Strategy Boffins

Idea Almanac

Daily update on new ideas and books so that you can grow each day

January 22, 2022

Idea Almanac

Two CEOs of consulting firms

“Vince had worked with a top management consulting firm before B-school. During his two years at Berkeley, he followed the stock market religiously, maintained contact with business associates, and read as many analyst reports as he could get his hands on. He graduated near the top of his class. Rich also earned impressive grades but maintained a relatively low profile in the process. To earn extra cash, he waited tables and tutored undergraduate students, and when he wasn’t working or in class, he could be found at the psychology lab where his wife-to-be worked. Because Rich spent so much time away from the business school, he didn’t establish quite as many close relationships with classmates as most others did. When Vince decided to start his own consulting firm just a few years out of school, no one was surprised. When Rich did the same thing two months later, no one noticed.”

Excerpt From: Patrick M. Lencioni. “The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive.”

January 21, 2022

Idea Almanac

What differentiates successful givers from failed givers

“Givers are also more likely to end up at the bottom of the success ladder. Success involves more than just capitalizing on the strengths of giving; it also requires avoiding the pitfalls. If people give too much time, they end up making sacrifices for their collaborators and network ties, at the expense of their own energy. If people give away too much credit and engage in too much powerless communication, it’s all too easy for them to become pushovers and doormats, failing to advance their own interests. The consequence: givers end up exhausted and unproductive. Since the strategies that catapult givers to the top are distinct from those that sink givers to the bottom, it’s critical to understand what differentiates successful givers from failed givers. ”

Excerpt From:  Adam Grant, “Give and Take“

January 20, 2022

Idea Almanac

Russian society found the most valuable currency to be trust

“I remember discussing this dynamic with my Russian teacher one day, and he had an interesting theory. Having lived under communism for so many generations, with little to no economic opportunity and caged by a culture of fear, Russian society found the most valuable currency to be trust. And to build trust you have to be honest. That means when things suck, you say so openly and without apology. People’s displays of unpleasant honesty were rewarded for the simple fact that they were necessary for survival—you had to know whom you could rely on and whom you couldn’t, and you needed to know quickly.”

Excerpt From: Mark Manson. “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck.”

,

January 19, 2022

Idea Almanac

Big Cycles of great accumulations and great losses of wealth and power

“As you saw from my study of the last 500 years up to now, there were Big Cycles of great accumulations and great losses of wealth and power, and of these, the greatest contributing factor was the debt and capital markets cycle. From an investor’s perspective, this could be called the Big Investing Cycle. I felt that I needed to understand these cycles well enough to tactically move or diversify my portfolio to be protected against them and/or to profit from them. By understanding them, and ideally realizing where countries are in their cycles, I can do that.”

Excerpt From: Dalio, Ray. “Principles for Dealing With the Changing World Order : Why Nations Succeed and Fail”

January 18, 2022

Idea Almanac

Dr. Fauci’s strategy for managing the COVID-19 pandemic

“Dr. Fauci’s strategy for managing the COVID-19 pandemic was to suppress viral spread by mandatory masking, social distancing, quarantining the healthy (also known as lockdowns), while instructing COVID patients to return home and do nothing—receive no treatment whatsoever—until difficulties breathing sent them back to the hospital to submit to intravenous remdesivir and ventilation. This approach to ending an infectious disease contagion had no public health precedent and anemic scientific support. Predictably, it was grossly ineffective; America racked up the world’s highest body counts.”

Excerpt From: Robert F. Kennedy. “The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health.”.

January 17, 2022

Idea Almanac

A reporter, an NSA codebreaker, a German, and two Italian hackers walk into a bar

“Six months before Edward Joseph Snowden became a household name, I found myself flanked by Germany’s preeminent industrial security specialist and two Italian hackers at a restaurant in South Beach. We were all in Miami to attend the same bizarre conference—an annual invite-only gathering of the smartest fifty-plus minds in industrial-control security, a particularly terrifying subset of the industry that examines the myriad ways hackers can break into oil and water pipelines, power grids, and nuclear facilities. That evening the conference organizer, a former NSA cryptographer, invited some of us out to dinner. Looking back, the invitation had all the makings of a twisted joke: A reporter, an NSA codebreaker, a German, and two Italian hackers walk into a bar”

Excerpt From: Nicole Perlroth. “This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends.”

January 16, 2022

Idea Almanac

Design thinking methods to move from blank page to insight to action

“Sometimes a single course can change a student’s life. That’s what happened to Rahul Panicker, Jane Chen, Linus Liang, and later Naganand Murty when they used design thinking methods to move from blank page to insight to action. They turned a routine class assignment into a real-life product: the Embrace Infant Warmer, an easy-to-use medical device that costs 99 percent less than a traditional baby incubator and has the potential to save millions of newborns in developing countries. The course was Design for Extreme Affordability, almost universally referred to at the d.school as simply “Extreme”—which pretty accurately describes both the pace and the class experience. Taught by Stanford business school professor Jim Patell and a faculty team, Extreme is a multidisciplinary melting pot in which students from departments all over the university come to the d.school to develop solutions for daunting, real-world problems.”

Excerpt From: Tom Kelley. “Creative Confidence.”

January 15, 2022

Idea Almanac

What we’re trying to change ?

“In this book so far, we have explored the many ways in which conventional approaches to happiness and success seem to backfire, for the same essential reason: that there is something about trying to make ourselves happy and successful that is precisely what sabotages the attempt. But there is an even more unsettling possibility. What if the problem is not just one of technique? What if we are mistaken, not only about how to change ourselves but also about the nature of the selves we’re trying to change?”

Excerpt From: Oliver Burkeman. “The Antidote.”

January 14, 2022

Idea Almanac

This selling technique is designed to get to “Yes”

“You feel like his prey, and you are!
The last thing you want to do is say “Yes,” even when it’s the only way to answer, “Do you drink water?” Compromise and concession, even to the truth, feels like defeat. And “No,” well, “No” feels like salvation, like an oasis. You’re tempted to use “No” when it’s blatantly untrue, just to hear its sweet sound. “No, I do not need water, carbon filtered or otherwise. I’m a camel!”
Now let’s think about this selling technique. It’s designed to get to “Yes” at all costs, as if “No” were death. And for many of us it is. We have all these negative connotations with “No.” We talk about the rejection of “No,” about the fear of hearing it. “No” is the ultimate negative word.
But at the end of the day, “Yes” is often a meaningless answer that hides deeper objections (and “Maybe” is even worse)”

Excerpt From: Chris Voss. “Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It.”

January 13, 2022

Idea Almanac

Economic Inequality

“So vast is the wealth at the top of the American economy, even in a weakened state, that being a mere billionaire is barely enough to gain admission to the Forbes 400. In fact, the richest 1 percent of Americans possess over a third of the country’s wealth, more than the combined wealth of the bottom 90 percent of American families. The top 10 percent of American households take in 42 percent of all income and hold 71 percent of all wealth. Economic inequality is steeper in the United States than in other democracies. Some people think that such inequality is unjust, and favor taxing the rich to help the poor. Others disagree. They say there is nothing unfair about economic inequality, provided it arises without force or fraud, through the choices people make in a market economy.”

Excerpt From: Michael Sandel. “Justice.”

amazon business link

Strategy Boffins

Explore

Collections

Energy

Captivating