In the span of forty years the China performed a development miracle. It transformed itself from an agrarian afterthought to the world’s second largest economy. This was in spite of pervasive attitudes and policies that ran contrary to most Western economic thought. In as recent as 1980, the country’s official dictionary defined “individualism” as “the heart of the Bourgeois worldview, behavior that benefits oneself at the expense of others.” Analyzing how one person’s world went from rural farming to internet millions is a hard task. Distilling the thoughts and attitudes of a billion people and putting it in context of modern society is a seemingly impossible one. As I explain in my Age of Ambition review, Evan Osnos delivers the impossible. He answers the question, “At what cost was China’s development miracle?”
Eric Gardner
Change Management is the tactical implementation of strategy
Change Management is a vague concept. It has been around for about fifty years, but there it lacks an 100 percent agreed upon definition. A cynic would say it’s almost like people built an entire industry without fully understanding what it is they were claiming to do. John Kotter, who popularized the term, originally considered it an 8-step linear process. PROSCI, the largest and most well known change management firm, defined it as “the discipline that guides how we prepare, equip and support individuals to successfully adopt change in order to drive organizational success and outcomes.”
These are partially correct, but holistically wrong. Change Management is just the tactical implementation of strategy.
Ranking the Best 34 Books I Read in 2015
Contrary to what I want to believe 2015 is nearing an end and that means it is time to create my annual list of recommended books. If 2014 was my personal apocalypse, 2015 was the most demanding, unpredictable, and rewarding year of my life. Reading-wise I found myself diving head first into the civil rights movement and graphic novels, only to circle back to sports, entrepreneurship and science fiction. Hopefully you find something on this list worth reading; I know I did. If reading recommendations are your thing, check out last year’s The Best 38 Books I read in 2014 and The Best 27 Articles I Read in 2014.
The Dangers of Data Journalism
I like Catherine Rampell. I can’t say that I am a regular reader, but every time I am forwarded something she wrote I normally read it. That being said, this week wasn’t a good week to be Catherine Rampell. She inadvertently made a case study in the dangers of data journalism.
To Hate or to Adhere
Why does language evolve the way that it does?
I stumbled upon a passage written about John Adams by Thomas Jefferson. Adams was a notoriously jealous and petty. He earned the nickname “His Rotundity” for being obese and arguing that everyone should refer to George Washington as “His Majesty the President.” Jefferson was a cool guy. A philosopher and statesmen that shared the opinion that most reasonable, fun loving people of the era had: Adams was a jerk. After learning that Adam’s official notes from the Treaty of Paris were “a display of his vanity, his prejudice against the French court and his venom against Dr. Franklin.” I found Jefferson’s reply interesting. He simply wrote, “[Adams] hates Franklin, he hates [John] Jay, he hates the French, he hates the English. To whom will he adhere?”
This begs the questions: Why, 232 years later, do we say we hate things, but not adhere them?
Ranking the 38 Books I Read in 2014
It’s the end of the year, which means it is time for ugly sweater parties and “best of lists”. 2014 was a pretty eclectic year in reading for me. For a short time I got obsessed with the journalism of Jon Ronson and then the novels of David Benioff, only to meander down to Presidential biographies. One thing you won’t find is a lot of business books. Even though I write a lot about business you won’t find many business books on this list. The reason is simple. You’ll learn more about strategy and leadership from LBJ than you will from any business advisor.
If you missed my earlier post on 2014’s best articles you can find it here.
Now to the books.
The 27 Best Articles I Read In 2014
Why spend the time identifying the 27 best articles I read all year? The better question should probably be, “Why not?” I selected each article based on the following criteria:
- The work should most importantly be interesting
- The work should help explain the business, political and social world we live in.
- The work should provide historical context to the modern world.
- The work should make you laugh (See Jones, Jerry)
Without further ado, here they are.
Book Review: Peter Thiel’s Zero to One
Each year hundreds of thousands of business books are published. Peter Thiel’s Zero to One is arguably the best business book of the decade.
Book Review: Eric Schlosser’s Command and Control
I can say this with certainty: Command and Control is without a doubt the most comprehensive book on the systemic risk of any nuclear weapons system.
The Revolutionary Logic Behind Chip Kelly’s Madness
[drop_caps]C[/drop_caps]hip Kelly is an interesting man. He was an unassuming former D-1AA defensive back who became a successful offensive coordinator and found himself the most wanted college football coach in America. In his first game as the head coach of the Oregon Ducks, his team managed just 153 yards and scored only 8 points. A season ticket holder wrote him asking for his money back. Kelly mailed him a personal check for $439.
Like I said, Chip Kelly is an interesting man.