Przemeq

Finally a GREAT book on strategu

Revisado: 09-23-24

I am a serial reader of business related books 90% of them is gibberish, 7% is acceptable, 2% a really good and only a handful is great. This one falls into the latest category.

Finally someone was able to distinguish between strategic conditions, strategic goals, initiatives, success measures, and so on. I've read the book 3 times already and still find nuggets in there.

I'm only wondering why it is not popular as it should be – I will be happy to help making it more popular

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A mishmash of thoughts and observations about communication with vocal fry as a "bonus"

Revisado: 06-10-24

As in the subject line. Listening to the book I had a feeling that I'm involved in some loose, unstructured conversation in a lobby during a conference or in a coffee room with someone who has just had two glasses of wine or is generally talkative. Some thoughts here, some thoughts, there, no idea what message the narrator wants to convey. No idea when one subject starts, and the other one ends – the author jumps from one subject to another like a fly changing directions all the time.

And to add injury to the insult, the narrator has a very irritating speaking habit called vocal fry.

I bought this book, lured by initial positive reviews, but it seems friends and family produced those...

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WASTE of time. Catchy stories for naive people

Revisado: 05-15-24

What this book proves is that in the modern world you can quickly become successful by selling utter crap to naive minions and underlings, who dream of making it one day. Like this Author did, by selling them this and other books.

So let me save you some dollars and summarize it: you need to have a good idea. You need to be genuine, patient and at the same time energetic. Combine these, select a social media channel (service) that suits you best and - poof! - you are a millionaire. If you don't believe it, here you have some stories of people who made it. If they made it, you will make it. And if you don't, something must be wrong with you.

The book is a typical self-help crap book that creates an illusion, that if you do X, you will be successful. No scientific research to back up the claims presented in the book. No mention of those who followed the advice and didn't make it. No mention of the fact that a lot of people try to make "quick money" on the internet and you will be swimming in a very red ocean. No mention of the fact that first you really need to have an original idea. No numbers or tangible facts behind the testimonials - just some people claiming they made it (they probably did but there is no proof that they made it BECAUASE they read Mr. Vaynerchuk's books - it might be, and I believe it is, a correlation that does not imply causation; it's also not clear whether they weren't simply paid for the testimonials etc).

The Author says that he dreams of having his monument built. No problem, I can sponsor it. But I reserve the right to put in a plaque on the monument saying something like "A memento of the first half of the 21st century, when it became so easy to find suckers thanks to the social media and get rich easily thanks to their naivety".

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Worth buying and learning from. I loved it

Revisado: 04-17-24

As in the subject line.

The only thing I would point to is that ca. 95% od the World's population use metric system - the book only uses inches and feet so converting it to the metric system while listening to the book is a proper nuisance 🤷🏻‍♂️. Which is especially interesting when you consider this book is more or less about getting your message across to your audience in a clear way - such technical glitches are exactly in opposition to communicating clearly

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Buy this book if you want to become a professional whiner

Revisado: 06-19-23

It will teach you to whine like a pro and equip you with all necessary supporting techniques like good excuses for poisoning your environment with your whining and good explanations to yourself that in fact your whining is ok 🤷‍♂️😁.

Three more points:
1. This book definitely preys on the halo effect - since S. Sandberg has been successful in business, the mistake we make is that we assume she may have something interesting to say. She apparently does not, at least not via this book. The only thing we keep on reading is the story of her relation with her late husband and how traumatic his death was to Ms. Sandberg. It sure must have been and it's objectively a heartbreaking story, but it does not make up for a good book worth your time.

2. Ms. Sandberg tries to "upgrade" the book by using famous names known from media - the ones she apparently has dealt with in her business life and the ones most of us know from the "covers of the magazines". However apart from flashing the names, stories involving them bring no actual content.

3. The only valuable bits in the book are those quoted from other authors, like Victor Frankl's "Man/s Search for Meaning".

Avoid at all cost. Waste of time and money.

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If life were that simple...

Revisado: 05-01-23

SUMMARY:
The major problem is that the book presents hiring others to do the stuff you can't or don't want to do as a sufficient condition for a success in business and/or life, while it's not even a necessary condition (see more below).

In other words it creates an illusion that it just takes to hire people and - poof! - you're successful, happy, have more free time etc. Can't imagine a more dangerous or naive simplification of life.

And I have no clue why the authors considered the subject novel enough that it deserved a separate book - people have been hiring others for the last at least 5000 years, so what's the point here? It''s a kind of "the Emperor is naked" situation: the authors talk about things so obvious, that no one dares saying "well, it's obvious" like no one dared saying that the Emperor was naked.

DETAILS
The book completely neglects three important facts:

1. Not every business or every job gives or you financial space to hire anyone to do stuff you don't want to do. Yes, you could say it is a waste of time to do "non-value added things" such as driving to work but sometimes you don't have an option i.e. you can't spend USD 50 on Uber every day (like one of the people mentioned in the book) just to save time. (Not to mention, that you first need to have a really good idea what you want to do with this saved time - for many people it's not so clear).

To put it into perspective: advice given in this book is like telling children in rural Africa that they shouldn't waste time on walking 5 miles to school because they would be better off if they spent that time on learning or resting. It's a fact they would be. The problem is that it's not a question of their choice, but of actual constraints. The authors seem to completely neglect the fact that such constraints do exist - they try to convince the reader that the constraints are only in our heads, because "we were brought up this way". This only proves how disconnected from real life the authors are - it's like Marie Antoinette of France who told the hungry people of Paris before the French Revolution to eat a brioche (cake), when she heard they don't have bread. In other words it's very easy to give advice about making others do your stuff when you already can afford it.

But wait. one more thing: don't people who can afford hiring others already do it? I think it's called "companies" or "services" :-D. You know: people who can afford hiring others hire them to do some work, those others do the work, they get paid and both parties are happy. So what's the point of this book? What's so novel in here that it deserved a book?

2. Even if you had money to hire people, there is never a guarantee of a return that is higher than the investment. This book only shows you one scenario: you hire people to do stuff you don't want to do, you immediately get the right people, it all works perfectly, you spend the saved time on becoming richer and happier, you finally do become richer and happier etc. And what if your business idea or a job aren't (and never will be) good enough to generate enough money to support the structure based on hiring others? In "scenario B" you can end up having spent money on others, not learning the skills which you "outsourced" to them and when your business idea fails, you end up penniless and without the skills. Not a very bright perspective...

I see a parallel between this book and the evangelists of the subscription economy: the latter tell us "rent or subscribe, don't own, because it's more flexible". In reality it's like playing roulette with life - it all works when you have steady income or saved enough before, because yes - you can enjoy the benefits of subscriptions (no upfront cost, flexbility etc.). However it's very easy to find yourself in a situation that you no longer can afford this lifestyle or even you lose the ability to earn. And you become defenceless because you can't afford anything and you don't even own anything. The same story is with this book: hiring others only works under two conditions, skilfully ignored in this book (1) the return on hiring is higher than the cost and (2) your business lets you earn enough to maintain this structure. And there's no guarantee, it will always be the case...

3. Finding the right people who could really add value is an extremely difficult thing. The book builds an illusion that it just takes YOUR DECISION to hire and - poof! - once you've decided, you immediately get the right people and your problems are solved. How easy! Anyone who has ever hired people especially for managerial roles could tell countless stories of overpaid people who delivered little or no value and only added problems rather than solving them...

To sum up: I can imagine why this book is popular and so are the coaching classes of Mr. Sullivan. It's comes down to the fact that people love to be deceived, people love illusions, people love easy answers to complex problems. And this book does exactly that: creates an utopian illusion and makes everything so easy: "just hire people to do the stuff for you, and you will be better off and happier". It's an illusion, because hiring others never gives you a guarantee. Hiring others may be, at maximum, a necessary condition for success but never a sufficient condition. And this books presents it as if it were a sufficient condition...

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Avoid, avoid, avoid... Unless you're plain stupid

Revisado: 01-29-23

I returned this book the moment I read there an urban legend, that the Author cited as a real story to illustrate his concepts, about the alleged rescue of Winston Churchill by the inventor of penicillin Alexander Flemming (just google it to see it's a myth).

And it was chapter 1... :-)

Yes, the book talks about important concepts (or to be more precise: the TOC indicates so, I can't confirm as I returned the book after reaching the middle of chapter 1) and the risk of being manoeuvred by people who use persuasion tricks on you. But it does it the worst possible way - the narration is childish and probably aimed at people who have never read a non-fiction book and are completely new to the concepts of persuasion, manipulation, cognitive biases and new to the concept of not being a complete moron.

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You get two VALUES from this book

Revisado: 07-01-22

I would definitely recommend this book. For two reasons:

1. For a person like me, who studied corporate finance 20 years ago it's a good, concise and comprehensive summary of current state of knowledge on the subject, with up-to-date illustrations and examples. If you follow McK, their website and are subscribed to their mailing lists, you could accumulate knowledge as presented in this book from those bits, but it's really convenient to have it all in one place.

2. This book is my definite #1 in terms of the ability to put me to sleep - it even beats my hitherto #1, "Introduction to Psychoanalysis" by Sigmund Freud (which I read in paper, so might not be directly comparable) - the latter held this title for 30 years, so it's a proper achievement to beat it.

So in fact you get a really good book on corporate finance and an extremely effective sleeping aid :-))).

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„Believe in yourself” told in a thousand different ways…

Revisado: 05-03-22

…regardless of how stupid and unrealistic your life plan might be. This book has actually no content at all - no proof, no evidence of the effectiveness of the concepts presented. Just a handful of hand-picked stories on how the Author or other famous or legendary people managed to get out of trouble (hint: mostly by pure luck and/or charisma).

"Illogical" is based on a plethora of cognitive biases and the Author attempts to draw universal conclusions from random events, events based on myths (such as biblical tales) or from events that happened because of pure luck. The final nail in the coffin for this book is referencing to Steve Jobs - how damn’ easy it is to “prove” your concepts by bringing in late Steve Jobs. Every Author of business books, who has little clue, brings Jobs, Zuckerberg etc. to prove their point, whatever point they are making - it's always easy to skew the story in such a way that it somehow fits the bio of Jobs and the likes. And yet Jobs was a complete exception, not a proof of a universal theory of “believing in your ideas”. Why are there not many new Steves? Or what is the ratio between the number of people who believed in themselves and who have become such stars as Jobs?

You need to have zero confidence in yourself and zero understanding of how the world actually works to think this book would be “helpful”. It creates a false impression that if you try, you will succeed. Let me tell you the truth: you might, but this would be because of a combination of hard work, time, effort and a number of other favorable circumstances, not just you trying and pushing your idea that others consider “illogical”. Ever thought about that they may consider your idea worth nothing because it’s actually worth nothing? Think of thousands of failed startups in the Silicon Valley - they also had dreams and, using the terminology from the book, behaved "illogically" by starting something new that no one has seen before or believed in. Believing in yourself is one of many conditions sine qua non, and this books tries to say that it's enough to believe in yourself.

My point is that the crowd around is not always stupid and your idea is not always good and this book seems to be saying otherwise. A good book should tell you how to verify your idea - yes, you should believe in yourself and be persistent, but you cannot neglect reality.

The problem with the world is that we don't know or see those, who failed. We only see those who succeeded (like Jobs) and, trust me, they did not succeed just because at one point in their lives they decided to behave "illogically". Also, the successes of current muiti-billion tech startups is not based on their founders behaving "illogically". There is a very good and premeditated logic behind each one of those. What they were capable of doing, was taking a new look at synthesising the knowledge that existed in the world, and not just building their success on behaving "illogically" one day.

In summary: this book is dangerous because if sells you a complete illusion, not real guidance.

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Pure gold. Full stop.

Revisado: 05-01-22

Whenever someone tells you that you can buy something expensive at a fraction of the price, it’s a scam. This book is an exception: you spend, well, I don’t even know exactly how much - 1/12 of your annual Audible subscription so something like 20 bucks and you get unlimited access to a gold mine. I never stumbled upon a better deal in my whole life.

I even like the fact that the Author saves your time by fast reading. At first it was quite uncomfortable but having listened to chapter 8 I understood the idea behind it 😁.

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