Reading Respectfully
I see books as treasure troves of knowledge and paths to a technicolor of worlds. I love them and I read a lot. Ok, I buy plenty more than I read thanks to my blasted Kindle that gives me almost any book I want at a click of a button. Having lots of unread books in your library (in my case digital version) is a good thing according to Nicholas Nassim Taleb. He claims that read books are far less valuable than unread ones, the more unread books you acquire the more you will know.
I hadn’t always picked up books out of desire to know, they were just around me as I grew up with two older sisters who were both English teachers so there was no shortage of books. I first picked up Othello at age 9, out of boredom, I read it from cover to cover without being able to make sense of it. The novels of Mills and Boon, Barbara Cartland, Sweet Valley High and Judy Blume were where I escaped to in my pre-teen to early teen years from a horrible family situation. Mid-teens until I went to university at 18 was all about English classic novels by authors such as Jane Austen and Charles Dickens and whatever else Penguin Classics was selling for £1 (a bargain I thought). The classics, many of them set in or mentioned the city I lived in––the city of Bath known for its Roman and Georgian architecture––gave me for the first time, an appreciation of my surroundings, a place so beautiful that it had been written about in historic novels.
Murakami Talks About Running
When I first came across Haruki Murakami’s book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, I was surprised to see that it was a nonfiction, and actually about running. I knew him as a novelist as I have read many of his novels. I’m not a spectator of any sports except the odd five minutes of synchronized swimming and diving every four years during the Olympics. So the thought of reading nearly 200 pages about running even if it is written by one of my favourite authors had no appeal. But curiosity got the better of me, I wanted to know why he wrote such a book. I had recently read a book on writing called Stein On Writing by the legendary book editor Sol Stein in which he spoke of how styles of fictional writing when applied to non-fiction writing can enliven it. I wanted to see how Murakami’s style as a novelist would translate to non-fiction. I figured I’d flick through it, read a few pages here and there; Some books aren’t meant to be read in their entirety.
Michael Lewis will tell you what happened to fairness in the US
I listen to podcasts when I’m working out in the gym. I judge how good they are if I don’t get bored and change to fast paced pop music when it comes to doing cardio on the rowing machine or stationary bike. My recent stay in San Francisco gave me a new podcast assessment criterion: how much I notice how short of breath I am walking up the streets of Douglass, Eureka, Diamond then 23rd and 24th from the neighborhood of Castro to Twin Peaks in San Francisco. If you are not familiar with San Francisco let me just say doing an hour HIIT(High Intensity interval training) like Les Mills’ Body Attack class followed immediately by an hour of Zumba class is a walk in the park compared to 30 mins walk up the aforementioned streets. In the three weeks I did the walk daily (didn’t do it to torture myself, I did because the public transit in San Francisco sucks.
Factfulness! Hans Rosling’s last attempt to rid us of our misconceptions
Of the books I’ve read this year, the one book that has stood out the most is Factfulness by Hans Rosling. The book was released posthumously last year, I feel Rosling left us with a remarkable gift. Actually, this is the second year and time I’ve this book. I first read, more listened to an audio version towards the end of last year. There were so many passages I wanted to underline so I could later refer to, not an easy task I found with audio books. So I bought the Kindle version and decided to re-read it again to remind myself of the pearls of wisdom Rosling shared, for example, the test on page two. The test does a wonderful job of challenging the often outdated and erroneous view of the world most of us (particularly Westerners) have.
Why I love working with PhDs
Recently, after I finished a call with a client I was jubilant, as I realized how much I had learnt from the call. It got me thinking about how blessed I am to have my job. I train innovators how to develop and convey their work to stakeholders and partners inside and outside their organisations so I get to hear about all sorts of cool things they are doing. I thought about what I like about my role and the clients I’ve worked with over the years. My clients are mostly scientists, engineers, and technical managers. It dawned on me that a high portion of my clients have PhDs and it is from them I’ve learnt the most.
Before I started this job, the only people I knew that had doctoral degrees were my professors at university (which was a fair bit of time ago) and my medical doctors (who I avoided as much as possible). In the decade I’ve been doing this job, it has become so normal for me to be in a room full of PhDs that it is really worth acknowledging what a privilege it is and how I’ve benefited from it.
Why the communication gap between technical and business teams
I recently spent a few months in San Francisco Bay Area attending conferences, meet-ups, workshops etc. to get a feel for the place. Every time I told people what I did for a living they were surprised and intrigued. Didn’t know such a role existed they said. I am an innovators’ nurturer. They’d ask what does the job entail exactly? I would say: “I help companies improve the effectiveness of their innovators by training them to develop and convey ideas”. Or I said: “I train innovators to see and navigate through the diverse groups of stakeholders required to get their ideas to the market.” Sometimes, I would also say: “you know how technical and business folks speak completely different languages, I train to speak the same language.” The latter explanation resonated mostly with folks. This for me is an oversimplification of what I do but I understand that most people think there is a ‘communication’ gap between technologists and the business. But it is just a manifestation of the underlying issue.
What business managers want: influential innovators
I’m an innovators’ nurturer, I help companies improve the effectiveness of their innovators. For the decade I’ve been doing this job, the most common request I get from the managers who hire me is “make my innovators be influential.” These managers run departments and teams of technologists (scientists, engineers, developers, etc.) whose job is to innovate for their companies. They usually come to me when these innovators have become ineffective, unable to demonstrate the business value of their work. The managers’ assumption is that their innovators have poor communication skills. But in my experience, this is rarely the issue. The real issue is that innovators are unable to see and understand the perspectives of the stakeholders that their ideas must go through. This is a major barrier to their success as innovators due to the way companies are set up. Companies are structured in silos: each one will have its own objectives, resources, offices and even subculture. Within these silos you will have disparate groups of stakeholders with divergent productivity criteria that innovators have to meet to develop and take their ideas to market. The bigger the company, the larger the number of stakeholders. Innovators are not trained to deal with this. They are trained to develop specialized technical mastery.