This is a wonderful American dream story. For a peasant boy an impoverished village in Qindao under the Chinese communism in the 70’s to an accomplished ballet dancer, Li Cunxin gave his all and lived his life to the fullest with some luck and influence of his teachers, friends and, most of all, the love from his family.

The story was truly inspirational. It taught us that determination combined with hard work paves the way to greatness. And never forget the people who made it possible for you. There are more people cheering you on than you can imagine.

Li’s ballet teachers, Mr. Shao and Mr. Zang, portrayed in the book can be a model for all the teachers out there. They saw the strong will inside Li and went on to inspire and push him to become the best dancer he could possibly be. The strangest thing is that Li did not make his own decision to become a ballet dancer. He was “accidentally” chosen by the central planning of the central Communist government, as a pawn for the government to advance its own art agenda. In other words, sometimes the passion can be shaped at the early age. I don’t know what Li would be doing had he not been picked to be a dancer or his school teach did not tap on the shoulder of the selection committee member to “take a look” at Li.

Told over and over, the frogs living inside a well epitomized his life and the life of his family. From the village to Beijing and to eventually America. He saw a bigger and bigger world that shook his belief in communism. The shocks he encountered along the way can easily be compared to the Tarzan movie. China certainly did a good propaganda job in convincing the people that they were living in heaven and yet in extreme poverty.

The author went into lots of details on various steps of Ballet. Not being a Ballet expert, it’s hard for me to visualize how difficult the dance steps are. But from his struggle, I can tell it’s no small feat. I can tell that he is an intense perfectionist carried with him a mission to accomplish the dreams of his family – his mother, father, and the six brothers. It’s a heavy burden that he was able to let go after his triumphant return to his family, after being barred for 8 years after his defection to USA.

Based on my Google search, Li has turned into an inspirational speakers and security exchange manager after his retirement from dancing. I think he has a lot to offer given what he has gone through. But I would love to see him perform his ballet dance.

The narrator, Paul English, of the audio book had a British or Australian accent that took a while to get used to. But he carries the emotion of text or the author’s intent so well, it was like being told a very interesting bed time story. Sometimes, he came through as the original character in the book. He kept me captivated throughout the 15 1/2 hours. Wonderfully done.

I really enjoyed this book. This true story is many times better than the Joy Luck Club. It’s honest, sincere and full of emotion – a triumphant story of human spirit.

I picked up this book from the library while browsing the shelves. I thought it was interesting to put a methodology around debugging and was pleasantly surprised by the contents. They match what I practice when I need to debug a hardware or software issue. Some of the examples are really old and are probably difficult to understand for some but I can appreciate the examples as they put some context around the framework. I think this book is a must read for an engineer who has gone through some debugging wars and is disparately looking for a method to the madness. This is it!

The 9 Rules are:

1. Understand the System. a) Read the manual. b) Read everything in depth. c) Know the fundamentals. d) Know the road map. e) Understand your tools. f) Look up the details.

2. Make It Fail. It seems easy, but if you don’t do it, debugging is hard. a) Do it again. b) Start at the beginning. c) Stimulate the failure. d) But don’t simulate the failure. e) Find the uncontrolled condition that makes it intermittent. f) Record everything and find the signature of intermittent bugs. g) Don’t trust statistics too much. h) Know that “that” can happen. i) Never throw away a debugging tool.

3. Quit Thinking and Look: You can think up thousands of possible reasons for a failure. You can see only the actual cause. a) See the failure. The senior engineer saw the real failure and was able to find the cause. The junior guys thought they knew what the failure was and fixed something that wasn’t broken. b) See the details. c) Build instrumentation in. d) Add instrumentation on. e) Don’t be afraid to dive in. f) Watch out for Heisenberg. Don’t let your instruments overwhelm your system. g) Guess only to focus the search.

4. Divide and Conquer: a) Narrow the search with successive approximation, b) Get the range, (if the number of 135 and you think the range is 1 to 100, you’ll have to widen the range) c) Determine which side of the bug you are on, d) Use easy-to-spot test patterns, e) Start with the bad – start where it’s broken and work your way back up to the cause. f) Fix the bugs you know about – bugs defend and hide one another. Take them out as soon as you find them. g) Fix the noise first. Watch for stuff that you know will make the rest of the system go crazy. But don’t get carried away on margin problems or aesthetic changes.

5. Change One Thing at a Time: a) Isolate the key factor. b) Grab the brass bar with both hands. (as the brass bar in a nuclear submarine on the instrumentation panel – look at the dials and indicators carefully) c) Change one test at a time. d) Compare it with a good one. e) Determine what you changed since the last time it worked.

6. Keep an Audit Trail: a) Write down what you did, in what order, and what happened as a result. b) Understand that any detail could be the important one. c) Correlate events: “It made a noise for four seconds starting at 21:04:53” is better than “It made a noise.” d) Understand that audit trails for design are also good for testing. e) Write it down!

7. Check the Plug: Obvious assumptions are often wrong. Assumption bugs are usually the easiest to fix. a) Question Your Assumptions, b) Don’t Start at Square Three, c) Test the tool.

8. Get a Fresh View: You need to take a break anyway. a) Ask for fresh insights, b) Tap expertise, c) Listen to the voice of experience, d) Know that help is all around you, e) Don’t be proud, f) Report symptoms, not theories, g) Realize that you don’t have to b sure.

9. If You Didn’t Fix It, It Ain’t Fixed: a) Check that it’s really fixed. b) Check that it’s really your fix that fixed it. c) Know that it never just goes away by itself. d) Fix the cause. e) Fix the process.

The author’s website may be helpful.
The Debugging Rules Poster

The author uses the word “know-how” as something of a individual core competency for a CEO or company leader to perform or bring the “substance” to a company. A person of good “know-how” can turn around a failing company or produce consistent high return for the company. He outlines the following 8 skills:

1. Positioning and Repositioning. The ability to find an idea for the organization that meets customers’ demands and makes money. A lot of times, the leader need to change the business model to extract more profit from the market or remain viable, by zeroing in on the central idea that meets customer needs and makes money. Walmart had to re-position itself to offer its customers a wide assortment of good quality merchandise at the lowest possible prices. Moving from the rural area to the metro area by taking on the big guys. The 2nd tweak lies in leveraging its strength in logistics and IT to move into groceries. The classic example now is the newspaper industry.

2. Pinpointing External Change. The ability to identify patterns that place the organization on the offensive and connecting the dots. Ask yourself the 7 simple questions: 1) What is happening in the world today? 2) What part of my frame of reference has worked for me? What hasn’t worked for me? 3) What does it mean for everyone? 4) What does it mean for us? 5) What would have to happen? For macroeconomic trends to create opportunities, certain things have to happen. 6) What do we have to do to play a role? 7) What do we do next?

3. Leading the Social System. The ability to get the right people with the right behaviors and the right information to make better decisions and business results. Here is the Social System Test:
a) The built-in conflicts that are part of every organizations are being surfaced. b) These conflicts are resolved in a timely way by people committed to delivering results. c) Information flows horizontally across silos and is not hoarded or deliberately distorted. d) The right questions are raised so that you can look at your business from both “50,000” feet” and at ground level and conduct brutally honest dialog. e) Operating mechanisms are designed so that they result in high quality, timely decisions are help deliver the aspired results. f) You know the points of intersection where operating mechanisms are needed for people to make trade-offs and share information. g) Appropriate and continuous improvements are made in the working of the operating mechanisms: creating new ones, combining some, eliminating others. h) Each operating mechanism is connected in a unfiltered way to sources of external information. i) Leaders have the psychological courage to confront reality and shape behavior of participants in line with the value of the business. The right behavior and values are reinforced and those who deviate are dealt with.

4. Judging People. The ability to calibrate people based on their actions, decisions and behaviors and matches them to the job’s non-negotiables. How to spot the future leaders: a) They consistently deliver ambitious results. b) The continuously demonstrate growth, adaptability, and learning better and faster than their excellently performing peers. c) They seize the opportunity for challenging, bigger assignments, thereby expanding capability and capacity and improving judgment. d) They have the ability to think through the business and take leaps of imagination to grow the business. e) They are driven to take things to the next level. f) Their powers of observation are very acute, forming judgments of people by focusing on their decisions, behaviors, and actions, rather than relying on initial reactions and gut instincts; they can mentally detect and construct the “DNA” of a person. g) They come to the point succinctly, are clear thinkers, and have the courage to state a point-of-view even through listeners may react adversely. h) They ask incisive questions that open minds and incite the imagination. i) They perceptively judge their own direct reports, have the courage to give them honest feedback so that direct report grow; they dig into cause and effect if a direct report is failing. j) They know the non-negotiable criteria of the job of their direct reports and match the job with the person; if there is a mismatch they deal with it promptly. k) They are able to spot talent and see the “God’s gift” of other individuals.

5. Molding a Team. The ability to coordinate competent, high-ego leaders.

6. Setting Goals. The ability to balance goals that give equal weighting to what the business can become and what it can achieve.

7. Setting Priorities. The ability to define a path and direct resources, actions, and energy to accomplish goals.

8. Dealing with Forces beyond the Market. The ability to deal with pressures you cannot control but affect your business. How not to be between a rock and a hard place: a) get the management team psychologically prepared for the fact that societal issues will arise and can pick up stream fast given today’s high transparency and the Internet. b) As you examine your company’s positioning, you need to anticipate what societal issues might be raised and what kinds of advocacy groups might raise them. c) Develop a methodology for dealing with such issues, first in terms your personal psychology, and second for the organization. What are your methods for picking up early warning signals of issues that are just emerging or gaining traction? How will you assess the power of various causes? d) Be prepared to exchange information and build bridges with advocacy groups to help shape the issues and solutions. Go on the offensive.

Citing case studies from his consulting practice, Charan identifies personal traits of leaders that help or interfere with the know-hows.

1. Ambition. The drive to accomplish something but not win at all costs.
2. Tenacity. The drive to search, persist and follow through, but not too long.
3. Self-confidence. The drive to overcome the fear of failure and response, or the need to be liked and use power judiciously but not become arrogant and narcissistic.
4. Psychological Openness. The ability to be receptive to new and different ideas but not shut other people down.
5. Realism. The ability to see what can be accomplished and not gloss over problems or assume the worst.
6. Appetite for Learning. The ability to grown and improve know-hows and not repeat the same mistakes.

This book went through the 8 skills with fairly good examples to backup his points. Of course, if a person has all the 8 know-how skills, he/she should make a good CEO indeed. Often times, there is “luck” involved in having the right positioning strategy at the right place at the right time. Perhaps, that would make the 9th “know-how.” The narration of the audio book was good and the flow was as smooth as one large body of idea that I had to borrow the physical book to re-capture the 8 skills.