Maverick, Ricardo Semler.

The book “Maverick” by Ricardo Semler is a narrative about a company identifying the need for a transformational change then telling the story of how that change was brought about.

The example however falls short of being a paradigm on a number of fronts.

Ricardo Semler had the right idea and the right goal but went about it the wrong way.

The book is an eight year litany of confrontation, bloody noses and sackings as Ricardo tried to force his employees to change.

He did not have the best people at the start, he had normal people.
His workforce were exactly the same as any other workforce on the planet, they were average people, but they were all individuals.

He inherited the company from his father; who was a traditional authoritarian boss. He demanded that it was done his way or the highway, and had no idea how destructive his uncompromising Command and Control style of management was.

His workforce was average and produced an average performance.

Ricardo's vision was that each employee was potentially exceptional but that it was the working environment they were kept in that prevented them from being exceptional.

Ricardo's' vision was to create the working environment that would allow his employees to be as good as they could be.

This involved getting the managers out of the way to stop them interfering with the ability of the workforce to perform and to give control of their lives back to the workforce.

The company in those eight years grew over ten times but the cost was the replacement of almost every single member of the management team.

The reason for this was that although the change was the right change, it was being driven by Ricardo, from the top down.

This made the workers and the middle management resist what was happening because they were being told what they had to do.

When you tell a human being what to do, whatever it is, the act of telling automatically generates resistance to whatever it was they were told to do.

It is not “What” they were being told that caused the resistance it was just “Being Told.”

At the end of eight years the employees were the same individuals but the environment that had been created for them to work in had allowed them to engage. That in turn allowed them to be exceptional and to produce exceptional performance.

Today we recognise the problem of top down driven change that Ricardo could not avoid.

It lost Ricardo his whole management team and eight years of superhuman effort to drive through his changes.

Today we can see how, by allowing change to come from the bottom up, we not only get the right change but we also avoid the resistance that the “Top Down” driven solution creates.

Ricardo Semler did his best with what he had.

Now we know better.

No matter how right the change being proposed, if it is driven from the top down it will create the resistance that will cause it to fail.

Peter A Hunter
www.breakingthemould.co.uk

Our Iceberg is Melting by John Kotter & Hogler Rathgeber

I read this book, after strong recommendation of my professional guide.

The book is in the fable form, and it reminded me of book 'Who Moved My Cheese?' by Spencer Johnson.

Though I have read the ideology of John Kotter, in one of his Harvard Press Articles, listing out his 8 steps Change Management Press, but fable is more enjoyment, less stress and more insight.

So, in general it was fabulous book on Change Management, which is becoming increasingly important, as global forces are making businesses and all other spheres of life fast changing. It actually reminds of the phrase ' Changing is Changing So Fast!!' in the book 'Future Shock' by Alvin Toffler.

Still, I think most of the management theories are unable to answer one vital question 'How to create a change, when its not actually not a zero sum game, but at the same time, also to an extent a zero sum game?' The typical and extreme case is 'Downsizing'.

And, I couldn't get the answer to this question in this book too.

But, in total its a good methodology and book to follow in any Change Management Process.

One can refer to the site of John Kotter, http://www.kotterinternational.com/Default.aspx for further details on the book and its methodology

Reengineering the Corporation by Michael Hammer & James Champy

This book was written by the authors, who coined the term 'Business Process Reengineering', which has been a buzz word since 1990's and still is.

Though this book as written in 1990's and then rewritten in early 2000's, but the approaches discussed in it are quite relevant.

The best thing I liked about the book is how the authors took me through the journey of Industrial Revolution, Adam Smith's Factory Model, Ford's Assembly line model and then back to Process based industry.

I think, this book is must read for any corporate manager. While many of the approaches discussed, may not be immediately applicable in one's environment, but it surely will broaden the perspective of readers

More works of Michael Hammer can be explored at his company's website http://hammerandco.com/

Corporate Atyaachaar by Abhay Nagarajan

Well, I must give all the praise to the author for his first attempt.

As, I haven't read many Indian Authors, I am forced to compare Abhay with Chetan Bhagat. And, this book for most of the times, reminded me of 'Five Point Someone' and 'Two States'.

I couldn't stop laughing throughout the read. And I was easily able to connect with the mindset of the rookie with respect to his boss.

I must say, Abhay has knack for story telling. But, towards the end I was slightly disappointed, as it was not able to keep the pace with most of the book.

Also, I am wondering, if the instances in this book are real, then Abhay must be on hit list of his boss and colleagues.

Looking for more from him!!!

Mckinsey Mind by Ethan Rasiel & Paul Friga

I have been in corporate for around 6 years. Have attended lot of trainings on Problem Solving

And used to think that Business problems are really complicated, and we need tools like Six Sigma to solve it.

But, after reading this book, I came to understand that how easy it is, provided we follow the systematic approach with rigour. Although approach is more of common sense, but systematic and rigour are the key differentiators

Balanced Scorecard by Robert Kaplan & David Norton

I was constantly fascinated by the article written by Robert Kaplan & David Norton 'Balanced Score Card' and its sequel 'Strategy Maps'

I used to think that article is more than enough. But, when I actually read this book, came to understand the book is much more than the article.

It illustrates the Dashboard approach of Balance between Long term and Short Term strategic metrics, for a business.

I recommend this book to all the Top Management of Corporates

The Immortals of Meluha: A Review

Aah! Just finished with just another book by just another IIM graduate. But the story this time was not just another story that we listen to or read every other day. This story was of none other than that of Lord Shiva who has been portrayed as not the God but a superhuman who earned that status of Lord Shiva through his righteous fight against the evil.

The story is of Shiva, the tribal leader of a Tibetan tribe who’s invited by Nandi to his kingdom of Meluha in the lands of Sapt Sindhu. The people of this land are blessed young-forever because of the treasure called somras that they drink. This civilization is an extremely advanced one where everything seems to be perfect and everyone seems to be rational. They have the most advanced scientific tools at disposal with most intelligent people to develop them further. Everything seems to be fine with them, except one thing. They are Suryavanshis – descendants of Lord Surya and followers of Lord Ram – and they are faced by continuous attacks from their ‘enemies’ – Chandravanshis, descendants of Lord Chandra. This is where the story begins, but it ends with the defeat of Chandravanshis by the Suryavanshis under the guidance of Lord Shiva. To know how and why, you have to read the novel.

The story has been greatly put together. The research has been fantastic. It doesn’t look like the debutant novel by Amish, I thought he’s written atleast half a dozen novels before penning this down. If you are interested in mythology and fiction, this is the best book that you can read where mythology meets fiction and creates a great story. I’m waiting for the next two novels in the Shiva trilogy by Amish.

-Arun Sharma

(Originally published at www.whynothavefun.wordpress.com by Arun Sharma)

Ambani & Sons by Hamish McDonald

This is another book by Hamish McDonald, the author of 'The Polyester Prince'

The Polyester Prince was banned or is still banned in India since its publication around decade ago. But, you can easily find the pirated copies of it on road side in all the metro cities of India.

Anyway, this sequel has made it easy for the readers to buy the story of Ambani's legally. According to readers, the story is 80% the story of The Polyester Prince, with 20% addition.

The earlier book was focussed on rise of Dhirubhai and covered it till 1998. While this book covers till mid 2010. The new chapters focus more on now two seperate empires of Anil & Mukesh.

And after reading it, I can very well understand why the earlier book was banned. And I think, Hamish is in habbit of writing such open and provocative books, which are banned in the focussed countries.

But, if you want to understand evolution of Business in India post Independence, this is must read

Operation Karakoram

Operation Karakoram is the debut novel by Arvind Nayar. Though Chetan Bhagat has written a testimony that it’s a nice novel to begin with, but I don’t think it comes even closer to what Chetan’s debut novel was.

Anyways, the story is about another fictional Indo-Pak tussle where Pakistan wins, for a change. There is an Indian politician who is about to become the Prime Minister, but is dreaded by Pakistan because of his hard stand on Pakistan. So, the most secret body of ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence agency, hires a professional assassin to kill this politician. Then the novel is all about irrelevant things like this assassin’s Spanish mission and a murder in Oman, which bear no relevance to the story, but just showcase that Arvind has been to these places. A lot of loopholes are obvious in the story. For instance, Pakistani intelligence hires an assassin to kill the Indian Prime Minister, without knowing that he’s an Indian, even after they met him in person. But nevertheless, the guy was professional and completed his task of killing the to-be Prime Minister.

I would say that the concept was fine, but the articulation was extremely poor. Boy, you need to work a lot more for your new piece. If I had to rate it on a 5-point scale, I’d rate it at 1.5.

-Arun Sharma

(Originally published at www.whynothavefun.wordpress.com by Arun Sharma)

The Lost Symbol: A Review

I know it’s been quite a while since the book was out, but I read it just now and thought it’ll be great to give you guys a head start on it, in case you plan to read it.

If I rate Dan Brown’s other fictions, namely The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons at 5, I’ll rate The Lost Symbol at 4, or maybe even 3.5 due to some reasons. The Lost Symbol is another Robert Langdon stunner with the usual Dan Brown beginning that he wakes up in the morning not knowing where he’s going to end up in the evening. This plot has been followed in all his novels without exception. And I think Dan Brown is obsessed with three things - Europe, America and Christianity.

The plot of the story rotates about a mad man trying to find a Masonic Pyramid which is believed to be hiding the secret of some secret Word that leads to apotheosis of the man. And obviously, there’s only one man on earth who can find and decipher this pyramid and this word – Dr Robert Langdon. And out of nowhere, he finds himself trying to save his mentor and his own life from this madman who’s also being followed by none other than the CIA chief. The end, of course, you’ll have to find it yourself.

Though the story is intriguing and the thought process has been great, but I think Dan Brown is getting caught into his own web. During most of the novel, it looks like he has written it just to show-off his intellect and knowledge. He has gone into so detail about the specification of events, even the ones that don’t have any impact on the story, that it starts getting boring and sometimes irritating. The description of Italian marble and 16^th century bible etc etc were some parts which were not at all required, but were there in the story. Such parts were enough to distract the attention away from the main plot.

Apart from this, I think the novel has been written very well and is a usual Dan Brown thriller with unexpected turns and twists. Though I’ve rated it below his other masterpieces, it’s definitely way above some of the other well-known authors.

Arun Sharma

(Originally published @ www.whynothavefun.wordpress.com by Arun Sharma)