What RamP's Reading: Nov'14

Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change
From the bestselling authors who taught the world how to have Crucial Conversations comes the new edition of Influencer, a thought-provoking book that combines the remarkable insights of behavioral scientists and business leaders with the astonishing stories of high-powered influencers from all walks of life. You'll be taught each and every step of the influence process--including robust strategies for making change inevitable in your personal life, your business, and your world.

Power, Freedom, and Grace: Living from the Source of Lasting Happiness
Deepak Chopra considers the mystery of our existence and its significance in our eternal quest for happiness. Who am I? Where did I come from? Where do I go when I die? Chopra draws upon the ancient philosophy of Vedanta and the findings of modern science to help us understand and experience our true nature, which is a field of pure consciousness.When we understand our true nature, we begin to live from the source of true happiness, which is not mere happiness for this or that reason, but true inner joy. When we know who we are, we allow the universe to flow through us with effortless ease, and our lives are infused with power, freedom, and grace.

The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits
Drawing on Prahalad's breakthrough insights in The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, great companies worldwide have sought to identify, build, and profit from new markets amongst the world's several billion poorest people, while at the same time helping to alleviate poverty. Prahalad also offers an up-to-date assessment of the key questions his ideas raised: Is there truly a market? Is there scale? Is there profit? Is there innovation? Is this a global opportunity? Five years ago, executives could be hopeful that the answers to these questions would be positive. Now, as Prahalad demonstrates, they can be certain of it.

What RamP's Reading: Oct'14

The Little Big Things: 163 Ways to Pursue EXCELLENCE
Business uber-guru Tom Peters is back with his first book in a decade, The Little Big Things. In this age of economic recession and financial uncertainty, the patented Peters approach to business and management—no-nonsense, witty, down-to-earth, insightful—is more pertinent now than ever. As essential for small-business owners as it is for the heads of major corporations, The Little Big Things is a rousing call-to-arms to American business to get “back to the basics” of running a successful enterprise.

The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company
The roller-coaster rags-to-riches story behind the phenomenal success of Pixar Animation Studios: the first in-depth look at the company that forever changed the film industry and the "fraternity of geeks" who shaped it. The Pixar Touch is a story of technical innovation that revolutionized animation, transforming hand-drawn cel animation to computer-generated 3-D graphics. It’s a triumphant business story of a company that began with a dream, remained true to the ideals of its founders—antibureaucratic and artist driven—and ended up a multibillion-dollar success.

Autobiography of a Yogi
Autobiography of a Yogi is at once a beautifully written account of an exceptional life and a profound introduction to the ancient science of Yoga and its time-honored tradition of meditation. Profoundly inspiring, it is at the same time vastly entertaining, warmly humorous and filled with extraordinary personages.

What RamP's Reading: Aug'14

 

Design Thinking for Strategic Innovation: What They Can't Teach You at Business or Design School

Design Thinking for Strategic Innovation presents a framework for design thinking that is relevant to business management, marketing, and design strategies and also provides a toolkit to apply concepts for immediate use in everyday work. It explains how design thinking can bring about creative solutions to solve complex business problems. Organized into five sections, this book provides an introduction to the values and applications of design thinking, explains design thinking approaches for eight key challenges that most businesses face, and offers an application framework for these business challenges through exercises, activities, and resources.

Persuadable: How Great Leaders Change Their Minds to Change the World
As a leader, changing your mind has always been perceived as a weakness. Not anymore. In a world that’s changing faster than ever, successful leaders realize that a genuine willingness to change their own minds is the ultimate competitive advantage. Drawing on evidence from social science, history, politics, and more, business consultant Al Pittampalli reveals why confidence, consistency, and conviction, are increasingly becoming liabilities—while humility, inconsistency, and radical open-mindedness are powerful leadership assets.

Not Always So: Practicing the True Spirit of Zen
Not Always So is based on Shunryu Suzuki's lectures and is framed in his own inimitable, allusive, paradoxical style, rich with unexpected insights. In Not Always So Suzuki once again voices Zen in everyday language with the vigour, sensitivity, and buoyancy of a true friend. Here is support and nourishment. Here is a mother and father lending a hand, but letting you find your own way. Here is guidance which empowers your freedom (or way–seeking mind), rather than pinning you down to directions and techniques. Here is teaching which encourages you to touch and know your true heart and to express yourself fully, teaching which is not teaching from outside, but a voice arising in your own being.

 

What RamP's Reading: Jun'14

In Pursuit of Elegance: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing
In this thought-provoking exploration of why certain events, products, and people capture our attention and imaginations, Matthew E. May examines the elusive element behind so many innovative breakthroughs in fields ranging from physics and marketing to design and popular culture. Combining unusual simplicity and surprising power, elegance is characterized by four key elements—seduction, subtraction, symmetry, and sustainability. In a compelling, story-driven narrative that sheds light on the need for elegance in design, engineering, art, urban planning, sports, and work, May offers surprising evidence that what’s “not there” often trumps what is.

Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies
Drawing upon a six-year research project at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, Collins and Porras took eighteen truly exceptional and long-lasting companies -- they have an average age of nearly one hundred years and have outperformed the general stock market by a factor of fifteen since 1926 -- and studied each company in direct comparison to one of its top competitors. They examined the companies from their very beginnings to the present day -- as start-ups, as midsize companies, and as large corporations. Throughout, the authors asked: "What makes the truly exceptional companies different from other companies?"


Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice
"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few."  So begins this most beloved of all American Zen books. Seldom has such a small handful of words provided a teaching as rich as has this famous opening line. In a single stroke, the simple sentence cuts through the pervasive tendency students have of getting so close to Zen as to completely miss what it's all about. An instant teaching on the first page. And that's just the beginning.

What RamP's Reading: Apr'14

Better Under Pressure: How Great Leaders Bring Out the Best in Themselves and Others
In Better Under Pressure, Justin Menkes reveals the common traits that make these leaders successful. Drawing on in-depth interviews with sixty CEOs from an array of industries and performance data from two hundred other leaders, Menkes shows that great executives strive relentlessly to maximize their own potential—as well as stoke their people’s innate thirst for their own triumphs.

The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater & Every Business a Stage
The Experience Economy offers a creative, highly original, and yet eminently practical strategy for companies to script and stage the experiences that will transform the value of what they produce. From America Online to Walt Disney, the authors draw from a rich and varied mix of examples that showcase businesses in the midst of creating personal experiences for both consumers and businesses. The authors urge managers to look beyond traditional pricing factors like time and cost, and consider charging for the value of the transformation that an experience offers. Goods and services, say Pine and Gilmore, are no longer enough. Experiences and transformations are the basis for future economic growth, and The Experience Economy is the script from which managers can begin to direct their own transformations.

The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living
The Art of Happiness is the book that started the genre of happiness books, and it remains the cornerstone of the field of positive psychology. Through conversations, stories, and meditations, the Dalai Lama shows us how to defeat day-to-day anxiety, insecurity, anger, and discouragement. Together with Dr. Howard Cutler, he explores many facets of everyday life, including relationships, loss, and the pursuit of wealth, to illustrate how to ride through life's obstacles on a deep and abiding source of inner peace. Based on 2,500 years of Buddhist meditations mixed with a healthy dose of common sense, The Art of Happiness is a book that crosses the boundaries of traditions to help readers with difficulties common to all human beings. After being in print for ten years, this book has touched countless lives and uplifted spirits around the world.

Reading List for Feb-14

Not been able to finish reading books from last month's list. Only book for Feb.

Your Life as Art by Robert Fritz
I came across this book repeatedly while (and whenever) reading The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge. I had previously read Fritz's The Path of Least Resistance and had liked it very much. However, this particular book has been out of print and not available in India and I managed to find in my trip to Austin in Jan.

This book is about creating your life just as the artist creates a painting, a composer writes a symphony, or the poet writes a poem. Robert Fritz further develops his special insights that he introduced in his best selling book The Path of Least Resistance. In Your Life As Art, Fritz shows the relationship among the mechanics, the orientation, and the depth of the human spirit within the creative process, and how your life itself can be made like a work of art. Your Life As Art breaks new ground, shakes up the status quo, and, at once, is common sense and revolutionary insight that can change the way you understand the dynamics of your life-building process.

10K10d: Welcoming 2014 by running 10K on 10 consecutive days

Wish you all a great 2014. May all your dreams for 2014 come true.

Running has become a passion or even a life style for me in the last three years. However due to lack of discipline to maintain a training regime has ensured that my progress (measured in terms of length of the runs and/or timing) is limited. More often than not, I drop off from the program for couple of months and need to start all over again (I extensively refer to the training programs (5K, 10K, HM and FM) given in the book Run Less, Run Faster). Fortunately, I've two friends whose head I'd be eating regularly for guidance and motivation (both are accomplished marathoners themselves) and one of them had recently run six HMs (half-marathons, 21Kms) on six consecutive days to celebrate his birthday. Inspired by him, I thought I too would do so, albeit 10Ks - this was a "spur of the moment" decision (both my friends mentioned above have this capability to inspire by their talks and deeds). I then had serious doubts of pulling it through, as I had only run 10K on two consecutive days and generally get tired at the end of 10K.


However on the night of 25th Dec, I was discussing with my friend, this wonderful article 15 Business Lessons I Learned Quitting The Biggest Race of My Life). My friend pointed out a quote from the article that read - "Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever". I personally liked another quote "Learning to “tough it out” is a life-long skill worth mastering" and I made another "spur of the moment" decision to start the very next day to run 10K for a week, each day. So, in the next 8hrs of having made the decision I was on the road on my first 10K of the week.

Hence started my 10K week on 26-Dec. I did pretty fine on day two also and decided that I should now instead make it 10 consecutive days and thereby by stretch it to 2014 and possibly make it my way of welcoming 2014.

Then the inevitable happened on Day-3. I "heard" something going wrong in my right leg (calf muscles) and sure enough it started to feel different. I had just completed about 3.5 kms, and this was just the 3rd day (and immediately after keeping the goal at running for 10 consecutive days). I decided to run through the pain atleast for this one day and I completed, by literally having to drag the right leg for the next 6.5Kms. I could see that the whole body was moving as if it were two parts - the whole body except for the right leg and the right leg itself. I wanted to quit several times, but just kept moving. After I reached home, I could see some swelling. Decided to do more stretches/cool down exercises and started liberally applying the magic spray - Volini, through the day. The objective was just to somehow run on the 4th day, then the 5th, then the 6th day and then eventually the 10th day. Am I glad I did it!


Its been crazy 10days. Getting up at 5:30AM on a chilly morning when the whole world is on vacation and start running. I like running in the dawn, to savour the early morning "chili-pili" of whatever birds that are still around, moon on top of you, very few folks on the road (mostly joggers/walkers) and the beauty when the sun rises and darkness disappears. Eventually the run ends, a satisfied smile appears, the aroma of sweat starts spreading and the great feeling when you do stretches. One feels truly blessed.

Except the scare on the 3rd day, rest of the days went peaceful. Though the going became progressively difficult from 7th day onwards. Running became very very difficult after 5-6kms on 8th, 9th and 10th days with heavy legs, couple of blisters and tiredness. The mind was asking me to quit about 10 times every kilometer. I decided to "tough-it-out", increased my walk percentage, ignored the timing (it was never great anyways) and somehow made it. Recovery too started taking more time. Couple of blisters developed, both legs have became sore and heavy.  Nevertheless I enjoyed the experience. Also made a few friends that are early morning runners and got some valuable suggestions and loads of encouragement. About two years ago, I had run my first 10K and had documented a few lessons learnt. I did learn quite a bit with this 10day running even too and just thought of documenting here:

1. You never know what you are capable of, until you try for yourself.
2. Most constraints we place on ourselves are coming from the "lazy mind" and we should learn to ignore it.
3. Nothing beats the sense of satisfaction we get when we complete a stretched goal.
4. Goals have a magical way of making sure you "prepare" (I read somewhere that almost all the people have a "will to win", but very few have the "will to prepare to win" - and I understood the meaning of the same little more better).
5. When you enjoy doing something, nothing seem to come in the way (Even getting up at 5:30AM was an event I was looking forward to).
6. Never underestimate the influence of great friends/mentors/coaches to inspire one to achieve higher levels

Based on the confidence gained from this experiment, I now see a realistic chance of running a half-marathon (21kms) atleast this year. Need to work on gaining little more speed, reduce weight and do lot of "strengthening exercises". Life continues to be in perpetual beta. Love it.

Have you had a similar experience? Would love to hear.

Reading list for Jan-14

Wish you all a great 2014:

- May you find time to read all the books you always wanted to read
- May you find time to summarize your insights of the books that you just read
- May the books you published get into more reprints
- May you start/complete your next book

I've come-up with my reading list for the whole year 2014. One new year resolution is NOT to buy new books till I've completed reading the unread ones (about 150+ at the last count), so that I can stick to my reading plan. Here are the books that I plan to read in Jan.



Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How we Live, Work and Think by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger
“Big data” refers to our burgeoning ability to crunch vast collections of information, analyze it instantly, and draw sometimes profoundly surprising conclusions from it. This emerging science can translate myriad phenomena—from the price of airline tickets to the text of millions of books—into searchable form, and uses our increasing computing power to unearth epiphanies that we never could have seen before. A revolution on par with the Internet or perhaps even the printing press, big data will change the way we think about business, health, politics, education, and innovation in the years to come. It also poses fresh threats, from the inevitable end of privacy as we know it to the prospect of being penalized for things we haven’t even done yet, based on big data’s ability to predict our future behavior.

In this brilliantly clear, often surprising work, two leading experts explain what big data is, how it will change our lives, and what we can do to protect ourselves from its hazards. Big Data is the first big book about the next big thing.

Confidence: The Surprising Truth About How Much you Need - and how to get it by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic

We're told that the key to success in life and business is confidence: believe in yourself, and the world is your oyster. But building confidence can be a challenging task. And, as leading psychologist Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic argues confidence can actually get in the way of achievement - self-esteem is nothing without the competence, the core skills, to back it up. Confidence is feeling capable. Competence is being capable. None of the figures whose success is put down to supreme self-belief - Barack Obama, Madonna, Muhammad Ali - could have achieved their goals without the hard-won skills (and years of training) behind the confidence mask. Successful people are confident because of their success, and not the other way around.

 

Manage Your Day-to-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind  - Jocelyn K. Glei

 Stop doing busywork. Start doing your best work.

Are you over-extended, over-distracted, and overwhelmed? Do you work at a breakneck pace all day, only to find that you haven’t accomplished the most important things on your agenda when you leave the office?

The world has changed and the way we work has to change, too. With wisdom from 20 leading creative minds, Manage Your Day-to-Day will give you a toolkit for tackling the new challenges of a 24/7, always-on workplace.