Inside apple

Make responsibilities clear.

Have high standards.

Simplify.

The second world war..

By WC.
 
Until I read these books, I didn't realize little I knew about WW2 history.
 
WC's had an interesting view of the war; living through it, fighting it. The Holocaust was hidden from his view.  The Allies had an uneasy relationship with Russia. Enemies with Russia for the first half of the war. Then suddenly allies when Germany invaded Russia. Then opponents again when Russia used the chaos at the end of the WW2 to gobble up the eastern bloc countries. I didn't realize that the seeds of the cold war were sown in WW2.
 
Be decisive.
Never give up.
 

Influence without authority

This book reminds me that to effectively influence, you have to do the work of influence. How to win friends and influence people plus a lot of legwork. Also calls out more explicit strategies to deal with groups, committees and the like.

Closing the execution gap

One of those book that can be summed up by it's chapter titles…

1. Translate strategy into action
2. Expect top performance
3. Hold people accountable
4. involve the right people in making the right decisions
5. Facilitate change readiness
6. Increase coordination and cooperation
7. lessons for leaders…
1. Integrate the leader and manager roles
2. Clarify assumptions and priorities
3. Make sure the right systems are in place
4. Coordinate and monitor high impact actions
5. Get change management right
   

The splendid table's how to eat weekends...

Great inspiration for the kitchen. I wish it focused more on technique than recipes.

Existentialism

From Dostoevsky to Sartre.

I had to put this book down. I saw that Hunter S Thompson recommended it, almost as a guide for life. Maybe I should take advice from people who live drug and alcohol soaked lives, no matter how interesting they are.

Out of sight, out of mind.

Pointing out the intellectual laziness of perfectionism doesn't mean that we will become intellectually active. Perfectionism has a strong advantage-- you have a standard and a high one at that. We can be lazy and just muddle along. We can be overwhelmed and incapable of engaging on every issue. Problems fall out of sight and out of mind. In these situations, you don't have a standard, you have no standard and no standard can be worse than perfectionism. Perfectionism is easier to correct than laziness. When you are a perfectionist you are doing something that can be observed, measured, tweaked, reviewed, changed, matured. But laziness?
 
 

More on Managing for results

Drucker has a pretty harsh view on how long and hard you should try to solve problems…

"Under no circumstances should there be more than one repair operation on a repair job (Product that is struggling) If the repair does not work the first time, the plea "now we know what's really wrong here" should be most unsympathetically received. A repair job is bad enough, but an investment in managerial ego is worse. Yet this is what a second chance for a repair job will produce in the majority of cases."

He also says else where that the way a business earns money should be obvious and clear, though I can't find the direct quote.

I think that we delude our selves far more often than we deal with reality. 9 out of 10 new business fail. Your idea may stink no matter how strongly you disagree. Sure you should work hard to make it happen and to solve problems. But, and some point you are not facing reality, or are two wound up in the idea to admit failure and then move on.

Perfection

Perfection is lazy thinking. You don't have to work through what you actually need, and what your system can actually provide. You just set a standard that's very high, probably unnecessarily high. No one can ever fault you for not having high enough standards. You just pretend that you can overcome every obstacle along the way. The result of chasing perfection is a moral high ground that turns into a mess when reality hits and you learn the hard way what compromises have to be made, what resources you actually need, and what skills it would take to do a proper job.

It's not your fault of course, after all, you were only trying to be perfect.

Managing for results

There is a lot in this book. I need to read it again.

1. Focus on your opportunities, not your problems.
2. Your business is to create customers.
3. Your customers are the people who decide to buy, not the people who think want to use your product.
4. Your customers want satisfaction. Your product is only a means to that ends.
5.   distribution is as important as manufacturing.

Reread. The book is very dense.

Eat, drink and be healthy

Very common sense and based on good research.

1. Avoid saturated fat. Don't be afraid of unsaturated fat.
2. Eat plenty of vegetables.
3. eat whole grains
4. Stay away from refined starches, sugars and potatoes.
5. Beef has saturated fat, bird less so, fish is unsaturated.
6. Exercise 30 minutes a day
7. Sleep 8 hours a day.
8. Limit alcohol to 1 or 2 drinks a day.
9. Watch your weight.