These are questions for wise men with skinny arms

I took this out of Mert’s collection on his recommendation, and while I liked the thoroughness, it over complicates a simple message with business metaphors. I’d simplify that message to Get passionate people to ruthlessly iterate on your problem. Once that was outlined, the rest of the book was repetitive with increasingly convoluted examples. As a business book, this puts it only a little above the average, so I’d give it a C+.

This book suffers from being very general advice with overly specific examples. It’s incredibly easy and distracting to pick apart the ways that the research might not have generalized as cleanly as he intended. It covers so many topics with enough commentary that it’s almost more of an introduction to business concepts than summarized case studies. It’s difficult to relate everything in the book to our current situation, which makes it possibly dangerous or distracting if not taken at a deeper level. It’s not a compelling read, and if the point above is all I remember, it’s hard to recommend now.

Nitpicks

While the process described in the book appears obvious, there are so many little things that prevent me from finding it profound. I generally distrust the ‘management as a science’ style talk, and many of the arguments walk a fine line between fables and case studies. It’s not specific enough to propose any radical ideas nor compelling enough to tell a memorable story. It manages to be so unarguably general that the evidence just isn’t even necessary to support its conclusions.

The Circuit City and Fannie May study in particular fall flat only a few years after this book was published, becoming well known as disasters. This further waters down any of the good lessons that are only anecdotally supported because the trends he predicts and ‘biases’ he attempted to control for clearly missed the mark. While the advice still appears sound, using such public examples of failure makes it much harder to take seriously.

Many of his tangents appeared strange to me, but maybe that’s because I hadn’t read any contemporary business books that he was trying to disprove with his stories. Expecting executive compensation to have a positive effect on the business might have been a real argument when the book was written, but now it doesn’t deserve the half-chapter that attacks it. Similarly, calling out lackluster M&A strategies contributes very little unless you assume that prevailing wisdom was that M&A can save/build any company.

Strong Takeaways

The team alignment strategies in the first few chapters were far more influential than the rest of the book. It falls into wonderful contrast with some parts of Principles in how it frames the question of culture. It provides many useful examples of positive personality traits and then backs them up with great stories to make it memorable. It made me think about my past experiences in a different way and helped me realize aspects of myself that were easy changes for potentially big impacts. It was very much a feel-good topic that left me energized when I tried to extend some of the concepts outlined in other ways. I would have rather had more detail in this section than the other following four because I think it’s the most specific and least obvious.

The lessons of persistence and attention to detail were included in multiple sections, and this repetition gave them more weight than when they were explicitly titled concepts. He uses a number of metaphors throughout the book to emphasize this dogged determination is necessary for every step of success. This again contrasts in an interesting way to more modern suggestions of ‘working smart, not hard’. I agreed with his assessment on large time investment being a critical factor, again tackling both personality and business organization together instead of trying to split them apart. It’s not a revolutionary idea, but it does provide a good story.