Tribal leadership - Review

More than being a leadership book, tribal leadership is a book on perception to organization and perception to life.

Tribal leadership categories organization and people into 5 stages of culture.

Useful chart from the book

With this simple classification, one can easily categories how good a person mindset or an organization's culture is, and the next step of improving.

In short, the book provides a road map for a person to grow, and a target for an organization to grow culture-wise.

A good book provides you new language and new eyes to see the world from. eg: I realized I was a stage 3 self-enrichment book fanatic, reading and practicing to win at a stage 3 game. Lately as I start searching and going through leadership books, stage 4 idea become more and more prevalence in my thought.

The importance of people, not for networking sake but for the sake of relationship itself. The importance of connection not for the profit but the connection itself, the goodness of it and the thriving of common value.

The ultimate purpose of self development is not to be the strongest of all, but is to be the quiet mover of men and women, inching everyone towards a goal originating from a conman shared value.



Download Tribal Leadership Audiobook for free! Thanks to Zappos.
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Tribal leadership official website.

Delivering Happiness - Review

Reading someone's book is like living through someone's life, gaining the experience they gained without needing to make the mistakes they made. 

--This statement couldn't be more true describing this book.

This book walked-through the life of Tony Hsieh, the man behind LinkExchanged and Zappos. Through Tony's writing, we got a glimpse of the life of a regular child negotiating with the obligation of school work - something I can definitely relates to, getting into a prestigious university and proceed to be unmotivated in academic pursue, looking to cut corner every chance he gets - something I definitely can relate to (the lazy to study part, not the getting into Harvard part), to finishing U and working a passionless but good paying job. (Me).

Then the plot twisted. First is him having the courage to quit his well paying job to start a business of his own and hence an inspiring story of an entrepreneur begun.

It is real enjoyable reading how Tony created LinkExchange, and how he "failed" his company.

It is also enjoyable to catch a glimpse of the life of a young millionaire, and how his perspective on life changed with riches and experiences.

It is just a blast having him walk us through the conception, creation, struggle, breakthrough and success of a company (Zappos), Wisdom can be found through reliving the process with Tony's narration.

The treasure in this book however, is how it shattered the idea of how a company can be run. It challenged the way of how most company is run today, and proposed a more Wow-derful way to run a company. It showed me the real meaning of "company culture", and how and why it is so important to a company. Tony also was kind enough to show us some rope on how to install a culture in a company.

TL;DR: This book is essentially 1) Start-up walk-through + 2) Company culture for dummies

Proud feeling: It felt good to know that some millionaire on the other side of the planet approved the books that I too have read, and like a lot. Good to Great, Build to Last, Happiness Hypothesis. It stroked my pride to know that I too, in my own volition, did what the millionaire did - Tracing the science and philosophy of Happiness. (and I shall read Tribal Leadership next).


Official website - Delivering Happiness
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Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box - Review

This book deals with one issue - The effect of our subjective perception towards the world. How we tend to see the world with a self-centered bias, and how it hurts ourselves & everybody else.

The book introduced an idea, a new vocabulary- "The box".

The box is an imaginary confinement that altered our perception towards the world. 

It makes us see the world the way that make us look good, instead of the way it really is. - "Self-deception" as the book called it.

This book with "the box" is essentially an idea stem from the same concepts as "self-victimization", "taking responsibility", "change yourself as you can't change others", "everything starts with perception". 

Though it was an old idea with different packaging, it has given me a new insight on how "the box" can be tied together with issue such as leadership, when I previously only see it as a interpersonal or intrapersonal skill.

Or perhaps I should say, the impact for me was the realization that leadership is a interpersonal skill, something between a person and another, rather than a herding skill of one person vs a group entity. 

This is leadership.

This is not.

The book explore the concept of "the box" through the narration of a man starting a new job, through the examination of his work life and his family life. With plenty of examples, the book dissects our daily life and show us how "the box" affects everything. 

Conclusion, all evil in the world can be traced to self-deception. 

Self-deception is literally Hitler. 

Hitler through the box, see Jews as the people to blame.

At the end, it is painfully obvious to us that we have to leave "the box" to achieve ...errhem  success.

Rant: One would not mistake the story in this book for true-story as the narrator portrayed every character in the book as if they are 5 years old, especially Tom the protagonist. This was done mainly to achieve an "ELI5"(Explain Like I'm Five) effect, to leave nothing unsaid and thus no chance of misinterpretation. It achieved the said purpose well to the effect that I dub this book "Self-Deception for Dummies".

Summary of book:

1) Self betrayal leads to self-deception and "the box".

2) When you are in the box, you can't focus on result.

3) Your influence and success will depend on being out of the box.

4) You get out of the box as you cease resisting other people.

Notes to self: 

1) One does not ask a person to change, one invites a person to change; just like one could not demand a person's affection but invite/seduce a person by changing oneself. 

2) When we are having a self-centered perception, we tend to see others as OBJECTS instead of human being.

Rant: As if there isn't enough self-help book using the story of Ignaz Semmelweis and childbed fever, I felt like I am breathing recycled air every time I came across another self-help book using this oh-so-profound story. 



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