This is a great book about how boys and girls are hardwired to be different and how to deal with their differences.

The main take-aways for me:
1. Girls listen better than boys. Put boys in the front of class helps.
2. Boys like to take risks and enjoy thrill while girls tend not to. This is why scaring boys about the negative effects of drug does not work well. “Victim-orient” discussion is best for girls but not for boys. And boys don’t really “feel” things.
3. What the recent phenomenon of hook-up means to boys and girls and how to prevent boys and girls from hooking-up.
4. Co-ed schools may be harmful for girls who tend to lack self-esteem and not take risks. And it’s harmful for boys who may be compelled not to take arts and literature and other seemingly feminine activities. Having been educated in an all-boy school, I felt I was deprived of the skills in dealing with girls. This has negative effects as well. I think there needs be balance.
5. The harmful effects of ignonymous male – being rejected by male and female friends.
6. The difference between gays and trans-sexual. Gays tend to be more masculine than non-gay. Not true for lesbian. And the physiological difference between male and female is bigger than male and gays. Bi-sexual is rare for men – more as a cover up for homosexuality. Bi-sexual for women is not unusual but not necessarily in the sexual sense.
7. Girls who play sports tend to do well due to high esteem and less likely to be teen mom or suicidal. Should encourage girls to take risk and sports activities and boost girls’ self esteem. On the other hand, boys who play sports has higher risk to get a girl pregnant.
8. Being strict with girls work by allowing them to have a way out of activities they may not want to do but forced to do by peer pressure.
9. The fact that being masculine and feminine are independent. The self tests at the end are interesting.

I’ve learned a lot from the book. Very useful for raising a child – boy or girl.

What sticks? According to Chip and Dan Heath, the following SUCCES elements are important: 1) Simple, 2) Unexpected, 3) Concrete, 4) Credible, 5) Emotional, 6) Stories.

1. Simple: Example: Southwest Airlines’ “We are THE low-faire airline.” Newspaper’s lead. “If you say three things, you don’t say anything.” Clinton’s slogan, “It’s the Economy, Stupid.”
Simple = Core + Compact

2. Unexpected (pay attention): Surprise gets our attention but interest keeps our attention. Sony’s “Radio in pockets” and Kennedy’s “Walking on the moon” are classical case of unexpected surprises.

3. Concrete (understand and remember it): Use less abstraction but something tangible. Easy to remember. Memory is more like a Velcro. The more hooks an idea has, the better it will cling to memory. Your childhood home has a lot of hooks but a credit card number has only one. The difference between an expert and a novice is the ability to think abstractly. Novices perceive concrete details as such. Experts perceive concrete details as symbols of patterns and insights that they have learned through years of experience – the curse of knowledge. The solution is to find a “universal language,” one that everyone speaks fluently. HP’s Ferraris’ living room designed to show Disney.

4. Credible (agree/believe): Ulcer was discovered by the incredible outsiders, Marshal and Warren, to be caused by bacteria. No one believed them. More vivid details and accurate statistical
numbers may help. Sinatra’s “If I can make it here, I can make it anywhere.”

5. Emotional (care): the case of “sportsmanship.” Appealing to self-interest. Maslow’s hiearchy of needs: 1) transcendence: help others to realize their potential, 2) self-actualization: realize your own potential, self-fulfillment, peak experiences, 3) Aestheic: symmetry, order, beauty, balance, 4) Learning: know, understand, mentally connect, 5) Esteem: achieve, be competent, gain approval, independence, status, 6) Belonging: love, family friends, affection, 7) Security: protection, safety, stability, 8) Physical: hunger, thirst, bodily comfort. “Don’t mess with Texas” campaign is a good example of appealing to individual’s perception of being a Texan.

6. Stories (able to act on it): Subway’s “Jared” story of how he lost 345 lbs. How do spot good stories: 1) The challenge plot (David and Goliath story), 2) The connection plot (good Samaritan), 3) The creativity plot (makes us do something different, to be creative.

Overall, this is a great book outlining the key ingredients to making your idea stick with people. Having all of the these ingredients would help you communicate effectively and stick with people. Excellent book.

The author offers three of Toyota principles – ingenuity in craft, pursuit of perfection, and fit with society. The emphasis is on simplicity when it comes to being “elegant.” And the ingenuity needed to create the elegant solution usually comes from the frontline people, not a group of high-ranking executive. It’s about making the best use of one’s expertise while openly exploring the possibilities and defining the task at hand. It’s about asking the right question. The story about this guy being dropped into a role and told to “dig” the role/job was something I would not have expected from a Japanese’s control-and-command style.

Continuous improvement (Kaizen) is a big part of Toyota’s culture, practiced by everyone. Kaizen means asking what is blocking perfection, instead of what can we improve? It involves “system thinking” – the ability to provide a solution within the current context.

The ten practices:
1. Let learning lead – learning and innovation go hand-in-hand, but learning comes first. The company teaches the softest skill of thinking critically. The tool used is IDEA: Investgate, Design, Adjust, and the Execute.
2. Learn to see – understanding customer’s world. “Genchi genbutsu:” go and see.
3. Design for today – focus on clear and present needs – Toyota’s term is “market-in.” It’s not just about “fit-it.”
4. Tell the story with pictures: visualize it.
5. Capture the intangible: perceptual and emotional. Find the most compelling value that is at the heart of what motivates purchase behavior.
6. Leverage the limit: resource constraints can spur ingenuity. Don’t just “satisfice” – doing just the minimum to achieve the goal.
7. Master the tension and harmonize the opposing “dynamic tensions”: Breakthrough thinking demands breaking through obvious, easy solutions. I like the fact that they don’t think “win-lose” with the opposing tensions. Thinking win-win creates breakthrough solutions.
8. Run the numbers or accessing relevant data:
9. Make Kaisan mandatory: Pursuing perfection requires great discipline. Create a standard, follow it, and then find a better way. This is almost like a staircase-like improvement so you have a solid baseline to fall back on, instead of rolling down the hill when things go wrong.
10. Keep it lean: get the heart of elegance through simplicity. “Complexity destroys value, which is what customers want most.” The most elegant solution are shockingly simple. Becoming lean requires fighting the basic human instinct to add, accumulate, and store. Lean requires a precise understanding of value: the who, what, when, where, how and why of the customer’s need.

To implement these ideas, the author describes the “clamshell” strategy: the manager provides the necessary cover and support from the top, and the team does the “heavy lifting” from the bottom. According to the author, big change only comes with little steps; that getting a little better each day does result in sustainable market leadership.

This is a great book about a great company, Toyota, and its success story. It did not happen by accident, if the culture is indeed what has been described. These are the small steps to greatness for any company, small or large or even individuals.

John Wooden outlines his formula of leadership success in his book. As an UCLA alumni, I cannot help basting in his glory during his legendary tenure at UCLA. Although I started my schooling way after John Wooden’s years, the pride of the UCLA basketball stayed with the school and the students during all my years at UCLA. This may have pushed UCLA’s football to the forefront during my years at UCLA in the early ’80’s.

In any case, John Wooden exemplifies what a true leader should be. This book epitomize his teachings. The pyramid of success he outlines was truly an art.

On the bottom/foundation, there are:
A1) Industriousness (there is no substitute for work),
A2) Friendship (requires a joint effort),
A3) Loyalty (To yourself and to all those depending upon you),
A4) Cooperation (Be interested in finding the best way, not in having your own way)
A5) Enthusiasm (You must truly enjoy what you are doing).
Then the second layer of the pyramid:
B1) Self-control (Practice self-discipline and keep emotions under control),
B2) Alertness (Be observant and eager to learn and improve)
B3) Initiative (Don’t be afraid of failure but learn from it)
B4) Intentness (Being determined and persistent)
The third layer of the pyramid:
C1) Condition (Mental, moral, physical – moderation must be practiced)
C2) Skill (A knowledge of and the ability to execute the fundamental)
C3) Team Spirit (An eagerness to sacrifice personal interest for the welfare of all)
The fourth layer of the pyramid:
D1) Poise (Just being yourself)
D2) Confidence (Comes from being prepared and keeping proper perspective)
The Top layer:
E1) Competitiveness Greatness (Be at your best when your best is needed)

They sort of make sense and look nice to be form a pyramid. It would be nicer if it’s not that wordy or is condensed to 7~8 habits of the sorts. But they are all for good reasons as reinforced throughout the book. They also reflect how detailed-oriented a leader like John Wooden can and should be.

Coach Wooden went to a great length about how the leader must control his/her emotion in order to lead the team to the right goal. I certainly have a good feel of how important this is as people like to follow a cool-headed leader and yet show enough emotion to be human – a paradox that we want out of our leaders. I have seen first hand how much respect people pay to me when I encounter a difficult situation without knee-jerk reaction and yet with well-thought-out response. It’s hard to do and takes practice.

On how to manage your time, Wooden offers “make each day your masterpiece.” This is hard to do but may well be an over-arching goal for an individual. Given the high leverage of a leader to his/her organization, this is a critical step to move an organization forward. Often times, a leader must ask if this is be the best way to spend my time and how it contributes to the team goal. I’m taken aback how Wooden tracked and itemized the 2-hours practice time down to a 3″x5″ card – very disciplined indeed.

Wooden also suggested that the leadership shouldn’t look at the scoreboard. This goes hand in hand with achieving one’s success to the best of each person’s capability without comparing to others. It’s true that in a competitive business environment, one often falls into the trap of tracking market share. But it’s more important to ask if the BU has achieved all of what it’s capable with. What a mind set to achieve! Individually, one often keeps track one’s wealth as the scorecard and constantly compare to the “millionaire next door.” This is a trap John Wooden would like us to avoid.

Wooden is the kind of leader that sweat the small things to make big things happen. A leadership who doesn’t care enough to know the details often falls into the trap of missing the boat or steering an empty boat to nowhere. It’s refreshing to see a leader that’s truly down to earth. He also asks us to treat adversity is your asset, basically turning lemons to lemonade. And if one wants to reach all of his/her capability, adversity is a norm. How one handles or treat the adversity is how a person seizes the opportunity to learn from his/her mistakes and turn them into lessons for future success.

The one major take away for me is how he defines “success” in a person’s life. I struggled with this for myself until I read the following sentence from his book. “Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable.” How profound! It’s not how much money you have made, though having money may things a bit easier to achieve your success. It’s how much you have achieved that you’re capable of achieving. This sentence alone may well change how I plan my career.

I can see how all these skills are good for leading or coaching a basketball team or factory works but are they applicable to today’s highly independent, creative individuals as in an engineering organization? In other words, is the leadership model as described by John Wooden truly timeless and applicable to today’s knowledge workers? In my opinion, I believe so and I believe these qualities need to be taught to all the team members as all team members are leaders of their own areas of expertise.

Overall, it’s a great book. Thanks for sharing your leadership wisdom with us, Coach Wooden.

This is a truly sad story of a boy soldier from Sierra Leone, a west African nation well known for their abundance in diamond. The boy, Ishmael Beah, lost his family (mother, father and brother) to the ruthless slaughter by the rebels (RUF) opposing an unstable government. He was then drafted to become a soldier at age of 12 and then rehabilitated at around 15 years old. Having been to New York and addressed the UN conference on the life of a boy soldier, he has seen what a child’s life should be and vowed not be become a soldier again. Later, he took the risk in fleeing the country as Freetown (Capital of Sierra Leone) fell into the rebels’ hand.

Ishmael was an exceptional boy, well versed in Shakespeare and American Rap music and has mastery of the English language and the use of metaphors. His story telling was impeccable. At times within the story, I wish he had not been vivid in capturing the horrific scene and his state of mind. Ishmael was also an extraordinary survivor, living in the constant, ruthless gun war without losing his life. His brush with death happened when his feet were struck with bullets. He was able to survive it due to the caring of his superior. His loyalty to the military, whether founded or not, was then firmly established. During his 3-year solider years, he and other boys were constant on drug (cocaine, marijuana, and booster), which made them fearless and ruthless. Most of story was told of the time how he kept running from the rebels inland to the coast and was within minutes of meeting his family. Unfortunately, he was spared the life but missed the opportunity to re-unite with his family when the rebels killed everyone in the village where his family took refuge. You can tell about his despair when he said he wished he had re-united with his family and be killed with them together.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell what evil is. Is it born with or caused by circumstances? In this case, children with sufficient drug and adult brain-wash and armed with AK47 can be turned into an evil, ruthless, war machine. Ishmael was able to survive all these years because he was a lean and mean soldier. His skinny statute and his intelligence provided him a natural protection from the flying bullets. In the end, Ishmael went through months of drug withdrawal and several big fights before being rehabilitated. But the trauma and scar from all these killings will last him entire life time.

This story reminded me the “Blood Diamond” movie. Indeed, “Blood Diamond” took a lot of story lines from this book, I believe. It’s sad that Africa, after centuries of being exploited as the source of slaves, can turn around and exploit their own people for money and how the west or rest of the world continued to enslave the African people long after the slavery has been banned for over a century.

Ishmael’s description of the modern city sceneries (tall house) and amenities (“box” for elevator) and later his experience with New York’s cold weather and “East Village” shows how much of the mountain/village life shaped his entire world before and during the war. It’s when he was fortunate enough to be forced out of the military, thanks to the efforts of UN’s UNICEF and his superior’s sharp insight of this boy’s potential, he was able to see the world and the war from the outside as they are.

This is a great book written and narrated by the real people whose life has been permanently altered by the action of the greed and evil of the people in power. We should never forget how much of collateral damage we sustain when we go into a war.

This book is absolutely hilarious. As a man, I never quite grasped the dilemma women had about being a woman: neck, purse, cream, bath oil, child labor, pedicure, manicure, cooking, food obsession and etc. The material presented in this book can be used in a very funny comedy monologue. The “falling-in-love” to the apartment is probably something people living outside of New York city are difficult to relate to. But I can probably relate to the how she feels about aging and wish I have done more of the things that I cannot do now – liking showing off your body while you can. It’s also a warning to us that we should treasure what we have taken for granted like good eye sight (not needing reading glasses), not having as many wrinkles and etc.

The wisdom from her mother about “everything is a copy” strikes a chord. She interpreted it many ways. For me it means nothing is really new, though we want to perceive it as new – it’s just a refinement of some old things. Most of our knowledge nowadays are simply copied from the old knowledge passed from the past generations. Quite true. Technology works the same way. 99.9% of the technology is simply a refinement of the past technology.

Nora’s brush with greatness – JFK and Bill Clinton was written with a great sense of humor and disappointment (about Bill). This is a similar experience to her two marriages: one to the guy with strong connection to his cat and another to one that cheated on her while she was pregnant.

Her proclamation that everyone is dying is truly sad, especially about the death of her best friend or more like a sister/mother/daughter. I can appreciate that it could be really scary that people who you love and care are dying around you. It’s not funny but it cast a morbid humor about human life – just when you’re most settled in your own way and most comfortable about yourself, you’ll be checking out of this world.

Overall, this book is very funny and insightful – worth listening to a couple of more times, especially in the car when stuck in traffic.

This is John Grisham’s first non-fiction novel. I used to enjoy read John Grisham’s novels, all related to the justice system – the law, trial, gangster, jury and etc. This one has almost all of the elements of his novel thrillers.

This book is a memoir of Ronald Keith William, a potential baseball superstar that fell because of his alcoholism and a string of bad luck that turned him into a murder suspect, then was wrongly convicted and sent to the death roll in Ada, Oklahoma. After spending 12 years in jail, Ron William’s case was dismissed thanks to the DNA evidence and of course the work of the behind-the-scene law clerks in appeal court that stayed his death sentence. Several other characters were introduced that was sometimes confusing but was relevant. His supposedly co-conspirator – Dennis Fritz, turned out to have a better ending. The other similar case was highlighted with a sad ending though.

The author did a good job in highlighting the fact that the people in power (prosecution attorneys and police) holds lots of power and injustice can be easily served by the alliance of the prosecutor and police. It appears the police are not to be trusted once they’re convinced that you’re guilty – resorting to using “dream” confession. The author did a great job in explaining the judicial process for the capital conviction and the mistakes of the defending attorneys. But most of all, he painted a pretty sad picture of the justice system for the poor and the mentally ill. The rich seems to be better served than the poor – the equality is non-existent. Once again, the forensic science – DNA technology, the unsung hero, helps to preserve the lives of many innocent men.

The narration was excellent in the audio book – good animation and attempt to mimic the voices. It was kind of dry in the beginning but it sets the sad backdrop to the emotional outbreaks of Ron William and the drama that unfolded. The description of the death-roll prison cells were detailed and vivid as if the readers are inside the miserable place.

Honestly, I don’t know what future Ron William would have changed had he not been wrongfully jailed for so many years. He’s not a very likeable man, but he’s like your regular jovial jock. His sports career was over when he was arrested for the murder. I believe a big part of his going mentally ill is due to the fact that his baseball career was over and he (and his family) couldn’t accept it. The unwillingness to accept the reality and put behind him may have driven him to the depth of his psychosis. Overall, it’s a sad story worsen by the mistreatment of justice system and it could happen to some of us.