The Bright Idea Box is a very different type of book compared to what I normally read, so I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started reading this.
Jag Randhawa presents a system to encourage and empower employee driven innovation. There are many real world examples, from Toyota, 3M and of course, Google. There are also numerous how to’s and checklists to get you started.
The premise is that bottom-up innovation needs to be nurtured and encouraged, and that doing so will also increase employee engagement, a win-win for most companies.
I found this to be an easy read and a good introduction to the topic. However, I was left at the end with a feeling like I wouldn’t quite be ready to start something like this at work without furthering reading and research.
Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this through NetGalley, in exchange for a fair and honest review.
In this book Dr. Beecham, a sport psychologist and leadership consultant, talks about the importance of beliefs and the power of the mind.
It’s really amazing to consider about how much what we think or expect to happen actually influences what does happen in our lives. According to Dr. Beecham, those who win are the ones who not only want to win, but have the intention and expectation to win. Winning, here, is defined not only in context of sports but also in business. Winning might be a promotion, a raise, or just not getting fired.
Beliefs control biology, biology controls behavior, and behavior determines success.
Dr. Beecham has worked with collegiate, olympic and professional athletes, and relates several stories illustrating how the athletes’ perceptions and goals going into their sporting event play a large part in the outcome. Athletes not expecting to win almost never win, and few athletes are going into competition expecting to win. This was a shocking revelation to me.
In order to do your best, you must expect to win.
He also spends a portion of the book talking about failure and how winning (success) cannot exist without failure. You must learn to fail, and learn from failing, to succeed. Take those bad days and learn from them!
Success is not the avoidance of failure any more than life is the avoidance of death.
His recommendation? Take a look at your beliefs, go deep, and answer the question Who am I? Today, present tense. Only then can you consider who you want to be. One exercise is to draw a pyramid, with the largest section at the bottom being “have”, or what things you want to have/possess in life; the middle being “do”, the things you want to do with your life; and the top being “be”, what/who you want to be. An interesting note is that most people these days seem to value their stuff more than their time.
A large section talks about the necessary, the possible, and the impossible. Most people do the necessary, the things that must be done, and consider this the possible. Until you are actually doing, to your full extent, the possible, you will never be able to do the impossible. Once you are doing all that is possible, it is just a short step to do more, what previously may have seemed impossible.
If you are able to commit yourself to doing all that is possible each and every day, a wonderful and marvelous thing will happen to you. You will find what you once thought of as impossible, you now view as possible.
I recently read this as a non-fiction selection for a book club that I organize. Being the first thing I’ve read by Michael Pollan, I wasn’t sure what to expect.
It’s divided up into 3 sections, Industrial Corn, Pastoral Grass, and Personal The Forest.
Each of this book’s three parts follows one of the principal human food chains from beginning to end: from a plant, or group of plants, photosynthesizing calories in the sun, all the way to a meal at the dinner end of that food chain.
The first section, Industrial Corn, was probably the most interesting. There are a lot of facts about the American corn industry (and agriculture in general) that was quite enlightening. For example, did you know that science can detect the isotopes of carbon in human tissue and calculate how much corn a person has in their diet? Or that corn in American costs more to grow than it does to buy, and the difference is hidden by government subsidies to farmers?
Pastoral Grass, section 2, takes a look at Polyface Farm in Virginia. Unlike most of American farming that’s focused on monoculture or packing as many animals as possible into a CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation), the folks at Polyface rotate crops, and animals, in the same face. They produce beef, chicken, eggs, and other things, all using the same land. They also do not sell their products for shipment, and everything stays mostly local (within a day’s drive). I found this chapter pretty interesting too, but the chicken slaughtering part was tough to read. I think it’s good to see an example of farming the way farming was meant to be, in stark contract to the American factory farming that seems to be almost ubiquitous at this point.
The final, Personal, section is my least favorite. Here, Pollan decides he must be vegetarian in order to be objective about evaluating the morals of eating meat. However, from this point on, the book takes on a less journalistic tone, and becomes mostly Pollan’s rationalization back to eating meat.
…there remains the question of whether we owe animals that can feel pain any moral consideration, and this seems impossible to deny. And if we owe them moral consideration, how do we justify killing and eating them?
Based just on the first two sections, I think this is an amazing book, and is very insightful. It’s too bad that Pollan had to make it more about himself at the end.
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini
Recommended to me as “powerful and dangerous”, Influence explains why we say yes when we know we shouldn’t.
There are many examples, studies, and clear explanations. The author even offers up ways to combat what he calls “compliance practitioners” — the people who are using these tactics against us.
The table of contents includes things like “Weapons of Influence”, “Liking: The Friendly Thief” and “Commitment and Consistency: Hobgoblins of the Mind”.
I found this book very informative and interesting. I felt there were some eye opening psychology learnings applicable for every life.
If you’ve ever felt swindled by a car dealer or a sales person shortly after buying something or been talked into doing a favor that you really didn’t want to do, then this book would probably be of interest to you.
For example, did you know that when someone calls you to solicit a donation, they often start with small talk like asking how you are doing? Do you know why? Most people will answer that they are doing well so now is the solicitor’s opportunity to tell you about someone or something that isn’t doing well (say orphans in Africa) and ask you to donate. After just having said you were doing well, it makes it much harder to say no.
The book also talks about social proof and why, in an emergency, you would be better off with one bystander to call for help vs a crowd. Advice in this section could b life saving.
The Bright Idea Box is a very different type of book compared to what I normally read, so I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started reading this.
