December Read/3

Title: Seeing What Others Don’t: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights

Author: Klein, Gary

Call Number: 153.4 K64S 2013

Subject(s): Insight

ISBN: 9781610392518

Number of Pages: 281

Book Description (from inside of the book cover):

            Insights-like Darwin’s understanding of the way evolution actually works, and Watson and Crick’s breakthrough discoveries about the structure of DNA-can change the world. We also need insights into the everyday things that frustrate and confuse us so that we can more effectively solve problems and get things done. Yet we know very little about when, why, or how insights are formed-or what blocks them. In Seeing What Others Don’t, renowned cognitive psychologist Gary Klein unravels the mystery.

            Klein is a keen observer of people in their natural settings-scientists, businesspeople, firefighters, police officers, soldiers, family members, friends, himself-and uses a marvelous variety of stories to illuminate his research into what insights are and how they happen. What, for example, enabled Harry Markopolos to put the finger on Bernie Madoff? How did Dr. Michael Gottlieb make the connections between different patients that allowed him to publish the first announcement of the AIDS epidemic? What did Admiral Yamamoto see (and what did the Americans miss) in a 1940 British attach on the Italian fleet that enabled him to develop the strategy of attack at Pearl Harbor? How did a “smokejumper” see that setting another fire would save his life, while those who ignored his insight perished? How did Martin Chalfie come up with a million-dollar idea (and a Noble Prize) for a natural flashlight that enabled researchers to look inside living organisms to watch biological processes in action?

            Klein also dissects impediments to insight, such as when organizations claim to value employee creativity and to encourage breakthrough but in reality block disruptive ideas and prioritize avoidance of mistakes. Or when information technology systems are “dumb by design” and block potential discoveries.

            Both scientifically sophisticated and fun to read, Seeing What Others Don’t shows that insight is not just a “eureka!” moment but a whole new way of understanding.

My Read:

            This is one few book that intrigued me from the beginning and hooked me up on zealous reading. The part I appreciate the most from reading this book is the storytelling. Those stories take the readers ride after another of investigation and speculation with sufficient information and detailed knowledge about the events/cases/stories. The one story impresses me the most is the story from chapter six, Creative Desperation, titled “Fighting Fire with Fire.” To enforce the rarity of such heroic action and to emphasis the emergent urgency of the situation the firefighters were facing the author uses a picture and a diagram allowing the readers to see, inspect, and imagine the dire condition the story is about. The solution and the act the survived firefighter came upon with is an ingenious one that no one ever has heard of. As I am writing this review my admiration and sense of unbelievable surge as I recall the whole story stated in this book.

            There are three parts listed and described in the book: Part I-Entering Through the Gates of Insight: How Do Insights Get Triggered?; Part II-Shutting the Gates: What Interferes with Insights?; Part III-Opening the Gates: How Can We Foster Insights?

There are five categories/strategies used and listed by the author in this book to decode how and where insights come from. They are: Connections, Coincidences, Curiosities, Contradictions, and Creative Desperation.

The following two diagrams are helpful and designed by the author to further understand his points of view and assist the reader to get hold of his ideas about insights.

Take a look:

            I find the following from the book very inspirational and directive:

“If you don’t expect much, if don’t inquire in a way that respects the intelligence of the other person, you probably won’t find many insights.”-page 233

“It was only through appreciative listening that a research team I headed was able to solve a mystery that stumped British military analysts.”-page 233

“If we want to increase our own insights, we should know about the different paths. The contradiction path depend on our being open to surprises and willing to take them seriously even if they violate our beliefs about the way things work. The connection path begins when we are open to experiences and ready to speculate about unfamiliar possibilities.The creative desperation path requires us to critically examine our assumptions to detect any that are tripping us up.”-page 244

“The new set of beliefs leads us to view the world differently.We have different mental equipment, different ideas about our capabilities, different priorities for what to watch and what to ignore. We have different goals. In some ways we become different people.”-page 246

Reference:

Martin Chalfie and the green fluorescent protein

Harry Markopolos and Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme

Michael gottlieb and AIDS

Jocelyn Bell Burnell and pulsars

Alexander Fleming and penicillin

Wilhelm Roentgen and X-rays

Barry Marshall and ulcers

John Snow and cholera

Wagner Dodge and Mann Gulch

Napoleon at Toulon

Watson-Crick double helix model

9/11 and the Phoenix Memo

Sean MacFarland in Iraq

Kodak bankruptcy

Six Sigma

Rosalind Franklin’s famous photo number 51

Other books by Klein, Gary:

Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions

The Power of Intuition

Working Mind: A Practitioner’s Guide to Cognitive Task Analysis

Streetlights and Shadows: Searching for the Keys to Adaptive Decision Making

December Read/Lydia

Title : The Giver

Author : Lois Lowry

Jonas lives in a perfect world called Sameness. There is no war, pain, poverty and worries. Everything is under control in Sameness; weather, job, applying for newchild, matching of spouses, even release to Elsewhere of old people.

Every child has almost the same childhood. In their first year, new children receive their names and families in an annual ceremony.  They go to the same childcare center and school. Seven year-olds wear front-buttoned jackets. This is their first sign of independence. Eight year-olds start volunteer activities for their community. Nine year-olds are given their own bicycle as a powerful emblem of moving. Twelve year-olds are assigned future roles in the community.

Jonas has been selected as the next Receiver of Memory when he turned twelve. He trained from the previous Receiver of Memory, the Giver. Only the Giver holds the memories of true pain and pleasure of life that was existent before Sameness. He can give advice from his past memories when his community is in unexpected trouble. It is the most honored role in the community but also a very lonely and painful job. The Receiver of Memory is exempted from the rules in community but not permitted to discuss anyone about the memories. Jonas has received the memories of pain and pleasure of life from the Giver for almost a year. However he was confused and affected by sorrowful and happy memories that he has never faced before in his community. He wanted to bring those happy memories to the community.

Jonas’s father is a Nurturer who has cared for newchildren born in the previous year. He brings a new baby named Gabriel every night because he isn’t well and needs extra care. One day Jonas saw his father releasing an undeveloped newborn baby and was shocked that release to Elsewhere meant death.

A few days later Jonas has heard that the community decided to release Gabriel to Elsewhere next morning. That night Jonas has taken Gabriel was on a bike and escaped from the community. For the first few days, Jonas has heard the planes search for them. The planes stopped chasing as they ran away, but Jonas and Gabriel now faced other problems: lack of food and cold weather, farther. Now Gabriel cried because he was hungry and cold and terribly weak. Jonas cried because he was afraid that he can not save Gabriel. At last, Jonas could not pedal his bike any more. So he began to walk up the snow hill holding the already cold and weak Gabriel. He reached to the top and imagined to slide down the hill on a sled. He went downwards and downwards and suddenly he saw a shine through the windows of rooms, where families created and kept memories. For the first time, he heard something that he has never heard before, music.  He heard people singing.

This book was very interesting. I could not stop reading after I picked up this book. I think Jonas’s community seemed ordinary in the beginning, but I realized the community has set up everything including human emotions. There were no negative values but also positive values like color, music, literature etc. Because the community allowed only practical values, it didn’t have true experiences. This book is asking me “Does practicality bring happiness?”

December Read/2

Title: How to Find Out Anything: From Extreme Google Searches to Scouring government Documents, a Guide to Uncovering Anything About Everyone and Everything

Author: MacLeod, Don

Call Number:001.42 M165H 2012

Number of Pages: 256

ISBN: 9780735204676

Book Description (From back cover):

            In How to Find Out Anything, master researcher Don MacLeod explains how to find what you’re looking for quickly, efficiently, and accurately-and how to avoid the most common mistakes of the Google Age.

            Not your average research book, How to Find Out Anything shows you how to unveil nearly anything about anyone. From top CEO’s salaries to  police records, you’ll learn little-known tricks for discovering the exact information you’re looking for. You’ll learn:

How to really tap into the power of Google, and why Google is the best place to start a search, but never the best place to finish it.

The scoop on vast yet little-known online resources that search engines cannot scour, such as refdesk.com, ipl.org, and Project Gutenberg, among many others.

How to access free government resources (and put your tax dollars to good use).

How to find experts and other people with special knowledge.

How to dig up seemingly confidential information on people and businesses, from public and private companies to nonprofits and international companies.

            Whether researching for a term paper or digging up dirt on an ex, the advice in this book arms you with the sleuthing skills to tackle any mystery.

My Read:

            In this book, the author generously and arduously shares his years of experiences at researching and finding out anything possible in this world. No matter if your searching or researching target is information, knowledge, organization, places, public records, or people you would be able to find some links, websites, books, and places to shed some light and hunt down what you are looking for.

            The chapter that benefits me the most is the chapter on the Google “Advanced Search” template. There is a two-step process using the “Advanced Search:” first, ask a better question; second, a person will need to reduce the number of web pages that Google consults to create your hit list by using the filter tools to exclude things you don’t need to see. (page 42)

Syntax/ Filter tools include using symbols like (examples taken from the book)

-quotation marks (“ “) to precise, literal matches to your search words. i.e. “database” “interest rates”

-minus sigh (-): to help disambiguate results. i.e. “Avatar” –movie

-pipe symbol (|): to have one or more of these words. i.e. “digital SLR” “Nikno”|”Canon”|”Leica”

-asterisk (*): to act as a wild card

Going All In (page 48-49)

            Inurl:Chevrolet    allinurl:felony defense

            Intitle:Longfellow     allintitle:Jackson snakes plane

            Inanchor:combustion_engine     allintext:bedbugs remedy

Web Filters

            Let’s use the examples the author has in the book to teach us how to use the filters to narrow our search results.

Domain and site searching: 

“diabetes” site:.gov

“admissions” “Yale” site: .edu-site.com(finds Yale University, not Yale Locks)

Searching a specific website:

            “necklace” site:tiffanys.com

            “tuition” “in-state” site:oregonstate.edu

File type:

            “Roe v Wade” filetype:pdf

            “SuperBowl winners” filetype:xls

Numeric range:

            “car” “used” $5000..$8000

Cache: To see what a web page looked like one session before the current one, click on the link labeled “cached” in the result list.

Google Collections

Google Alert: www.google.com/alerts

Google Books: http://books.google.com

Google Finance: http://finance.google.com

Google Groups: http://groups.google.com

Google Guide: www.googleguide.com

Google News: http://news.google.com

Google +: https://plus.google.com

Google Scholar: http://scholar.google.com

iGoogle: www.igoogle.com

            All is about Connection!

In the last chapter the author wraps it up stating: Regardless of what new wonders technology may bring us next, one thing will always be true about research: The process of finding things out means making connections. Ultimately the secret to knowing how to find out anything means learning how to connect with people. Exactly how you do it up to you. (page 241-243)

            Of course the best thing to do is to practice, practice and practice.

           

December Read

Title: Cuckoo’s Calling

Author: Galbraith, Robert

Call Number: F

Genre: Mystery

Number of Pages: 455

ISBN: 9780316206846

Book Description (from the inside of the book jacket)

            After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, and creditors are calling. He has also just broken up with his longtime girlfriend and is living in his office.

            Then John Bristow walks through his door with an amazing story: His sister, the legendary supermodel Lula Landry, known to her friends as the Cuckoo, famously fell to her death a few months earlier. The police ruled it a suicide, but John refuses to believe that. The case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate designers, and it introduces him to every variety of pleasure, enticement, seduction, and delusion known to man.

            You may think you know detectives, but you’ve never met one quite like Strike. You may think you know about the wealthy and famous, but you’ve never seen them under an investigation like this. Introducing Cormoran Strike, this is the acclaimed first crime novel by J.K. Rowling, writing under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.

My Read:

            Talking about motif for a murder there are unique categories attached to it: Money, love/hatred, and revenge. In this book the case is about money: ten millions.

To the main character, Cormorna Strike, it’s been obvious to him from the start that the person who benefits most from the supermodel’s death is her adopted brother, John. (page 430) Upon facing John, the killer, Cormoran commented: I said you’re bat-shit insane. You killed your sister, got away with it, and then asked me to reinvestigate her death. (page 429)

            Even before I finished the book I had a feeling that this wouldn’t be just one time story; this book would be the first book of a series featuring the old-fashioned, note-taking, sharp-observing, and one-legged sleuth named Cormoran Strike. Cormoran’s personal life is complicated enough and the author skillfully weaves his personal agendas with the progress of the case he undertakes the investigation.

           And don’t forget the ever efficient and extremely considerate Robin, Cormoran’s temporarily hired secretary. From the ways and methods she handles Cormoran’s requests and threats from her boss’s creditors intrigued readers would consider her to be the smart and must have sidekick of Cormoran’s and expect to see her again in the next books following the Cuckoo’s Calling.

            I admire Cormoran’s methodological tactics on investigation and his seemingly harmless yet to the point questions he presents to the people involved directly and indirectly to the case. It seems like he gathers piece by piece from asking questions and the followed answers to complete the broken and messy puzzle.

            If you like the TV series Columbo starring Peter Falk and the Lincoln Rhyme series books by Jeffery Deaver you will find yourself fully engage in reading this book following Cormoran’s thinking and action he takes. Check it out yourself!

November Read/Ruby

Title:The Sisterhood Of The Traveling Pants

Author: Brashares, Ann

 

There were four girls who know one another from babies. because their mothers took a class in aerobics for pregnant women, they were the September group. The September mothers started hanging out after class, and after babies were born, they formed their own little mothers’ support group and let all babies squirm on a blanket together while they complained about not sleeping and how fat they still were. But now, even the friendships between mothers were not so close anymore, the girls kept the relationship. Sometimes it seems like they’re so close they form one single complete person rather than four separate ones.

One day, at a thrift shop, Carmen(one of the girls) was tagging along with Lena(another one of the girls) and her younger sister, Effie, and their mom. Effie was there to buy a dress for the sophomore prom, Carmen decided to buy something and she found a pair of pants were only $3.49 including tax. She didn’t even try them on, so we can tell she wasn’t serious about owning them.

The four girls were different types& body shapes: Bridget the athlete, wild and unstoppable, was tall with broad shoulders and long legs and big hands; Lena the beauty, shy and beautiful, was slim; Tibby the rebel, had narrow hips and long legs for her small frame; Carmen the one with the bad temper, writer, her butt had specific requirements for pants. But the pair of pants fit all of them, they thought “there are magic pants”.

It was their first summer apart, and the magic pants came to them, they wanted these pants belong to them equally, that the pants will travel to all the places they’re going, and the pants will keep them together when they are apart. The girls sorted out some rules for the traveling pants, for example, never wash the pants; mustn’t pick nose while wearing the Pants; Pants equal love, love your sister love yourself, etc…

Bridget, who went to a summer camp, she felt in love with one of the coaches, but it wasn’t allowed to; Lena and her sister Effie went to visit their grandparents who lives in Greece; Tibby stayed at the town and had a part-time job at a grocery store, she met a 12-year-old girl who has leukemia; Carmen spent her summer with her father, her parents were divorced for years, but she didn’t except her father was going to marry.

When four girls got together in the end of summer, they were full to their edges with their own stories, having a summer of experiences and feelings that belonged to each person alone. The Pants were the only witness to all of their lives, and I believe that they will cherish their friendship forever.

November Read/2

Title: Promote Yourself: The New Rules for Career Success

Author: Schawbel, Dan

Call Number: 650.14 S313P 2013

Subjects: Career Development; Success in Business; Career Changes; New Business Enterprises-Management

Number of Pages: 250 pages

ISBN: 9781250044556

Book Description (from inside of the book jacket):

                How people perceive you at work has always been vital to a successful career. Now with the Internet, social media, and the unrelenting hum of 24/7 business, the ability to brand and promote yourself effectively has become absolutely essential. No matter how talented you are, it doesn’t matter unless managers can see those talents and think of you as an invaluable employee, a game-changing manager, or the person whose name is synonymous with success. So, how do you stand out and get ahead?

                The subtle and amazingly effective art of self-promotion is the razor-thin difference between success and failure. By drawing on exclusive research on the modern workplace and countless interviews with the most dynamic professionals, Dan Schawbel, career guru and founder of Millennial branding, gives you the new rules for success, and answers your most pressing questions about your career:

-What are managers really looking for?

-What do you do if you’re stuck at work?

-how do you create a personal brand for professional success?

-how do you use social media to propel your career?

                Promote Yourself frees you from the outdated rules for getting ahead and lays out a step-by-step process for building a successful career in an age of ever-changing technologies and economic uncertainty. By basing your personal brand on the rock-solid foundation of hard, soft, and online skills that are essential to get the job done right, and by knowing exactly what managers value, Schawbel provides you with the unique skills and message that you’ll need today and for the rest of your career.

                Promote Yourself: The New Rules for Career Success is the definitive book on how to build an outstanding career.

My Read:

                My first impression after reading this book is its targeted audience is the Generation Y (those who was born between 1982 to 1993). Still I find this book helpful: informative and directive. The author’s expertise is personal branding so it makes great sense when, in this book, he states: your reputation is the single greatest asset you have and his emphasis on networking inside and outside the company and the industry.

                There are two terms I have learned from reading this book that are inspirational and appealing to whoever with ambition and aspiration for taking the high road: subject matter expert and intrapreneurship. The author uses his own professional experience of building his first personal branding blog to being recognized by his own manager and those high up and getting his promotional move to the position that he could exercise his specialty and enjoyed working on the projects. Becoming the “Go to” person and the subject matter expert you actually self-promote and become the company’s valuable asset. Intrapreneurship is about running your own business while on the job. The following is the good stuff the author lists for intrapreneurship: it’s a great way to better align who you are with what you do; intrapreneurship allows you to create new positions and advance in your career faster than you might have been able to on the regular track; intrapreneurship gives you unique experiences that differentiate you from your peers; intrapreneurship is less risky than being an entrepreneur because you’ll have the corporation’s resources available; intrapreneurship can be a bridge to becoming a full-on entrepreneur later on (page 204).

                There are skills, according to the author, a person should have to have a successful career. They are hard skills: be more than your job description, soft skills: make every impression count, online skills: use social media to your advantage. If you want to a successful career it makes sense to 1)know what managers look for, 2)develop cross-generational relationships, 3)build your network at work and beyond, and 4)turn your passion into a new position(those are titles of chapters in the book).

                Personally I enjoyed reading the chapter titled “Turn Your Passion into a New Position” the most. At the beginning it says: Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life-Confucius. Upon reading this it reminds me of what my mother told me when I phoned her about my employment being a page at the public library. My mother said the job perfectly matched my personality and I would be able to go to “play” everyday at workplace. She used the word “play” describing what I would be doing at work. Guess what my mother is right!

                Based upon what I have heard and what I have been through so far I strongly believe that being successful is no guarantee for or equation to being happy. But being happy includes being successful. The most helpful saying from this book is, to me personally, at page 53-54. The author compiles a list of needed soft skills for the young employees who wish to move up in their careers. To me, the content of the list is actually teaches a person how to become a better person. The following is the complete list:

-Strong work ethic

-Optimism/positive attitude

-Good communication skills

-Good conversation skills

-Storytelling abilities for presentations

-Time management abilities

-The ability to listen and to speak to the “human needs” of coworkers and customers and make them feel understood and respected

-Being good at reading people

-Ability to build relationships and connect with others on a deep level

-Exercise tact when delivering a message

-The ability to propose solutions to problems, not just talk about problems

-Meaningfully contribute to brainstorming

-Ability to write well

-Problem-solving skills

-Team player

-being likable

-self-confidence

-Can accept and learn from criticism

-Flexibility/adaptability

-Can work well under pressure

-Empathy

-Integrity

-Sense of humor

Reference:

PersonalBrandingBlog.com

 

November Read

Title: The starfish and the Spider

Author(s): Brafman, Ori; Beckstrom, Rod A.

Call Number: 302.35 B812S 2006

Subjects: Decentralization in Management; Organizational Behavior; Success in Business

Numbers of Page: 230

ISBN: 9781591841432

Book Description:

            What’s the hidden power behind the success of Wikipedia, craigslist, and Skype? What do eBay and General Electric have in common with the abolitionist and women’s rights movements? What fundamental choice put General Motors and Toyota on vastly different paths? How could winning a Supreme Court case be the biggest mistake MGM could have made?

            After five years of groundbreaking research, Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom share some unexpected answers, gripping stories, and a tapestry of unlikely connections. The Starfish and the Spider argues that organizations fall into two categories: traditional “spiders,” which have a rigid hierarchy and top-down leadership, and revolutionary “starfish,” which rely on the power of peer relationships.

            The Starfish and the Spider explores what happens when starfish take on spiders (such as the music industry vs. Napster, Kazaa, and the P2P services that followed). It reveals how established companies and institutions, from IBM to Intuit to the U.S. government, are also learning how to incorporate starfish principles to achieve success. Find out:

-How the Apaches fended off the powerful Spanish army for two hundred years

-The power of a simple circle

-The importance of catalysts who have an uncanny ability to bring people together.

-How the Internet has become a breeding ground for leaderless organizations

-How Alcoholics Anonymous has reaches untold millions with only a shared ideology and without a leader.

            The Starfish and the Spider is the rare book that will change the way you understand the world around you.

My Read:

            A starfish stands on 5 legs. In this book the five legs are: circles, the catalyst, ideology, the preexisting network, the champion. Circles work because, instead of rules, they depend on norms. As I surfed through the pages, I got a feeling that norms are like mutual, silent consent. Members of a circle they support and trust each other. The circles are formed because members believe what they attend to and have faith in not only their members but themselves. No need of a leader in a circle for the force and power of a circle come from the members, the group of people share similar faith and concepts.

            Because a catalyst has genuine interest in others, s/he assumes a peer relationship and listens intently. You don’t follow catalyst because you have to-you follow a catalyst because s/he understands you. (page 125). When things go personal, certain bond is created. A circle is formed by people who share and respect the ideology that brings them in from the beginning. To me, ideology serves as strong glue connecting people together; it is also the center of attention calling members to come and join.

“One is too small a number to achieve greatness.” –John Maxwell

One Chinese saying stated: One can easily break a piece of chopstick. But it would take a lot of efforts to break 10 pieces of chopsticks. If one wants to make a big difference one has to have some connections and networks to reach out to more people who are at the same page as you are. Finding and attending the preexisting network, one’s views and plans are magnified and multiplied. It’s like snowballing and the effect is bigger than one can imagine.

            Any good idea or plan is just an idea or a plan if there is no one to put it into practice and execute it with enthusiasm and passion. A champion is relentless in promoting a new idea. (page 99) Maybe catalysts are charismatic and attractive but it’s actually the champion, the passionate executor takes the idea to the next level. The pair of a catalyst and a champion is like an expert in marketing and a rainmaker in the sales department.

            As the authors said that if you cut off a spider’s head, it dies; but if you cut off a starfish’s leg, it grows a new one, and that leg can grow into an entirely new starfish. Traditional top-down organizations are like spiders, but now starfish organizations are changing the face of business and the world. (from inside of the book jacket)

            The world is changing and changes fast. But I got a question: how about human beings? Do we change as well so we won’t, at least, lose our directions and our minds? The concepts of combo special and the ideas of hybrid operations and organizations appeal to me. It reminds me of the image of a Tai Chi. The two colors of black and white seem in harmony. They also seem like they are dancing with each other. To me, to survive or even to thrive one has to always check one’s strategies and tactics about life. It's like we are playing a Mah Jong game. A tile would dramatically change a person's holdings and certain ways a player is playing. When environments and situations call for a change one is ready to react to the change and, better one is able to be proactive or even preactive to turn around the situations and lead the path for others to follow.