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.

I was very surprised that Richard Dawkins can be so passionate in evolution and courageous in taking on religions as entrenched as Christianity and Muslim. This is a very enlightening book. I can not think of more scientific ways of taking on religions as Dawkins did. He made his arguments clearly and based on scientific evidences, which is a quite a different approach than most religion’s leap-of-faith approach.

The author presents the “God Hypotheses” in great lengths from polytheism, monotheism, secularism, to agnosticism (1 to 7 scale). I never knew there were so many kinds of belief systems out there. This was educational. The author went on to poke holes/fun at each of arguments for God’s existence: 1) The unmoved mover, 2) the uncaused cause, and 3)Cosmological argument, 4) the argument from degree, 5) the Teleological Argument, Argument from Design, 6) the argument from beauty, 7) the argument from personal “experience”, 8 ) the argument from scripture, 9) the argument from admired religious scientists. 10) Pascal’s wager – nothing to lose, and 11) Bayesian arguments.

Next, the author made some strong points in arguing that why there almost is no God. The irreducible complexity was used to argue that God itself doesn’t pass the same test. He also advocated strongly that Darwinian evolution by natural selection – a slow and gradual process from the simple beginning – is the only thing, so far, that can explain things scientifically and logically.

Mr. Dawkins then speculated the roots of religion. Why something as “wasteful” as religion did not get eliminated by Darwin’s imperative? There must be direct advantages of religion: 1) group selection, 2) a by-product of something else, 3) psychologically primed, 4) cargo cults. But could we be moral/good without religion? Yes, because our moral standard (zeitgeist) is moving forward even when religion has not changed for over 2000 years.

Mr. Dawkins made a very convincing argument that we must raise the consciousness and do not allow our children to be locked into religion without understanding it or truly believing in it. On this, I strongly agree as I’m the “victim” of being born into a Christian without my own conviction. This is a form of child abuse, according to the author.

The contradiction of the bibles are new and very interesting to me. The brutality of God did not come across to me before especially the mentioning of the gang rape of women and poor treatment of women. The stories mentioned in the Old Testament was new to me; I guess my pastor was selective in teaching us about them. Mr. Dawkins did not advocate that we throw away the “Good” book but rather treating it as a literature reference.

As far of God’s role in “filling the gap.” The author argued that religion at “one time or another been thought to fill four main roles in human life;” explanation, exhortation (moral instruction), consolation and inspiration. None of which must be filled by “God” as argued by the author.

At the end, Mr. Dawkins urged the readers to open up our window of Burkas. There are more to meet the eyes than what the religion can tell us. Keeping an open mind to what science can offer will keep us from the trap of religion. Of course, there are still many things that can not be explained by science yet.

A good book to read that offers an opposing view is “Godless” by Ann Coutler. I wish I read this book immediately after reading “Godless” book. Like Mr. Dawkins, Ms. Coutler made good arguments against the evolutionist, most of which have been torn to pieces by Mr. Dawkins, thanks to being published later than “Godless.”

The book is a bit hard to read at times unless you’re familiar with the Bible and some background in science. The author made many references to many books, which were used to make his argument for or against. This may be reason why Evolution would have a hard time being sold to the general population – the science is too “thick.” On the other hand, Jesus may have a better, easier-to-understand stories to most people.

Nevertheless, this book opened my eyes to the possibility of seeing things as evidenced. I utterly enjoyed this book. I look forward to reading more about evolution and Mr. Dawkins’ publications.