Snapshot Review: Domain by Steve Alten

When I came across this book, I glanced at the blurb and wanted to read it immediately. The story looked very interesting at first with ancient history, technology, extraterrestrial life, and politics. But when the story started to unravel, it seemed to be more fantasy and magical rather than science fiction. It felt like Steve Alten poorly merged ‘Indiana Jones’ and ‘Independence Day’ with a Mayan prophesy.

Some parts of the story were well researched, especially the ancient history which I absolutely loved, and some parts were absolute dire. I keenly appreciate Alten’s effort to encapsulate history, science, mythology, philosophy, technology, and politics into a single plot. But unfortunately, he destroyed everything he built by venturing into an almost magical/fantasy genre.

One last note, Bad romance!

Death is the great equalizer. All our power and wants, all our hopes and desires eventually die with us – buried in the grave. Oblivious, we journey selfishly toward the big sleep, placing importance on things that have no importance, only to be reminded at the most inopportune times how frail our lives truly are.

Fear and religion. Religion and fear. The two are historically entwined, the catalysts for most of the atrocities committed by man. Fear of evil fuels religion, religion fuels hatred, hatred fuels evil, and evil fuels fear among the masses. It is a diabolical cycle.

Snapshot Review: The Inhuman Race by Yudhanjaya Wijeratne

After reading the first chapter I closed the book because dystopian children are a very disturbing theme for me. But thought of giving it another try and finished the story this weekend. What made this story unique is, the story set in Sri Lanka and Yudhanjaya’s cultural and political references which made it very familiar, yet dissimilar to the present period. The concept was not new to me, also, I didn’t like the part of child form of robots using for entertainment. Despite those few concerns and some typos, The Inhuman Race was indeed a page turner. Highly recommend this for dystopian sci-fi fans.

“She found herself thinking that the humans she worked with were not all that different from the machine societies they built. Something would topple, something would change, but eventually the whole thing would reset, and it would be as if none of this ever happened.”

“There were four main things that the ancients considered essential to a human being. Beauty, goodness, truth and justice…If you believe buggers who died a few thousand years ago, we’ve got the four main attributes of a human right here. You do realize, if these things are alive, then we’re torturing living things for entertainment?”

“We’re government employees, we do what government employees do,’ he said. ‘ Eat the lunch, drink the tea, pass the ball.”

Number Caste by Yudhanjaya Wijeratne

I was eagerly waiting to grab a hard copy of this book since the day I heard about it. I had to wait quite a long time to read this since I’m not very fond of digital copies. This is not a proper review of Yudhanjaya’s work, just a rambling of my thoughts about the book.

This book felt more real than dystopian because we already live in an era of social media where everyone measures their happiness and life worth by social media fame. Number Caste captures this basic concept and turns it to a social system that rewards and downgrades people according to the data and behavior. The plot is very exciting and scary at the same time. I would not need another tech god to dictate humans on how to live their life which would become worse than the religions and current social cultures.

Number Caste makes you think about the impact of this technology for society and humans rather than the technology itself, unlike other sci-fi books. I was very curious to know more about the technology, but I ended up analyzing the social impact and how close we are, of this concept of ruling our lives by a mere number, to become a reality. Sometimes I agree with Patrick and Julius when I think about the current political and social systems. We need something fairer and a balanced system without any corruptions. But then, when we depend too much on any system it eventually becomes the death row for humanity.

“Real people”, I got struck by Corky’s words when I was reading through the last part of the book. This is not something that only relates to future or Number Caste. It has already come to an age that we cannot separate the real and the fake people in our virtual life, sometimes in real life as well. We all, always judge and score everyone on our network, based on what they share with us. When I think more and more about this concept, it seems to me that we have already begun laying the first brick for the numberCorp, and it’s just a matter of time for someone to rise as the founder of that organization.

I wish there were further editing to the writing before it was published, but the story managed to keep my focus and wash away other disturbances. This book is not just for Sci-fi fans, I believe that anyone can enjoy reading this book. Especially, if you are interested in tech, futurism, or society, you will definitely enjoy this.

So, what would be your number?

Confession of a Bookaddict

I love taking photos of books!

She got up from the bed and slowly walked into the kitchen to make her morning coffee. The world around her was still dark and quiet except for the sound of some birds signing. She poured her coffee into her mug while thinking about the things she has to do for the day and planning all her work. She walked towards her book corner and picked up the book she was reading until late last night, thinking she has one more hour to start her day before the world wakes up. She cuddled up with her book and her cup of coffee and started her meditation. She immediately dived into the life of the characters from her book, forgetting the world around her, into a peaceful space. Her own quiet space where no one intrudes!

A book and a cup of coffee: two of the most comforting things!

Ever since I was a little girl, I loved reading. I can’t exactly remember the time that I fell in love with books. I always used to read anything that I can get my hands on. There were days that I pretended I had a headache and finished some stories underneath my school table while resting my head on the table. Sometimes, when the exams were around the corner, I used to read books, hiding them between the textbooks, pretending to be studying whenever my mother checked on me. Apart from my guilt associated with the pretend, I truly enjoyed the adventures, mysteries, life stories, and fantasies encapsulated inside those books.

I love the scent of a new book, the scent of an old book with torn edges; I love to admire the cover page and guess what would be inside the story. Opening a book is like opening a secret door and entering into an unknown world. I meet so many different characters who are adventurous, ambitious, weird, eccentric, dreamy, or irresponsible, characters who let me understand how the human mind, their thought process works. I start living their lives; I walk with them enjoying the evening sky while trying to understand their perspectives and experiencing their emotions and adventures. It is how I explore the diversity of thoughts, ethnicity, and understand the deep ridden intricacies of the world and beyond.

I transform into a different world through words, letting my imagination go wild and taking my emotions on a magical journey. I have the ability to become someone else, doing something exciting and exotic, even if it is for a short time. I can be a warrior, a witch, a dragon rider, a scientist, a detective, and so many other different individuals. It enlarges my imaginations, broadens my mind, gives me insights and experience I might never have had on my own. I travel across the time reading the history of the world or reading about the future. It helps me to understand my past, my present and how my future should be.

When there’s a book in my hand, I can hear the character’s voice inside my head. When my mind is nourished with words and thoughts, I start having small discussions with these thoughts and ideas. I start listening to the characters more to absorb and analyze their ideas until I reach multiple braingasms and close the book with an indescribable satisfaction. No other activity causes such deep stirrings in my mind. I am forever grateful to my books for teaching me patience, empathy, analysis, creativity, active listening, and many more crucial habits and skills which helped me to mold my personal and professional life.

Reading fuels my curiosity to learn more about the world surrounding me. It allows me to break out of old thoughts and grasp new perceptions and novel ideas. Every book I read teaches me something new. Let it be a fiction, business book, sci-fi, fantasy or even a children book, it always helps me to see things differently, and I become a bit wiser each day.

Books create that magical aura around me and lift me to a different world where no one ever intrudes; it’s totally my own world. I truly love books for uncovering so many things for me. For being with me all my life giving me so much pleasure. For taking me on unforgettable journeys. For making me the person, I am right now.

P.S. Few people asked me how I find time to read so much, which made me think about what made me fall in love with books. I hope that at least one person who reads this article will be inspired to read more books.

What Leaders Can Learn From The Greatest Showman

Recently, I watched “The Greatest Showman” for the second time. With a great soundtrack, it unravels the story of P. T. Barnum, his journey from a poor boy to the founder of the Barnum and Bailey Circus. While I was enjoying the story, the music, and the cinematic, I couldn’t help noticing lessons and insights it gives to entrepreneurs and leaders.

1. Create a positive vision and keep it alive.

The movie begins with the vision Barnum has articulated since the early age while planting that vision in everyone’s heart with the opening scene and the song, “A Million Dreams”.

Barnum created a shared vision from the start that served as the North Star which showed his team the right direction. It is crucial to articulate a clear and concise vision that moves your team forward and inspires them along the way. However, creating a vision is not suffice, leaders should be able to incorporate that vision into people’s beliefs and motivate them to not to give up along the journey. Keeping the vision alive inspires your team to focus on what matters and follow through the commitments without stopping or giving up.

2. Accept responsibility and accountability for your actions.

When Barnum made Charity Hallet laugh while she was practicing a tea drinking skill, her father scolds her for her unladylike behavior. Barnum came forward and accepted the responsibility for his action which earned him a slap from Charity’s father.

We are, all of us, responsible for our actions, our thoughts, and our behaviors deliberately or unintentionally. A responsible person makes mistakes, but when they do, they take responsibility for their mistake and make it right.

As a leader, you must create a mental connection between responsibility and consequences of your actions and accept accountability for them. If not, you will lose the credibility among your team members and colleagues which will lose the influence required to lead.

3. Failure is a part of the leadership.

Barnum was excited to open his new venture, a museum of oddities, and believed he was going to be successful. On the first day, he was able to sell only three tickets and that was for his wife and two daughters. The museum was a failure. But he didn’t give up, he moved to another concept for his museum which brought success to his venture.

What you do with the failure defines your character as a leader. Failure in general is hard to gulp, yet if you have never failed at anything, you would have never been forced to think differently and seek new opportunities. Great leaders see failure as a learning opportunity and push others to see beyond the failure to take risks that leads to innovation, cultivating a learning culture.

4. Positive attitude.

Barnum’s performers were concerned with how people would react to their performance and to their unique talents. But, Barnum always emotionally supported the team and managed to boost their morale, giving positive thoughts. Once, a newspaper critic published a negative review of the museum show and everyone else was distressed about the bad press but Barnum. Barnum took it as a good publicity for his show. He changed the name of the show and started promoting discounts.

Having a positive mental attitude determines how you behave as a leader, and the influence you have on others. Your attitude has the power to lift you up or pull you down. The same way, it affects your team. The positive energy you inject into your team can inspire them to come up with better ways to overcome challenges and turn the vision into a reality. The future belongs to those who believe in it and have the positivity to overcome challenges. Remember, you might see the glass as half empty, but it still contains water, and it is half full!

5. Don’t leave the team behind or shut them out.

Once, Phillip Carlyle and Barnum obtained an appearance with the Queen of England. They made it clear that they would not appear without the rest of the team which lifted the morale of the team.

Another time, when Barnum was celebrating the first show of Jenny Lind, he didn’t let his team be a part of the celebrations. The team was disappointed and they lost their confidence.

As a leader, you should never leave your team behind or shut them out. When you show that you respect your team and bring them along with you, the team feels appreciated and more positive about themselves and their ability to contribute. A self-esteemed team is a critical aspect of innovation and overcoming challenges.

6. Focus.

When Barnum started working with Lind, he became distracted and Carlyle was warning him about his distraction. He was splitting his time and attention between the circus and Lind, putting more effort on Lind’s tour which eventually led to losing both the circus and Lind’s tour.

Trying to move in too many directions at the same time distracts you from your primary strategy of turning your vision into a reality. Devoting time, energy, and money in multiple directions at the same time could lead to none of them being executed well, heading towards failure, consequently. With a clear focus brings greater clarity and results and an accelerated journey.

The Greatest Showman gives many more great insights for leaders and entrepreneurs. The importance of listening to the advice of others, the importance of seeking help and improving weak areas, the importance of leading for the right reasons, the importance of identifying talents, the importance of taking risks to move out from the comfort zone, and passing the leadership baton at the right time, are few more among those lessons.

One of my favorite conversations from the movie is the theater critic’s comment regarding the circus, “Putting folks of all kinds on stage with you, all colors, shapes, sizes, presenting them as equals, another critic might have even called it a celebration of humanity”. Identifying different talents, respect and positive equal treatment for all humans are sensible virtues that not only leaders should master, but the humankind.

Things You Need To Know Before Becoming Agile

Over the past few years businesses have become heavily rely on technology. Almost all successful businesses rely on technology in some way. With rapidly changing circumstances and technologies, agility has become the mainstream for the business success and the sustainability. Yet, majority of the projects fail to deliver the values that the customers expect regardless of whether they are doing agile or not.

Yes, you heard it right, Doing Agile! Doing Agile and Being Agile has a significant difference which is crucial to the business success. The concept of agility has been evolved since 2001 agile manifesto, which articulates a better way to develop software. Agility is not just for IT, not anymore; It’s for the whole organization!

The difference between ‘Doing Agile’ and ‘Being Agile’

‘Doing Agile’ means simply practicing all the agile artifacts, activities, roles, and rules for project delivery. ‘Being Agile’ is cultivating an agile mindset within the culture of an organization by believing and practicing the agile principles and values day in, day out. Understanding the difference between these two terms is absolutely critical for successful agile transformation.

Companies Doing Agile typically replace the project manager with the scrum master while replacing the project management tools with Jira, Version One, and other agile tools. Doing Agile simply delivers software continuously without learning and adapting. Retrospectives become just a list of improvement opportunities which forgets down the line of the delivery cycles. Daily scrum becomes a status reporting practice which is far different from the meaning of daily scrum. All of these practices ultimately lead to a micro-managing culture where agile doesn’t have a true meaning to it which gives the doubt of business success through agility.

Being Agile is a difficult journey. It requires a paradigm shift in mindset. Individuals within all levels of the company should be ready to embrace the change and held each other accountable to agile principles and values.

Journey of ‘Being Agile’ requires a dedicated discussion to itself to elaborate the transformation approaches. However, I would like to mention few perspectives of agility which are vital for the agile transformation.

3 P’s of Agility

People Agility

People Agility is about individual behaviors, habits, and beliefs. It’s about the culture of the organization that helps to evolve talents and skills. Having a flat organizational hierarchy without hard and fast job titles that imprison various talents is essential for an agile mindset. Management and the leadership should embrace the cultural change and let their subordinates feel safe to take decisions, to do experiments, to learn new skills and to evolve the methods of their working habits.

Process Agility

Process Agility is about the flexibility of choosing and customizing of the organizational processes. Heavily regulated organizations find themselves with rigid processes which hard to adapt to a changing environment. Process Agility gives the flexibility to teams on how they get the work done that will eventually lead to a better commitment. By giving the flexibility to mix and match, and customize according to the teams and project nature will lead to innovative development approaches.

Product Agility

Product Agility is about the internal quality of the software as well as the product solution. Rather forcing the solution to the development team, communicating the business problem with the team might unlock more of innovative solutions. Product Agility enables the flexibility to change and experiments innovative solutions which eventually leads to product scalability and new competences.

Analyzing the current position of these three perspectives will help the organization to understand the current priority levels and a smooth transformation towards the business agility.

Personal Kanban: Mapping Work | Navigating Life

I finished reading the book Personal Kanban: Maping Work | Navigating Lifeby Jim Benson and Tonianne DeMaria Barry. I’ve been practicing Personal Kanban for some time and this book gave me some more insights to improve my practice.

It gave me a better idea on personalizing Kanban board for different tasks by setting up different flows. I used to practice the basic flow of To-do, WIP and Done. The book explains how to set up further different flows. When I am studying, I have to do some research and collect notes for subjects; have to study, have to make short notes and have to review them. Rather than including all these tasks in WIP flow, I can set up different flows for these different tasks and add more clarity to my Personal Kanban system.

There are two rules that are very important in Personal Kanban; visualize your work, limit your work-in-progress. Throughout the book, Jim Benson and Tonianne Barry demonstrate the importance of these two rules and how to practice them. Even though Personal Kanban system has two rules, it is a very flexible system which can easily adaptable for changing environments.
 
The first chapter of the book explains rules, how they work and why Personal Kanban is needed. The next chapter explains how to create a Personal Kanban system for your work. The rest of the book explains the prioritization, time management, and how these things help to increase effectiveness.

Personal Kanban: Maping Work | Navigating Life was an easy read with lots of examples, cartoons, pictures, diagrams and clear explanations. The authors’ simple and forthright narrative style kept me out from getting bored on theories and principles. If you already know Kanban or practice Personal Kanban this book might not bring much new ideas. However, there are still good tips and explanations that make it worth the read.

“Personal Kanban is a simple, elegant mechanism that produces dramatic results. It helps us manage ourselves, but also lets us share our work, our goals, and our epiphanies with others. It’s a visual launched to personal effectiveness, spontaneous collaboration, and an integrated life. It’s low maintenance, but high yield. No crystals, no aromatherapy; just you, your work, and better planning.” — Personal Kanban: Maping Work | Navigating Life

Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh

If someone asked me about my favorite fantasy books, I would give a couple of names without any hesitation. But if someone asked what would be the best book that I have read about business, I might have to think a bit, since I have read so many biographies and business related books and liked most of them in different ways. From all those books I have read so far Delivering Happiness is one of the best business books that I have really enjoyed reading.

One thing I really liked about this book is Tony’s writing style. Tony has mentioned that he wanted to write this book by himself without having a ghost writer because he wanted the writing to reflect how he normally speaks. Tony’s writing style makes us closer to his life, his thinking process and it makes us easy to understand the theoretical aspect of the business as well. Rather than throwing out jargons and big words, he explains everything in a simple way of writing that anyone can understand.

I am a firm believer of cultural values of a company. I always think that becoming a good paymaster would not be sufficient to expect a loyal and diligent service from employees. If all employees only expects a monetary value for their service it would feel like working with robots, hence it would be much easy to make them happy and pursue organizational goals. Unfortunately, we work with humans and their motivational factors for their lives vary for one another.

In this book, Tony explains two factors for the success of his company; make Zappos’ employees happy and make Zappos’ customers happy. Giving the best customer service for your customers is essential for survival and retain customers in the long run. Also building a good culture within the company is a necessity to provide a better customer service. When the employees are happy they will eventually make sure that their customers will also be happy. Many organizations don’t invest on customer care, thinking it won’t have a direct impact on the ROI in their business. But they are the employees who represent the company to the customers and they have the power to retain a customer or make them discontinue the product or service within seconds.

Even though these good practices sound obvious, living up to it seems really hard and most companies are not willing to sacrifice their big budgets to invest on their employees and customer care due to various reasons. Hence struggle on customer satisfaction and KBIs such as employee retention, creativity, innovation, communication and internal politics.

There are valuable insights inside this book on how to build a better culture in your company and how to apply the core values of happiness into business and run the company with profits, passion, and purpose. This is a good read for everyone who is passionate about business startups and cultural values of a companies.

Some takeaways from Tony’s story:

“Don’t play games that you don’t understand, even if you see lots of other people making money from them.”

“I’d realized that whether in poker, in business, or in life, it was easy to get caught up and engrossed in what I was currently doing, and that made it easy to forget that I always had the option to change tables. Psychologically, it’s hard because of all the inertia to overcome. Without conscious and deliberate effort, inertia always wins. I’d started to force myself to think again about what I was trying to get out of life. I asked myself what I was trying to accomplish, what I wanted to do, and whether I should be sitting at a different table.”

“Our core values should always be the framework from which we make all of our decisions…Make at least one improvement every week that makes Zappos better to reflect our core values. The improvements don’t have to be dramatic — it can be as simple as adding in an extra sentence or two to a form to make it more fun, for example. But if every employee made just one small improvement every week to better reflect our core values, then by the end of this year we will have over 50,000 small changes that collectively will be a very dramatic improvement compared to where we are today.”

“Think about what it means to improve just 1% per day and build upon that every single day. Doing so has a dramatic effect and will make us 37x better, not 365% (3.65x) better, at the end of the year. Wake up every day and ask yourself not only what is the 1% improvement I can change to make Zappos better, but also what is the 1% improvement I can change to make myself better personally and professionally. In the end we, as Zappos, can’t grow unless we, as individuals, grow too.”

The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud

This is the best book I have read recently. The style is unique, the tone is witty, the characters are really entertaining and the plot kept me on the edge of my seat. I can’t think of any other book that so cleverly tells the story as Stroud has done with this series. It’s written from the third person perspective for the young boy Nathaniel and the first person perspective for the superior Djinni, Bartimaeus. The footnotes that can be found in Bartimaeus chapters greatly enhance the story with humorous remarks. It may sound tedious to read a bit, jump to the bottom for the footnotes and then carry on back up top. But Stroud has done it masterfully and these footnotes add magic to the book. They actually bring out a whole new aspect to Bartimaeus’ character.

I’m not enamored with the protagonist, Nathaniel, but I actually really like that he isn’t a self-sacrificing noble boy. Instead he is a selfish, arrogant, and ambitious apprentice. It’s good to have somewhat flawed and ignoble heroic protagonist in your story every once in a while. Bartimaeus, on the other hand, is the magic of this story. I absolutely love him. This ancient, powerful Djinni is a delightfully sarcastic, self-centered and a very entertaining character. To be honest, Bartimaeus chapters alone are worth the read.

Stroud has created a magical world consisting the elements of friendship, loyalty, survival, moral values, determination, greediness, and corruption. This is not a more easily read novel and it is quite long read compared to other YA books. It does require a fair amount of attention to enjoy every aspect of the story and the uniqueness of the writing. But trust me, Bartimaeus will be worth your time.

Seraphina & The Fifth Wave

Seraphina by Rachel Hartman Dragons! I never get tired of reading about dragons. That love over dragon stories caused me to find most stories somewhat predictable. But Seraphina’s world is really intriguing and captivating. Rachel Hartman has marvelously crafted this dragon world; the transformation of dragons to humans, consequences of human emotions, consequences of love between humans and dragons, the half humans and their abilities, and the co-existence of both species. I like almost all the characters, especially Seraphina and Lucian; they both are very clever, brave, and altruistic. The side characters that add colors to the story are also really fascinating. I’m really grateful that there were no confusing thoughts and dramas as we see in most YA novels. Even though there was a smell of a love triangle in the corner, I hope Hartman would be able to craft it without an irksome drama. What glued me into the book apart from the captivating story was Hartman’s writing. Her writing’s one of the unique aspects of this novel. Seraphina is indeed a page turner and I’m eagerly waiting for the next book to get lost in this beautiful and refreshing dragon world.

The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey The 5th Wave certainly is not a disappointment, but it is not at all surprising or refreshing either. The plot is highly predictable and the justification for using children as soldiers to kill humans does not give the satisfaction to believe the story when the aliens have the power to kill all humans at once or by themselves with their resources. Child soldiers, typical forbidden love story, and highly predictable dystopian plot is just not my cup of coffee. But dystopian YA lovers will definitely love this book.