is one of my favorite computer geek books of all time. This book is a no-nonsense, straight forward guide to running a highly successful IT department. But, VisibleOps is not just some flavor of the week self-help management book. The lessons and goals presented in VisibleOps are the culmination of years of observation and research by the authors, who happened to notice that successful organizations had IT departments that operated in very similar ways. This book is a distillation of those observations into a methodology that is easy for anyone in IT to grok. Loosely based on the ITIL framework, VisibleOps cuts straight to the chase with four basic steps.
The Four Steps of Visbile Ops
Phase 1. Stabilize the PatientPhase 2. Catch & Release and Find Fragile ArtifactsPhase 3. Establish Repeatable Build LibraryPhase 4. Enable Continuous Improvement
Stabilize the Patient
In the first phase of VisibleOps, the goal is triage. Can you reduce the number and impact of outages? Some of the key ways to accomplish this goal is to implement and strengthen Change Management processes, only allow scheduled changes, and have a defined maintenance window.
Another huge benefit to the Change Management
process that often gets overlooked is its ability to act as a
communication tool and a way to publish a schedule of changes. With these processes in place, you will have better visibility for outage responders:
- What changed?
- How to back out that change
Fragile Artifacts
The second phase is all about using a risk based approach to identifying and cataloging critical systems. Some of the key indicators include:
- Systems with the highest Mean Time To Recovery (MTTR)
- Systems with low change success rates
- Systems with the highest downtime costs
But being able to understand and identify the cost of downtime requires understanding the business processes that each system supports. That is why this phase is based on the Configuration Management process and includes implementing a Configuration Management Database (CMDB). Once these processes are in place, you should see a reduction in variance, increased conformity in your systems, and it will be easier to detect anomalies within the environment.
Repeatable Build Library
In order to overcome the limitations imposed by the Fragile Artifacts, you must create a way to commoditize these systems. Phase three is all about implementing proper Build and Release Management processes to further reduce variance and increase your understanding of what your systems are actually doing. The thing that makes systems fragile in the first place is your lack of understanding about how that system operates.
Once you are able to obtain that level of understanding, it is much easier to swap out interchangeable components than it is to ad-hoc a resolution out of random troubleshooting steps that you can't really explain WHY those steps "fixed" the issue.
Continuous Improvement
You would think that phase four would be self explanatory. It is anything but that. In terms of implementation, I have found that this can be the absolute most difficult because it requires a major shift in the culture of most organizations. The VisibleOps Handbook provides some key indicators and metrics that can help track your progress on this journey. It does not, however, provide much advice on how to steer your Titanic to avoid icebergs along the way.
Reflection
The thing I love the most about the Visible Ops approach to ITIL and managing IT in general, is how corporeal it is. The word "visible" in the title obviously wasn't an accident; it is visible because the steps for implementation, the explanation of the methodology, really everything about it is so clearly evident that [almost] anybody should be able to thumb through this booklet and pick up some ideas that they can put to use right away and see results almost as fast.
by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
Narrated by: Charles Kahlenberg
Publisher: Random House Audio
Total Length: 8 Hours, 37 Minutes
Date Published: September 17, 2007
Any book that starts off with a variant of the kidney thieves heist automatically gets a +1 rating in my evaluation process. Another +1 for having duct tape on the front cover and you know this is going to be a great book.
Made to Stick was incredibly fun to listen to. The authors decided to explore a topic mentioned by Malcolm Gladwell in The Tipping Point to see whether you could measure or influence how "sticky" an idea is. The book is full of great examples of how to craft and alter the message you wish to convey so that it has a better chance of being remembered by others. The book is laid out in chapters explaining each of the six criteria for the S.U.C.C.E.Ss of a sticky message:
- Simple
- Unexpected
- Concrete
- Credible
- Emotional
- Stories
- s - and another 's' on the end for good measure.
As I started putting together some notes on each chapter for this blog post, I had a difficult time condensing the material covered by this book. Each chapter is full of great information and superb examples for supporting their point of view. Here are a few of the over arching concepts that I got the most out of. Each of these are a massive body of knowledge unto themselves, but perhaps it will provoke you to do some additional research on these subjects, and read this book!
The Curse of Knowledge
As described in the Harvard Business Review article The Curse of Knowledge, most people make the mistake of assuming that other people are going to understand the message they are trying to convey. The example of Tappers and Listeners makes it clear how easy it is for the meaning of a message to get lost in transmission.
Gap Theory
What makes a subject or situation "interesting"? How do you get someone to pay attention to your message? The answer, in short, curiosity. In George Loewenstein's 1994 article, The Psychology of Curiosity: A Review and Reinterpretation (PDF), Loewenstein "interprets curiosity as a form of cognitively induced deprivation that arises from the perception of a gap in knowledge or understanding."
Priming
In the chapter on Emotion, Mental Priming is discussed as a way of not only getting people to pay attention to your message, but for them to care about your message in a way that causes them to take action. These concepts about mental priming stood out to me as I read through Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell and Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality by Dan Ariely as well. Based on the studies and examples cited in these books, it is obvious that Mental Priming is an extremely powerful tool.
Mental Simulation
The results of the Mental Simulation experiments and studies mentioned in Chapter 6 are astounding. The studies show that "mental practice alone (sitting quietly, without moving, and picturing yourself performing a task successfully from start to finish) improves performance significantly. [...] Overall, mental practice alone produced about two thirds the benefits of actual physical practice." With these types of results it is hard to ignore the value of being mentally prepared and engaged for a task. "The more that training simulates the actions we must take in the world, the more effective it will be."
Deep Dive (Chapter Reviews Coming Sometime)
Chapter 1 - Simple
Chapter 2 - Unexpected
Chapter 3 - Concrete
Chapter 4 - Credible
Chapter 5 - Emotional
Chapter 6 - Stories
by Donovan Campbell
Narrated by: David Drummond
Publisher: Tantor Media
Date Published: Apr 9, 2009
Total Length: 11 Hours, 41 Minutes
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1400067731
Date Published: March 10, 2009
Number of Pages: 336
I first heard about Joker One on NPR during an episode of Fresh Air with Terry Gross interviewing Donovan Campbell. I was struck by the depth of character and conviction to responsibility that I heard in this interview. Several weeks later, I remembered listening to the interview and decided to download the audio book. Wow. I was not disappointed. Impressed by not only the quality of the story itself but also the quality of the story telling. First Lt. Donovan Campbell of 1st Platoon, Company G ('Golf'), 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, led a group of 40 marines in 2004 during the beginning and the height of the insurgency. They were stationed in Ramadi and had to deal with much of the fallout from the first and second battles of Fallujah. Ramadi soon came to be labelled the most dangerous place in Iraq.
The book tells of Campbell's officer training at Quantico, his first days on the job as Lieutenant of his infantry platoon (call sign 'Joker One'), building relationships and respect with his men, patrolling the streets in Ramadi during some of the most intense resistance of the Iraq war, and returning to 'normal' life back home after serving in combat. 'Golf' Company suffered a 50% casualty rate, which exceeded that of any other Marine or Army combat unit since Vietnam.
Throughout this book it is clear that Campbell truly embraces the meaning of "servant leader". This excerpt taken from page 5 has truly profound insight:
"If
you are a Marine lieutenant in a
firefight, a situation that's probably as good a proxy as any for hell,
then it's your job to figure out at least 50 to 70 percent of what is
going on around you so that you can make intelligent decisions, which
translate into good orders, which lead to focused, effective and
decisive action. This whole process needs to be rapid to be relevant,
but if you're too hasty, then you can lead your men to their deaths, all
the while believing you are leading them to safety. It's not an easy
tension to manage on an ongoing basis.
"However,
it can be done, and to do it well you must have absolutely no concern
for your own safety. You can't think of home, you can't miss you wife,
and you can't wonder how it would feel to take a round through the
neck. You can only pretend that you're already dead and thus free
yourself up to focus on three things: 1) finding and killing the enemy,
2) communicating the situation and resulting actions to adjacent units and higher headquarters, and 3) triaging and treating your wounded. If you love your men, you naturally think about number three first, but if you do you're wrong. The grim logic of combat dictates that numbers one and two take precedence."
Reflections
The stories told in Joker One are so vivid that I can recall many of the details even though it has been a while since I first listened to this book (I also bought a hard copy soon afterward to refer back to). A few of the things that really stand out to me include:
Split Second Decisions - As seen in the excerpt above, being willing to make the tough calls in the midst of chaos and without having all of the facts laid out in from of you is an amazing skill. It is difficult to say whether decisions made in such circumstances are the "right" decisions. But the lesson I get from this is that being able to act now and continually adapt is often more critical than the time lost through hesitating over the "right" decision.
Mastery of Details - When Joker One arrived in Kuwait and were preparing to launch into Iraq, they spent time going over and over things that most people probably wouldn't think as being all that important. For example practicing dismounting from vehicles, as described on page 71:
"In our world, basic tasks have to be repeatedly rehearsed in conditions mimicking predicted combat scenarios as faithfully as possible. For example, you can never be sure which small detail might mean the difference between exiting a vehicle caught in an enemy ambush kill zone in two seconds or in ten. That kind of time differential can be fatal. Where is the door handle on the seven-ton truck? Do you have to pull it up or down to get out? How far is the drop out of the truck bed, and where exactly do you need to put your feet before you hurl yourself out the door? Once all the little questions have been answered, those answers must be practiced again and again until they become muscle memory. The Marines didn't like the mind-numbingly repetitive nature of such drills, and they didn't exactly love the squad leaders and me for putting them through the endless rehearsals, but every time we did something tedious and painful, we tried to lay out the reason behind the drills to everyone. I became amazed at how much my men would tolerate if someone just took the time to explain the why of it all to them"
Trusting Your Team - One of the situations Joker One ran into while patrolling was when a group of kids started throwing rocks at his men. The men radioed up to Campbell at the front of the patrol that the rocks were really starting to hurt. While he was thinking about how to handle the situation, one of his men radioed back and said the situation was under control. The men had gained the aid of an old Iraqi man who scolded the children and they ran away. As a leader, you won't have the answer to every dilemma that pops up. So it is important to train your team on the principals you want them to follow and allow them to think for themselves.
Succession Planning - Keeping an eye open for future leaders and take time to build on their talent. There's a great example on page 22 talks about Campbell's first encounter with with Lance Corporal Carson on a training hike, carrying two packs and pushing another Marine up hill and shouting at him not to fall out. Carson was later promoted to a team lead.
Dedication to the Mission - Campbell gave a recent interview with Steve Paulson, 10 Years in Iraq, where he recalls one of the events described in the book when the insurgents attacked his platoon. The rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) that was fired at his men miss them, but instead detonated in a group of school children. Campbell had the option of getting his men out of the situation, which meant abandoning the injured children or digging in, setting up a perimeter and helping the kids, which most likely meant facing another attack. I'll let you listen to the interview (or read the book) to hear what happened.
Not only was I impressed by the stories told by Joker One, but what really stands out to me is the contrast I see to my own life. In 2004, I had been out of college for a little while and making decent money for the first time in my life, and really just living the life of a slacker. Reading this book gave me a lot more respect for the challenges that young soldiers in the armed forces have to go through and the character it can build. I like to think of myself as someone who is up for a challenge, strong, courageous; but this book puts me to shame. I don't think I could have made it Iraq. However, I truly value the lessons shared within the pages of Joker One.
This book should be required reading for anyone leading a team to understand the amount of care that must be invested in your team.
The Leader's Code
I am anxiously waiting for Donovan's newest book, The Leader's Code: Mission, Character, Service, and Getting the Job Done to arrive. I pre-ordered it last week and I'm looking forward to digging through it for more valuable leadership lessons. Stay tuned for another book review!
by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford
Publisher: IT Revolution Press; 1st edition
ISBN: 0988262592
Number of Pages: 345
Date Published: 1/10/2013
Let me first say that it is incredible how many different lessons are packed into Gene Kim's latest book, “The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win.” It was a really quick read because the story line was so easy to follow. (Hey, where are the hidden cameras in my office anyway? I actually know all the characters in this story.) But I've spent a few extra days going back over the parts of the book where the real instruction is interleaved into the plot.
The Phoenix Project combines the teaching of the several "management / improvement" genre books such as:
- Eliyahu M. Goldratt's "The Goal" which teaches the Theory of Constraints (ToC),
- Patrick Lencioni's "Five Dysfunctions of a Team",
- David J. Anderson's use of kanban boards to control the release of work and Work in Progress (WIP) for Development and IT Operations,
- Mike Rother's “Toyota Kata: Managing People for Improvement, Adaptiveness and Superior Results”,
- As well as TPM / LEAN strategies and many others...
- And last by not least, Kevin Behr, George Spafford and Gene Kim's previous research in Visible Ops Handbooks.
The narrative tells the story of Bill who reluctantly gets promoted to VP of IT at Parts Unlimited, an automotive parts manufacturing and retail company, after his previous boss and boss's boss get canned due to poor performance. Bill inherits all of the typical problems that come with an overworked, dysfunctional IT team that is so busy fighting fires, that they don't have time to look at the long view of their situation. And as if that weren't enough, the whole company is on a death march to deploy their latest home grown system, "Phoenix" that was intended to save the company's poor performance and lack of profitability for the past several quarters.
Sprinkled throughout the novel, the themes from the Visible Ops Handbook are intertwined as Bill takes measures to implement a new Change Management process, identify critical systems and get his team out of the fire fighting business and into something that resembles productivity.
The Four Steps From Visible Ops:
- Stabilize the Patient
- Catch & Release and Find Fragile Artifacts
- Establish Repeatable Build Library
- Enable Continuous Improvement
Bill has some good ideas and starts to make some progress for his team, but it is obvious that there is more work piled on Bill's team than they have cycles to work on. Bill quickly realizes that one of his key resources, Brent, is the bottleneck that is holding up a lot of work from getting done as well as a silo of critical knowledge for managing and maintaining his systems. Using the techniques from Goldratt's ToC, Bill instinctively starts to put some processes in place to manage work getting assigned to Brent.
Things really start to get interesting for Bill when he meets a potential new board member named Erik Reid, who turns out to have worked with Part
Unlimited years ago to help solve a crisis at their manufacturing plant by implementing what sound remarkably like the same solutions recommended by Jonah in "The Goal". Erik befriends Bill and takes on the role of mentor with the same Socratic approach to helping Bill find a way to fix all the troubles he is having. Erik first introduces Bill to "The Three Ways" in Chapter 7, page 91.
- "The First Way helps us understand how to create fast flow of work as it moves from Development into IT Operations..."
- "The Second Way shows us how to shorten and amplify feedback loops..."
- "The Third Way shows us how to create a culture that simultaneously fosters experimentation, learning from failure, and understanding that repetition and practice are the prerequisites to mastery."
Erik's first assignment for Bill is to identify the four types of work that he manages. By the time Bill gets around to taking Erik seriously (and for a raving mad man), it is already chapter 15, page 160, and the wheels are really starting to fall off at Parts Unlimited. There have been outages to the POS systems and a "small credit card breach". Bill gets the first assignment right recognizing that the four categories of work are:
- Business Projects
- Internal IT Projects
- Implementing Changes
- Unplanned Work
Bill and Erik discuss other progress that Bill's team has made with trying to simplify the input of change requests into the change management process, the use of kanban boards in the CAB meetings, and the first step in ToC identifying Brent as the constraint. Bill's next assignments are to figure out how to take needless work out of the system as much as it is to control WIP already in the system, and further define how to control the flow of work to Brent.
The Five Steps From The Theory of Constraints:
- Identify the constraint (the resource or policy that prevents the organization from obtaining more of the goal)
- Determine how to exploit the constraint (get the most capacity out of the constrained process)
- Subordinate all other processes to above decision (align the whole system or organization to support the decision made above)
- Elevate the constraint (make other major changes needed to break the constraint)
- If, as a result of these steps, the constraint has moved, return to Step 1. Don't let inertia become the constraint.
Despite all of Bill's progress, he is quickly falling out of favor with his new boss, CEO Steve. After another major outage and some harsh words, the two finally make up and get the team back together to figure out how to actually fix the problems that the company has created for itself. Erik helps Bill convince Steve to institute a project freeze to free up resources to work on the critical Phoenix project, which they are banking is the only hope to save the company from going under.
By Chapter 20, page 208, Erik and Bill are discussing WIP again and defining what a work center is... "every work center is made up of four things: the machine, the man, the method and the measures." Having personnel assigned to too many work centers is so ineffecient and is the crux of Brent being the constraint to so many projects. Erik introduces an interesting concept on page 213 showing that the wait time for any piece of work can be calculated by dividing the percentage that a resource is busy by the percentage that resource is idle. "When a resource is ninety-nine percent utilized, you have to wait ninety-nine times as long as if that resource is fifty percent utilized."
Another interesting character in the story is John, the CISO. John is a fanatic about security, but in typical Infosec fashion runs around barking out orders that he claims are mandated by some policy or regulation or auditor. In Chapter 22, Erik finally puts John in his place by showing that none of the controls that he has attempted to put in place have any impact on the business' ability to manage risk. After that John disappears for several weeks. And finally re-emerges as a changed man ready to finally look IT through the lens of the business' priorities.
Once Bill and John realize what the business' metrics for success are, they come to a hard realization that the Phoenix project will never fulfill the needs of the business in the project's current form. Bill puts together a proposal to build a SWAT team that will work in parallel with the Phoenix project but with permission to break all of the rules in order to help the business make its numbers. The new processes that emerge from this SWAT team are the fundamentals of #DevOps.
Like I mentioned earlier, the book is phenomenal, extremely well written and easy to follow. [Spoiler Alert] Of course everything works out by the end of this fictional tale, but most of the lessons really do work in real life... IF
Now here's where the story becomes somewhat of a fantasy apart from real life. In several of the situations I have been in or seen unfold in the past, senior management hasn't been willing to really look in the mirror and recognize that they don't really understand technology. And if they are having trouble understanding it then they are really going to have trouble managing it. Some of this stuff should be basic project management 101. It always amazes me how many project managers and senior management figures at some companies measure success by completing a project on time, and slightly over budget. But they don't analyze the success of the project in terms of actual return on effort to the business (maybe because they don't want to admit their pet project didn't achieve the objectives they claimed it would).
Not everyone in the IT world gets a personal Jonah or Erik to guide them through the murky waters of IT management and give credibility to the ideas and initiatives that you want to champion. If you find yourself with a team to manage, hopefully this book along with some of the other resources mentioned can strengthen your decision making abilities to help your team and your company to succeed in this crazy new world of #DevOps.
One other thing to note is that the artwork on the cover of the book is pretty cool!
I'm very disappointed that LinkedIn pulled the plug on the Amazon Reading List (ARL) app/gadget. When I first discovered the ARL, I signed up just to add some activity to my LinkedIn account. It was about this same time that I decided to start investing in audio books for my hour long (one way) commute to work each day. I used it as my own personal scorecard to see how many books I count rack up and maybe write a few reviews along the way. It was a fun way to do some learning while I was stuck behind the steering wheel.
I am a very slow reader. Audio books are an amazing invention to me. Some people have "photographic" memory; I thrive on learning via the things I hear. I don't know why, but it just sticks with me better that way.
So, now I need an outlet to log the books I read. And this blog is desperately in need of some content... but I'm still disgusted that LinkedIn just vanquished the ARL without letting users know about it before hand or providing any way for users to retrieve their lists and reviews that were already posted. In terms of goals of information security, Confidentiality, Integrity, and AVAILABILITY, making my reading list unavailable is on par with the password breach LinkedIn suffered last summer (6.46 million LinkedIn passwords leaked online).
