Book Review
Offers a blend of practical methodologies, motivational stories, and actionable insights that can significantly enrich an MBA student’s academic and personal journey.
Offers a blend of practical methodologies, motivational stories, and actionable insights that can significantly enrich an MBA student’s academic and personal journey.
“Mental models” are deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, or even pictures or images that influence how we understand the world and how we take action. Very often, we are not consciously aware of our mental models or the effects they have on our behavior. For example, we may notice that a co-worker dresses elegantly, and say to ourselves, “She’s a country club person.” About someone who dresses shabbily, we may feel, “He doesn’t care about what others think.” Mental models of what can or cannot be done in different management settings are no less deeply entrenched. Many insights into new markets or outmoded organizational practices fail to get put into practice because they conflict with powerful, tacit mental models.”
Excerpt From: Peter M Senge. “The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization: First Edition.”
“Constraints are the third ingredient, after causality and counterfactuals, for framing to work. Without constraints, we might imagine an enormous range of alternative realities that are so ill-connected to the causal mental model that they fail to inform our actions. We need the right boundaries for our imagination to elicit the choices we have. Constraints are rules and restrictions that shape our counterfactual thinking in a particular way. We can play with them—by loosening or tightening them, and by adding new ones or removing old ones. With constraints, framing goes from the purview of cognition to the basis of actions that matter.”
Excerpt From: Kenneth Cukier. “Framers.”
“The Tropicana deal secured my promotion to partner, and I celebrated by redecorating my office. If I was going to be there twelve hours a day, I wanted it to be a cocoon against all the psychological stresses of my work, cozy, like a beautiful sitting room or library in an English house. I had the walls painted partly in reddish-maroon, the rest covered in the kind of grass cloth I’d seen at Lee Eastman’s place. I installed a chocolate carpet, chintz chairs, and a partners’ desk from the 1890s. It was exquisite. No one else at the firm had ever done this. It wasn’t how they thought about work. But I didn’t consider myself to be at work.”
Excerpt From: Stephen A. Schwarzman. “What It Takes.”
“Steve was in a sociable mood, so we chatted it up for a few minutes, and then the meeting began. “Before we start, let me just update you on a few things,” said Steve, his eyes surveying the room. “First off, let’s talk about iMac—”
He stopped cold. His eyes locked on to the one thing in the room that didn’t look right. Pointing to Lorrie, he said, “Who are you?”
Lorrie was a bit stunned to be called out like that, but she calmly explained that she’d been asked to attend because she was involved with some of the marketing projects we’d be discussing. Steve heard it. Processed it. Then he hit her with the Simple Stick.
“I don’t think we need you in this meeting, Lorrie. Thanks,” he said. Then, as if that diversion had never occurred—and as if Lorrie never existed—he continued with his update.”
Excerpt From: Insanely Simple. “Ken Segall.”
“Within 20 minutes, I provided a very clear idea of how to overcome the problem, and Wright was super excited about moving forward and finding a way to work together. Our strategy was to identify strong Hook Points within Amblin’s film library, leverage specific film clips and interviews that best expressed those hooks, and A/B test them against each other to identify winning variations that would drive traffic at scale to their new website. Some meetings will go well and lead to more business, while others won’t. What I want you to take away from this is the fact that even without previously knowing what the meeting would be about, I found the pain point, crafted a strategy in the moment, and wrapped it into a compelling story to prove my value.
Excerpt From: Brendan Kane. “Hook Point: How to Stand Out in a 3-Second World.”
“If you take away just one message from this book, I hope it is this: life doesn’t have to be as hard and complicated as we make it. Each of us has, as Robert Frost wrote, “promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep.” No matter what challenges, obstacles, or hardships we encounter along the way, we can always look for the easier, simpler path.”
Excerpt From: Greg McKeown. “Effortless.”