Manoj's Review on Books

One of the most engaging books I have read till date, goes to show how much the attention of the audience can be grabbed when there is a clear sense of why. Simon Sinek’s premise of the entire book is to have a consistent long-term purpose towards business initiatives, which is what he has repeatedly been calling out as start with why. The fulcrum of the narrative is to start an engagement with a strong sense of why while the how and what aspect should emerge as a tangible proof of what the organization believes in, which is coined as the golden circle. Samuel Langley, a  professor of Smithsonian  institution, inventor of bolometer, a renowned individual who tasted success for his proof of concept on objects that could fly short distance way back in 1900’s. The US government realized the potential and funded him 50,000 USD which could easily measure up to 50 million USD in current valuation, Langley hired the best talent in the country and got the attention of press as well. P...

The bus picked me up at 11:20 pm at Banashankari bus stop and stopped in a few more places to pick the remaining trekkers. In about an hour, I was surprised that a 50 seater bus was full with youngsters, the broad age range would well be within 18 to 24 years and the enthusiasm was evident. Once the last section of trekkers were picked, the back row group started playing music using their Bluetooth devices and voiced over the songs which were predominantly in Hindi. The songs were sung in loud fashion until the bus stopped for refreshments 2.5 hours latter and the group was truly living up to the back benchers tag. Am 39 years of age as I write this blog, may well be the oldest in the group and it has been a long time since I experienced such high energy amongst a group of people. The trek started at 4 am from Skandagiri base point and I was leading with the guide for a significant portion of the trek. About 20 minutes into the trek, I could sense it was tough and scale of difficulty w...

Oscar Trimboli is the host of Apple podcast Deep listening which covers over 100 episodes with a wide selection of personas focussed on listening attribute. He has created an ambassador community on deep listening and is the author of a couple more books, Deep Listening – Impact beyond words and Breakthroughs: How to Confront Assumptions. The introduction for Oscar makes it clear that he wants to make extensive use of his ears than mouth. We as humans are also biologically structured with a couple of ears but a single mouth giving us indications towards the proportion on how much we should be inclined to listen versus speak. Oscar has interviewed over 2000 participants to break down the components of what gets communicated by the speaker and how does one extract true meaning from it.   He throws in an interesting number towards this process, an average human can think 900 words per minute, hear 400 words per minutes and speak 125 words per minute. It essentially means...

Is a long youthful life possible? Can ageing be arrested or even reversed? Can we truly desire for an immortal life? A few deep questions that can have significant impact on the human population at large if it’s proved to be possible. David Sinclair believes to have found the secret sauce to counter aging and live a long life of vitality. A quick look on David’s qualification will bring in semblance of credibility on the outcome attained through decades of research, he has a Phd in molecular genetics, postdoctoral researcher at M.I.T. and held the position of co-director in Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research at Harvard Medical School. He starts of his book with an extremely bold statement, 'aging is a disease'. It took some time to realize the gravity of the statement since for millenniums of human existence, we are taught to believe aging as a natural progression of life. However, the fundamental belief is set to change if David’s research outputs are proved ...

It looks like Ernest Hemingway has an inclination towards anti-climax stories, something that can leave the reader with a heavy heart.  I was wondering what’s the message in the end, isn’t it not a futile exercise to be beaten down every time despite the hard attempt? An old man skilled in deep sea fishing, has been running on dry luck for over 80 days. His neighbouring fishermen are able to get good catches every few days but the old man’s dry days in the sea looked never ending. As being the case, he becomes a ridicule amongst the fishermen community and gets labelled as someone who will never be able to catch any fish. However, the old man keeps his hope intact and ventures into the deep sea for his next attempt. On this attempt, he happens to catch the longest sword fish ever to have caught in his community, measuring eighteen feet in length. The fish keeps him in deep sea for 3 days and 2 nights, emerging to the surface a few times to display it’s enormity and size up the ...

Let me start with a bunch of case studies which will showcase the importance EQ carries in our day to day life, the pressing question however is, does it weigh well over the IQ component. A successful advocate known for his compelling arguments and high win percentage towards his clientele gets a tumour detected on his right hemisphere. He undergoes a surgery to get the tumour removed along with a certain portion of amygdala. In theory, it shouldn’t disturb his life a great deal since the primary function of amygdala is towards detection of threat and the subsequent flight or fight response. However, the advocate lost complete sense of decision-making to a point wherein he couldn’t even decide fixing appointment given a choice of dates. His IQ had compelling reasons for and against both the dates which led to an endless indecisive swing between both the dates. With just a small portion of EQ removed, IQ proves to be useless. Let's take the case of Bell labs, which is world’s re...

  When a large organization tumbles down a survival crisis, the complexity to deal with, happens to be of enormous proportions. When it occurs to a crown jewel like IBM which was seen as a pride of US nation, it had to be rejuvenated and necessary course correction brought in place, because it wasn’t just another firm, IBM was an ecosystem in itself and the repercussions could be felt across the industry. Between 1990 to 1993, IBM had 1.2 lakh employees either resigning or getting fired, it was a significant break in trust since the organization was known for paternalism which is in short means a job for life that was literally guaranteed during the hay days. On top of it, the flagship mainframe product System 360 was dropping in sales and seriously getting out of customer’s preference. Given the context, how can a individual with no IT industry background survive at the helm of affairs, let alone bringing in a turnaround? Louis had similar doubts himself and didn’...