BookReview | Jacob Aloysious

Book - Making of a Manager, by Julie Zhuo

Sun, 20 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

If you are a newly promoted manager and struggling to figure out what the job is like. Don’t worry you are not alone - this book is exclusively only for you - go get a copy and keep it on your table (I have mine). Having read multiple books about management and leadership; also attending relevant sessions - nothing really stuck to me like this book. Maybe there is a reason, I could connect.

Trivia: The author - Julie Zhuo is the VP, Product Design at Facebook, having successfully worked her way up the ranks.

In this book, Julie - I would call her an accidental manager; becomes a manager at the age of 25, just because the size of her team was growing. She wasn’t prepared - she had no idea where to start and what to do and most importantly what she should NOT be doing. She juggles her way through trying to be a good manager and fighting her inner conflicts (read soul) - which was still an individual contributor(IC). And this was exactly where, I was able to connect to Julie and her book. As, I was a IC - who loved to code (time flies when I was coding) - excitement/feeling of making a feature work was awesome.

Hard Truth: The roles and responsiblities of a Manager vs IC is completely different - you cannot do both. Well if you are doing it - then you are a superhuman!

I was trying to do both for years, and it wasn’t scaling up. I was signing up for features and assiging bugs to myself - and it was hard to balance the time between the needs of the actual role(/team) vs my own code deliverables.

Well, don’t get me wrong. I dont mean, you should stop coding when you become a manager. I still code (mostly on weekends), but just that - we need to understand, that its NOT your primary responsibility. My guidance: the code you work on, should not be in the critical path and there are no depenencies (someone waiting for you to deliver).

I have been a manager for just over 5yrs as of today(Jun/2021). So, I might not have lot of experience. But this book definetly made a difference for someone like me who became a Manager being an IC.

It’s an easy to read book - you might feel like Julie is sitting on the other side of the table and talking to you - a live mentorship 😉. You can learn a lot from this book, irrespective of the team size you are leading (big or small).

Few Key Take aways:

Manager are Made not Born:

This was an interesting revelation for me 😉. This is a skill that you could really work on - if you find the roles and responsibilities motivating/interesting. Julie talks about 3 important things: 1) Purpose 2) People and 3) Process - the why, the who and the how. A great mananger constantly asks herself how she can influence these levers to improve her teams outcomes.

Why: Your team knows what success looks like and cares about achieving it. Success would be embody both - self (career) and for the product (company).
Who: Does the team have the right skill set and the motivation. Trust and coaching to their strengths.
How: Establishing guidance for principles and rationals behind decicion making.

Art of feedback:

Avoid: It’s time for our Annual Performance Review. Here is how you have been doing for the past year. Aspire: Can I share some feedback for you from that meeting this morning.

Giving feedback as often as possible, keeping it as specific as possible, clarifying what success looks/feels like and finally suggesting next steps. In case of cirtical/bad feedback - don’t do a “compliment sandwich” - as the most important focus point, which acutally matter could be missed.

Hiring Well:

Hiring is not a problem to be solved but an oppurtunity to build the future of your organization.
Hiring is Your responsiblity. No recruiter can possibly know what an ideal candidate looks like for your team. So, ensure you describe your ideal candidate as precisely as you can.

I would stop here - and recommend you to go read the book. There are lots of interesting observations and recommendations - which you could try out of the box. Read it, you can thank me later 😆

Highly Recommended!!

the-making-of-a-manager

Book - Atomic Habits by James Clear

Sun, 21 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

As of today (Jun'2020) - If someone asks me if there is ONE book I could recommend - without a second thought - it would be this book. Irrespective of profession or title - this book will definitely ring a bell.

The book covers what could be considered as ideas of common sense, but presents these ideas in a well-organized, clear, practical and logical way in developing good habits.

One of the first questions in the book was - “Write down your current habits". I tried and honestly there was NONE - except for the trivial ones like brush/sleep.. It was a good ice breaker for me to start thinking.

Key Takeaways:

“Habits do not restrict freedom. They create it. Building habits in the present allows you to do more of what you want in the future.”

Habit stacking:

If you have an existing habit - which is working well. Add the new habit along/right before or after the existing one. So that the environment is already set - and you don’t need additional motivation. In my case, “writing Journal as I have tea”. Tea is a must have for me, I can never skip it - so why not add a habit while I drink it 😄. Previously I always lacked the motivation to write/continue a Journal.

Habit Cues:

Setting up the environment for doing the habits. The environment should be both enabling and welcoming you to do your habits. In my case, before I sleep, I ensure - I keep the Journal book on the dining table - where I have my tea. And Kindle on my pillow, so I see it when I go to bed.

On bad habits - one of the practical way is to reduce exposure - like hide the TV remote so its hard to find 😉

“it is easier to avoid temptation than resist it.”

Compound Effect:

Very small change overtime will have a great impact. I have started realizing that as my reading time and consistency has improved.

One month after I completed this book, as I am writing this blog. I have a list of things … Start of Day:

Wakeup, Clean the dust bin at home
5 min workout (it isn’t much, but makes a difference for me)
Freshen up, Make Tea
Write Journal Book - Plan for the day (as I have tea)
Read a technical book ( Kindle)
Off to work

End of the day:

Update the Journal, review the day
Keep the Journal at the dining table (where, I have my tea)
Pray/Gratitude
Read a non-tech/non-fiction book (Kindle)
Sleep

There isn’t much - but still I feel a change - I have something that I could call as a habit - be it writing a journal or having a planned reading time. Thanks to this book - which gave me both the framework (practical ways of implementing a system) and the motivation in building habits.

“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity.”

I addition to having a Kindle copy - I am planning to order a hard copy - I hope it shall be a visible reminder - to add a new Good habit and get rid of the bad habit. I believe - even if the book it doesn’t completely change your behavior, it will make you more aware of yourself.

Highly Recommended!!

Book - My Good Reads, Non-Technical

Sat, 23 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In Progress

Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow, by Yuval Noah Harari
Bad Blood
The Coaching Habit
Practical Ways to Manage Yourself

Done

2021:

Backlog: GRIT, The Diary of a Young Girl

2020:

Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams, by Tom DeMarco, Timothy R. Lister
Art of Thinking Clearly, by Rolf Dobelli
Steal Like An Artist, by Austin Kleon
Make Time, by Jake Knapp & John Zeratsky
The Making of a Manager, by Julie Zhuo
Atomic Habits, by James Clear
Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari
Show Your Work, by Austin Kleon
Anything You Want, by Derek Sivers
Tuesdays with Morrie, by Mitch Albom
When Breath Becomes Air, by Dr. Paul Kalanithi
Ikigai, by Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles
The Joy of Leadership, by Tal Ben-Shahar, Angus Ridgway
Conquering the Chaos, by Ravi Venkatesan

2019:

Man’s Search For Meaning, by Vicktor E. Frankl
The Alchemist, by Coelho Paulo
Crucial Conversations, by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan,

Older:

Who Moved My Cheese, by Spencer Johnson
The Present, spencer Johnson
The Situational Leader, by Paul Hersey

Backlog

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou
21 Lessons for the 21st Century, by Yuval Noah Harari)
The Rosie Project, by Graeme Simsion
Elastic: Flexible Thinking in a Time of Change, by Leonard Mlodinow
The Unfair Advantage, by Ash Ali, Hasan Kubba
The Theory of Everything: The Origin and Fate of the Universe, by Stephen Hawking
A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
The Motivation Hacker, by Nick Winter
7 Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen R.Covey
Pragmatic Thinking and Learning, by Andy Hunt
The Happiness Equation, by Neil Pasricha
How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, by Dale Carnegie
How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie
Radical Candor, by Kim Malone Scott
Managing Humans, by Michael Lopp
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, by Patrick Lencioni
High Output Management, by Andrew S. Grove

Started and Shelved 😞

Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, by David Epstein
The Book of Life, by Jiddu Krishnamurti
Leonardo da Vinci Autobiogrphy, by Walter Isaacson
The 4-Hour Work Week, by Timothy Ferriss
A Gentleman in Moscow, by Towles Amor
Factfulness, Rosling Hans
I am Malala, by Malala Yousafzai, Christina Lamb
Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman
The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, by Robin Sharma
The Leader Who Had No Title, by Robin Sharma
The Doctor and the Saint, by Arundhati Roy
Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy, by Sadhguru

Book - Anything you want by Derek Sivers

Sun, 17 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

For the second time, I completed reading a book in a day. Agree, its small and meant to be completed in 1hr :).

In this book Derek Sivers shares his experience of starting, running and donating a million dollar company. Interestingly he started his “CD Baby” without realizing he has started a business. Yeah, its true - he just wanted to help himself and then his musician friends to try sell their independent work. It gained popularity initially - just by word of mouth - friends telling their friends; and eventually turned into a million dollar business…

There are lots of details in this book Derek walks us through - my key take aways:

Dont punish everyone for one person:

Don’t bring in rules just because one of your hundred(s) customer or employee did a single mistake.

Delegate or Die:

I could personally relate to this and its something I sincerly want to follow i.e. it should be business as usual irrespective of - I am avaiable or not in office

Delegate, but dont abdicate:

You need to be careful what and how much you are delegating esp when you have the responsiblity and ownership. Have a process checkpoint like review and ensure critical decisions are in control.

Programmer Himself:

This was my favourite part. Derek is a musician by profession. He started this website as it was a necessity just for himself. Later when the business grew, he wanted more than plain HTML on his website. Since he couldn’t afford to hire a programmer - he went to the bookstore and got a book on PHP and MYSQL programming. Until the day he sold his company - he was the sole software programmer of the company’s website… A business purely based on an online website making millions of dollars WoW!!!!. One of the points he mentioned - he liked doing it as it was creative, but he only had to learn just enough to get the things done - #LightBulb moment for me :)

Interseting Quotes

Anything you hate to do, someone else loves. So find that person and let he or she do it

Making money was never an objective for “CD Baby” and that was the reason it grew faster than he thought.

Do things which make you happy, you might do it better than you would like to !

Highly Recommended!

Book - Show Your Work by Austin Kleon

Sat, 16 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

For the first time, I completed reading a book in a day. Though I like physical books, since the entire city is currently in lockdown due to COVID19, non essential services are not available. Thanks to Amazon Kindle, I am kindaa liking it.

I stumbled upon this 3-Books that Changed my Life - what actually caught me - author said I read couple of these books in less than an hour each.

Though the size of this book was relatively small, I should give credits to the author Austin Kleon, for keeping it interesting all through; esp. the doodles – it was easy to connect. His ideas are simple but incredibly profound, easy to grasp and put to use. I got a feeling, he is sitting right across the table and conversing with me.

I always thought one should not show your work until is finished. After reading this book, I realize more than the final product the process of doing it is equally important, as it makes you happy!!

Give what you have. To someone, it may be better than you dare to thing - Henry Wadsoworth.

My key take away - We don’t really have to be terrified of being revealed as amateurs; its perfectly fine (read normal).

Author talks about Amateurs and Curiosity - The day you presume, you know lots (read, mastery) - then the curiosity might fade away and complacency might step in. Being an amateur - you take chances, exxperiment and follow your whims - and in the process keep learning .

That’s all any of us are: amateurs. We don’t live long enough to be anything else - Charlie Chaplin

Honestly, I feel good and motivated. I will probably start writing about the things that I find interesting esp. the once I am working on. Thank you Mr Kleon, you have definitely made a huge impact.

Highly Recommended! I already sent it to few of my close friends :)