Satellites, a visit to China, Nazi war criminals and stock day trading in Shen Zhen. How far will we go to keep ahead of the game? Some thoughts after reading “Sputnik” by Paul Dickson.

 

HBS rating: Good Fun

whos should read:

• Tech lovers

• East VS’ west interesandos

• What helped drive and build America as we know it today fascianados

Crossing from Hong Kong to the Shen Zhen province in China a few weeks ago, I didn’t quite know what to expect once I leave the ferry.  The ride is short, about 30 minutes.  The closer I got to the Chinese mainland the more curious I became.  What does China look like? Should I expect industrial revolution cityscape or ancient ink drawings?

The Shen Zhen province, is one of China’s industrial zones.  Anyone interested in manufacturing something, or anything, big or small, simple or complicated, is bound to arrive there at one point or another.  Remove the people from the streets, and the banners and logo’s off of the buildings, and you will not know which part of the world you are in.  A mega city of modern high-rise buildings, four to six lane highways, Starbucks, McDonalds and Walmart (yes Walmart). 

It’s exciting and disappointing at the same time.  Exciting as it is quite an opportunity to see a country going through high energy stages of an industrialized revolution.  Disappointing, as it seems that the Cultural Revolution now followed by an industrial one, pushed away anything an outsider would recognize as “Chinese”.

In here lies a trap.  Do we really know the Chinese and what China can do?  Once we figure out what the Chinese can do, how far will the west go to keep its edge?

China is developing fast; as time passes by, more and more knowledge and abilities associated with Western or other advanced technological societies around the world is and will shift (actually already have shifted) to this vast country.  The technology race is on, and there are historical precedents we can refer to.

In “Sputnik, the shock of the century” Paul Dickenson lays out the story of how one chunk of shiny metal circling the earth, shocked the entire American nation.  It wasn’t that the Americans didn’t have the ability to shoot something into space, its seems it wasn’t in their list of “things to be done”.  It’s not so certain that the Russians had it on top of their priority list either.  In a very Soviet way, they managed to delay their space program by a good number of years by imprisoning their brightest mind in a Gulag (for something only a communist would understand).  Luckily enough for them (again in a very hard to understand Russian way) the imprisoned scientists kept on developing their science in hiding.

What the Russians had, was thrust.  They could build rockets, and pretty damn powerful ones.  What they couldn’t solve with a small hammer, they solved with a bigger one.  So the dream of overcoming gravity became a reality.  What the Russians didn’t have, was the delicacy and technology to actually place in space something clever and sophisticated.

The Americans on the other hand, seemed to have the opposite.  They had, and eventually managed to perfect the complex necessary technology to go into orbit and land on the moon.  What they missed at the time Sputnik was beeping from space, was the knowledge of how to leave the Earth.

Here the reader will be confronted with a very difficult to come to agreement part of the American Space Program.  This does raise the question of how far nations will go to keep ahead of the game.

The person that is responsible for most of the rocket knowledge the Americans have, and the most spoken personalities to advance the American space program in a time that it wasn’t that popular (as result of big spending and internal rivalry between Army, Navy and Air Force as to who should lead the program), was none other than a Nazi war criminal.

Werner Von Brown, was a high ranking Nazi officer, responsible for the development of the infamous German V2 rockets.  In fact, the first rockets shot from American soil after the war, had many captured V2 parts in them.

Von Brown was not just an administrator; he was responsible for running the secret factories in which Jews were forced to labor and slave and build the V2’s.  In a very German way, the Nazi’s found out that it is cheaper to bring in new labor and let it die, than try and keep the existing labor alive.  Thus the life expectancy of anyone unfortunate enough to arrive at those technology death camps was about three months.

And Von Brown was responsible for that.

However, let us not confuse ourselves with facts.  The Russians had an object in orbit, so Von Brown, his team, and their families were cleansed from their criminal past and turned into official American citizens; in return, they helped the US overcome gravity.  How Americanized has Von Brown became? To the point he was testifying in Congress committees headed by the future 36ths President LBJ.  

Going back to my visit in China, I tried to figure out which is it that the Chinese have today: thrust, technology or knowledgeable scientists providing knowledge from countries that used to be considered enemies.

The answer is easy.  They have it all. 

On my last day of the visit I met with an American living in China for 25 years.  He is a go between business man helping outsiders manufacture in China.  How long will it be before the Chinese will stop needing people as yourself, I asked.  Six to ten years, he figured.  I sipped my locally brewed beer, locked over the city skyline similar to that of any American city, thought of the couple I saw earlier in the day drinking Frapucino’s in the local Starbucks while day stock trading on their locally manufactured laptops.  I think that with all of his experience in China he is getting his numbers wrong.  Sooner, much sooner,  a “beep from space” will awaken the west to realize exactly how far and advanced China is.  And then, how far will we go to keep ahead of the game?

One man on an ox, wisdom of Tao in three months, making all the wrong choices and all the knowledge you need in one thin book; all after reading Tao Te Ching by Lau Tsu

HBS rating: Must read

Who should read?

·         Tao, Eastern Culture or philosophy lovers

·         Those looking for answers

·         Those looking for questions

·         Those who like poetry

·         Those not afraid of questioning what they already know

 

One man’s brave attempt at explaining life from a-z.  Better then Soduko, this book will get you thinking.  It took this ancient genius three months to write, but will probably take us a lifetime to understand.. 

 Figure this out.  The one piece of Chinese literature that has sold the most copies in the world, and yet, doesn’t have a translatable title.  It’s not called Tao Te Ching for nothing, as these three words can be translated in a variety of ways, all of which make good, or no good at all, sense.   No translator would risk getting the wrong combo on this ancient masterpiece. 

And the options are..”The way of the flow of energy” or “The revelation of the force of Tao” or “The way of the law in the revealed” or “The cure of the flow and the way”. . Whichever way, it’s a work of art.  A masterpiece, unless..

You end up reading the wrong translation.  It’s a bit of a hit and miss as the way the book is translated can turn the reading experience from a head scratching “I don’t get it” experience, to a joyful and enjoyable event you will repeat many times.  My personal copy is beautifully translated to Hebrew.  I believe the translator really got the spirit of Lau Tzu which…

May or may not have lived, unclear, but has left behind a pillar of world knowledge.. The Tao.  So here’s some background. 

Rewind to ancient China.  Some 2500 years ago the Chou dynasty was in control.  This dynasty has managed to rule the country for some 1000 years without the use of excessive force.  The secret was in a simple and ingenious feudal system.  Each plot of land wad divided into nine plots.  The outer eight plots where given to eight families.  The center plot belonged to the emperor.  The eight families could live off their plots, as long as the central plot (worked by the eight families) produced as much rice as the eight plots.  All was well and prosperous, until technology moved on and a new medium was introduced to the arena: iron. 

Using iron better framing equipment was  made.  More crops could be grown.  Suddenly people had more money and a new class of merchants was created.  This new class grew rich fast, politics joined in soon after, and the combination led to many small private armies being created.

The new armies, powered by iron weapons and chariots constantly challenged the emperor, and eventually forced him to retreat and set up a new capital.  He has survived, but lost control over his empire.

Seven new states were formed by the new rising powers, and all got busy fighting one another.  The Chou emperor  knew he had to come up with something other than military power to regain his control.  Following his ancestors, he turned to his advisors and a plan was set.  How about a new religion of some sort that will unite the new states and the Chou (shrinking) empire, positioning the Chou’s spot on in the center of control?

The emperor had three options to choose from: Confucius,  offering a well thought out judicial and ethical system; a host of angry generals looking to fight the new nations, and Lau Tsu, than the head of the national archive who was a pretty sharp character – but no one could quite understand what he was talking about.

So according to Murphy’s law, when offered the right and wrong option, there will always be a person opting for the wrong option, the emperor managed to combine all of the wrong options.  He let Confucius establish his religion, provided the generals with funds for fighting and ignored Lau Tsu.  Soon after the empire collapsed and the Han dynasty was set up.

Lau Tsu, disappointed and old, mounted his favorite Ox and headed towards the mountains.  Realizing an important piece of knowledge may be lost, the emperor ordered all border posts identifying Lau to stop him on the spot and.. have him write down all he knows.

The slow moving Ox carrying one of the world’s most wonderful  pieces of knowledge eventually hit a guard and was stopped.  For three months Lau Tsu wrote what we now know as the “Tao Te Ching”.  In some miraculous way the book made it back to the emperor and was kept.

Did Lau Tsu ever exist? Did all of the above ever take place? Does it matter? We have his book.  Please forgive my poor translating skills and allow me to quote:

“if I had any sense

Just a little bit of sense

All my life

I would take the high road

It is big

Straight

Wide

And flat

The wise man fears by passes

But side roads

And twisty trails

Are for some reason favored by the masses

When the palace is fancy

But the people’s fields are dry

When the wealthy wear expensive clothes

And eat well

While the people are hungry

And leaving in between thorns

The rich should not be surprised

If there are thieves and bandits

This is also within the Tao

Excessive

Estates

Make you forget

The

Essential

 

 

 

 

 

 

How to be good, how to be great, two must books written in the wrong order and the not so surprising facts of life; Good to Great and Built to Last, Jim Collins

   

HBS rating: Expands your knowledge

 

Who should read:

·         Business heads

·         Those setting up a company, or looking to turn around their company to success

·         Those interested in the success and failures of companies

·         Those wishing to create a positive change in their company

 

This is more than good to great.  This book is good to great to super great.  A slaughter house of sacred cows focused on why some companies made it while others did not.  Vision? Celeb CEO? Strategy? Or maybe reality is different..

Now here’s a challenge.  What could I possibly write which is worth while about a book that has “over one million copies sold” on its cover.  First of all it’s a lie, I bet you anything that more, much more than 1M were sold.  At best this statement is some tax evading thing.  I can’t believe anyone seriously interested in business can afford to skip G2G or its predecessor B2L. 

The thing which is so capturing about both of these books is that they are both popular (i.e readable) and are based on actual research.  Now hold back your horses.  No need to pull out of your bookshelves the many titles who are also a good read and are based on fact.  There are some books like these out there, but not plenty.  The majority of what crowds the bookstores under “Business and Management” is mostly anything but fact based. 

There are so many business books out there which basically revolve around an idea that could be summarized in one paragraph.  But paragraphs don’t sell so good on their own, so on the enthusiastic author puts down the effort to expand his one paragraph to 500 pages of nothing.  At least in “Eat that frog” the author had the decency to announce his book is thin, because it only focuses on the main ideas (no fluffy nonsense in between).

Mr. Collins on the other hand has spent some six years, per book.  Years that were spent researching companies, managers, CEO’s and articles about all three.  A quest to answer two key questions.  The first, which according to the author should be read second, is what makes some companies last for many, many, many years , while their competition does not.  The second, which according to the author should be read first, is what makes some companies make the leap from just good to extra ordinary great.

I will save me the trouble of walking you through how exactly Collins goes about figuring out both of these questions.  Read for yourself, that’s the whole purpose of this blog, to get people to read more. 

In short, it’s the opposite of what you think, and what you fear most.  Success, and long term success specifically, is based on hard work, commitment, having the right people around you who are immersed in the right culture.  Anything short of that and you will end up writing a book which could be summarized in one paragraph, at best.

I will tell you what my experience has been after reading these books.  Outstanding.  Its not as if once you read these books you are off to set the next Great or Lasting company.  But you do gain a lot of insight as to what the necessary components are.  You read these thick books, and what is left in your grey cells is what matters.  Simple questions such as “what am I passionate about, what am I best in and what is my economic engine?” are questions that if you can answer, your business is moving in the right direction.  If you can differentiate between time reading and clock building, than reading this pair is time well spent.  Its actions such as setting up vision and core values, and implementing them in your organization.  Get those figured out, and I will not guarantee that you will win the big money, but you will work in a much more positive and fun environment.

If I may offer one criticism, is that Collins really does believe his pitch.  This puts him a bit on the sidetrack of real research.  He is really pitching.  If there are other options, they haven’t been exhausted to the point his theory prevails.  Also, the sample size which drives his arguments is not particularly large.

But does any of this matter? Absolutely not.  And for one reason only.  Over 1M sold, read, and I would bet you anything, have change the way the readers of these books think.  One case in which quantity, is quality.

 

 

 

Two long swords, a wooden oar, a whacky Samurai, a perfect winning record and how to never loose; The Book of Five Rings, Miyamoto Musashi

HBS Rating: Expands your knowledge

Who should read?

• Eastern culture, History lovers
• Eastern philosophy
• Those who get a kick out of being (or wanting to be) a Samurai
• Those wishing to get some more insight into how and why the Japanese are the way they are
• Martial art lovers or practitioners
• Those wondering why its sports in the west, and martial arts in the east
• Those looking to acquire some

The samurai that invented two sword fighting and never lost a battle.  Is it possible never to lose? And if so how? It took Musashi the better part of his life to figure out the answer to this question, all you have to do is read his centuries old book.

Imagine picking a life-or-death swords dual with a person notorious for never loosing a single fight.  Frightening.  And imagine that person is now calmly standing in front of you holding not one, but two Samurai swords.  As history and statistics prove, your end is near.  Very near.

 Miyamoto Musashi, the Samurai’s Samurai, has never lost a swords dual.  And he started young.  First kill believed to have taken place at the early age of 13.  Weapon: wooden practice sword.  Victim: an arrogant prince at whose castle the young Miyamoto was trained.  This kill was the first, but by no means the last.

From that moment forward, Miyamoto was challenged to a dual by all the periods’ hot shots, and their family members, who felt obliged to revenge their blood .  This started a kind of an endless chain reaction, as the more Miyamoto chopped to pieces, the lengthier the queue to fight him became.

All these victories got our hero thinking (oh, I forgot to mention a key fact, all of this is true.  M. Musashi was a real person) why is it that I always win, and all the others loose?  The more he tried to solve this question, the further Musashi drifted away from the mainstream.  He was reduced to rags and began living in a cave, spending his days and nights trying to resolve this bothering question: why is it that I always win?

An interesting question no doubt, as most of us, are usually focused on “why did I loose”, “why did this happen to me”, “how was I struck by such bad luck” and “what does the world have against me”..   Few of us actually go through the experience of always winning, to the point that we are becoming suspicious of the fact that we do.

Having said that, we all win sometimes, but we rarely spend the time thinking why.  We take it for granted that we were better than the other guy, that we deserved to win as much as our competition deserved to loose.  And on we continue to the next challenge, hoping we are on a winning streak.  If we ended up loosing.. Well then we would go into deep thoughts, analysis and improvement processes to ensure this loss will not return.  But if we win, do we spend the time thinking why?

Probably one of the keys for Musashi’s success was his ability to think out of the box.  Here was a product of a very strict feudal society, trained to become a Samurai and live a very certain life.  But as the challenges he faced proved, all of the training he went through, did not limit his ability to freely act and end up on top.

An example.. Well into his life, when his possessions included the torn clothes he wore and an empty rice bowl, Musashi was challenged to yet another dual by yet another revengeful prince.  The time and place were set to early morning on a certain beach front.  Musashi, so we are told, slept at a cheap inn, woke up late, screamed for a bowl of water to wash his face, and ended up drinking the same water he used to get cleaned.

Off he went to the beach front, armed by nothing but a knife.  After scavenging the shore for a while, he found an old wooden ore.  He then started shaving pieces of the wood off with his knife, sculpturing into a semi-sword looking object.

The prince on the other hand, was sailing to the beach front with his fancy boat.  He was than lowered into a smaller boat and sailed by his servants towards the shore.  The shallow water did not allow the boat to make it all the way, so the price servants had to jump into the water and to carry the prince, with his heavy armor from boat to land.  While all of this carrying and lifting was taking place, our friend Musashi saw the opportunity he was waiting for. 

He grabbed his wooden ore, raced towards the prince (now resting on the shoulders of his servants as they are transporting him to the shore) and with one single strike, cracked his opponents head open. End of fight (count lost by now).

So why did he win?  It took Musashi most of his life to come up with an answer.  But luckily enough for us this enlightened man did not keep the answer to himself.  He wrote it in the now famous book: The Book Of Five Rings.

Its interesting to read in the perspective of time.  Musashi lived in a feudal society.  We live in a hyper technology, capitalist business oriented and led society.  Yet a win is a win, and a lose is a lose. So the ground rules Musashi lays out, are not dissimilar to  those one may find in any top selling business book. 

Recommended for those interested at winning, based on ancient knowledge; good for a medium length flight with time to spend in a terminal for thought and contemplation.

 

 

 

 

A trip to Washington, two memorials, one brave reporter, and a reminder that war is evil; In the hot zone, Kevin Sites

HBS rating: Must Read

Who should read? 

• Politics, current affairs, US politics and its consequences lovers 
• Recent history, first person account
• Adventurers and rebelles willing to fight, loose and win for their believes
• Those who read the news, and yet, somehow felt there is a different story that needs to be told.

On a recent business trip I ended up in Washington D.C.  My schedule was pretty packed with meetings and presentations, but I did manage to have a look around.  Being a first time tourist there, I ended up in most of the usual spots.  White house, space museum, Washington’s monument.. From all the places I have seen three grabbed me the most: on top of the list is the room in which President Lincoln died.  I will refer to this more when I will review James L. Swanson’s book “Man hunt: the 12 day chase for Lincoln’s killer”. 

The other two were the second world war memorial, and with a very strong contrast, the Vietnam war memorial.  Looking at both you have got to appreciate the perceptive difference between the two.  I spent my university years as an industrial design student.  I am happily married to Tsofit, an architect I have met while in school.  Our background has taught us that shape and form tell a story.  You look at a painting, sculpture, building or car and they all tell you a story by the way they are outlined, shaped, the materials they are made out of.  This of course is even more expressive in monuments whose sole purpose in life is to commemorate and honor historical events.

The second world war memorial, is very impersonal.   Its an all in all mixed menu.  All the states are represented there, powerful motto’s are inscribed in stone, huge pillars surround an inner pool and fountains.  At night mystical lights intensify the impact of the structure.  At least for me, walking through the mega structure, I missed something on the personal level.  Something that will link me to those who fought and gave their lives for the cause dramatized by this monument.  Maybe the way this monument was designed has to do with the outcome of the war and the time when it was designed.  Sitting in the axis of Lincoln’s memorial and Washington’s pillar, it kind of fits in size.

A short walk away is situated the Vietnam memorial.  A completely different expression to war and its outcome.  The famous marble walls with the names of the soldiers who fought and died away from home, takes any visitor to the most intimate and personal level possible.  Walking through the  Second World War memorial, you almost get a sense of a glorified war.  None of that exists in the Vietnam memorial.  Over here the harsh reality of war, the bottom line, end result of war, tragedy, is very well expressed.

Kevin Site’s book “In the hot zone” leans much closer to the Vietnam war memorial experience then the WWII structure. 

A bit of background:  Kevin was working as a freelance correspondent for NBC in Iraq.  Probably because of his urge to be where the action is he ended up shooting his own stories.  Other reports or camera man refused to join him in the line of fire.  At one point he videotaped five Iraqi insurgents captured alive and kept in a masque in the city of Fallujah.  The next day, returning to the same mosque, he videotaped a Marine soldier shooting the captives.  Read the book for more details on how this  TRUE STORY unfolds.

For Kevin this incident was a life changing event.  Instead of backing him up, NBC seemed to shy away from the uncomfortable truth his video revealed.  Through mutual friends Kevin made contact with Yahoo! And became their first real reporter.  It turns out that all the news we read at Yahoo! Is basically collected elsewhere; no original news work.  The idea Kevin pitched was to travel to all of the current conflict zones around the world and report live from there.  A kind of a war blog/video web site.  You can actually log on to http://hotzone.yahoo.com/   to see his work. 

Kevin spent more then a year traveling to spots none of us have on their vacation wish list: Somalia, Congo, Uganda, Kashmir, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Iraq, Iran and more..  This of course made his work even more challenging.  Forget the stress and fatigue of so much travel (Last year I took 60 flights and stayed at relatively comfortable hotels.  Kevin did the same, but where ever he landed he was getting shot at).  The challenge Kevin set to himself was to reveal the personal intimate story behind each conflict, and not the generic plastic typical story other news networks tell us.

His approach to revealing these stories is quite interesting.  Using his team in the US he got in touch with non profit, volunteer organizations working in each zone.  These people, to which he refers as his “fixers” where able to quickly get him in front of the people behind the news.  Soldiers, victims, children, aggressors  and innocent everyday people who got caught in the conflict.

And the stories are hard.  Actually, it seems that if you were to categorize the atrocities of war, what nations do to themselves would top the list.  Two separate countries fighting, it seems, would never have the nerve to hurt one another in the same way people of the same nation do.

Going back to the WWII memorial VS the Vietnam memorial, I think what Kevin has done in his book is the equivalent of  etching the names of the Vietnam dead on stone.  Out of big and basically meaningless names such as Somalia, Chechnya or Afghanistan he pulls out personal stories that tell the truth about war—its evil. 

Think of all the countries you travelled to.  How many have war memorial and museums and how many have peace museums or memorials?

As long as we keep glorifying war and shying away from telling the real stories of what war is all about let us not be surprised if we find ourselves mobilizing our troops again and again.

Kevin’s book scores must read on my charts because it is very well written, and because  it fills an important knowledge gap for many of us.  Kevin refers to this as the “Wealth of information and poverty  of knowledge”.   We all have access to what ever bit of information we desire, but actually do no spend the time, or lack the motivation to know.

If it wasn’t such a life threatening task I would have urged Kevin to keep on traveling to hot zones and write his second book.  Assuming he will not, I urge you all to read his book.