garthmonroe

As the New Year approaches, some people like to consider resolutions; other people like to find good books. Bob Bruner was Dean at the University of Virginia, Darden School of Business for a decade; he published his recommended reading list at the end of each year; the list was often thoughtful and well-rounded.

I define a good book using one of three criteria: a book that is so compelling that I can’t put it down; a book that is so compelling that I can’t turn the pages quickly enough; or a book so compelling that it merits being read more than once. Hopefully, a good book challenges my point-of-view, opinion, or bias, rather than simply reinforcing what I may already believe. F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby (1925), said that “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

When I taught graduate-level, MBA-students at the University of Connecticut, I suggested that for most students, the degree marks the end of their formal education, and that books may be a useful tool to remain curious, to remain life-long students, to remain relevant; as John Wooden, the legendary UCLA basketball coach suggested, “it’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.”

The books are grouped into four categories: business, leadership, philosophy, and mortality.

Business: When I was younger, I read every business book and business magazine that I could touch. As I grew older, and gained more experience, I gradually stopped, becoming partly jaundiced, that many business books were simply the current management trend or fad; often flat, saccharine, or one-dimensional.

• Bad Blood – Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup: John Carreyrou (2018)
  • Details the rise and fall of Theranos, a medical diagnostic technology company; at its peak, valued at more than $10-billion. Wall Street Journal reporter, John Carreyrou, broke the story after an extensive investigation. Elizabeth Holmes is currently on trial for multiple counts of federal wire fraud, and could face up to twenty years in jail if found guilty of duping investors, and a veritable “who’s who” board of directors. The book is a page-turner, and reads like a thriller, a whodunnit, which is uncommon for a business book.
• Good to Great: Jim Collins (2001)
  • Jim visited Darden in 2004, and I enjoyed hearing him speak. I appreciate Jim’s sincerity, and focus on character. Jim was a Stanford professor, and Good to Great stemmed from his multi-year research project, identifying why some companies made the leap to great, while peer companies did not. One purpose for the book, was to encourage his students to not cash out of start-up ventures, but rather, to create lasting value through relentless reiteration, and to create enduring, great companies. Jim also suggests that a person cannot have a meaningful life without meaningful work.
  • Jim’s premise is that good is the enemy of great; “We don’t have great schools principally because we have good schools. We don’t have great government, principally because we have good government. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life. The vast majority of companies never become great, precisely because the vast majority become quite good – and that is their main problem.”
  • Key themes:
    • Level five leadership: leaders require a “paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will” rather than charm or charisma.
    • First who, then what: organizations need to “get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats, and then figure out where to drive it.”
    • Confront the brutal facts: ascribed to Admiral Jim Stockdale, a former prisoner of war, Collins suggests that leaders need to “maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, and at the same time, have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”
    • Hedgehog concept: leaders and organizations ask: what may you be best in the world at, what drives your economic engine, and what are you deeply passionate about; and pursue what lies in this (Venn) intersection.
    • Culture of discipline: Collins suggests that bureaucracy and hierarchy are only necessary when the wrong people are on the bus. In a culture of discipline, the right systems are in place to provide sufficient freedom for people to deliver results.
    • Technology accelerators: Collins suggests that “technology is an accelerator of momentum, rather than a creator of momentum.”
    • Flywheel and doom loop: Collins suggests that “no matter how dramatic the end result, good-to-great transformations never happen in one fell swoop; there is no single defining action, no grand program, no one killer innovation, no solitary lucky break, no miracle moment. Rather, the process resembles relentlessly pushing a giant, heavy flywheel, turn upon turn, building momentum until a point of breakthrough, and beyond.”
• Total Money Makeover: Dave Ramsey (2003)
  • I recognize that some people don’t have effective personal finance habits. Dave Ramsey’s methods effectively get people out of debt. I used his “debt snowball” to pay off $100,000 in graduate school loans in less than two years after completing my MBA. Dave is not a proponent of debt, advises people to set aside an emergency fund, and advises people to pay cash for a car, as many people buy more car than they can afford.
  • Dave speaks from experience, having amassed a $4-million rental real estate portfolio; he was forced into bankruptcy after the Competitive Equality Banking Act (1987), when banks recalled his loans and credit lines because he was over-leveraged. I don’t recommend Dave Ramsey as a “great” book, but I recommend Dave Ramsey as a useful book. His materials may also be found on YouTube and podcast; his book focuses on seven steps:

1. Save a $1,000 emergency fund
2. Get out of debt using the debt snowball
3. Save a proper emergency fund that is 3-6 months of expenses
4. Invest 15% of household income for retirement
5. Save for your children’s college
6. Pay off your home early
7. Build wealth and be generous

Leadership & Philosophy: I served four years in the Marine Corps, as a sergeant; one of the three great troop-leading ranks, the other two ranks are gunnery sergeant and captain. Marines lead from the front, they lead by example. This means to suggest that I know something about leadership. There are many leadership books, and it’s difficult to not become jaundiced, that some of these books are trite. The two books below offer unique leadership insights.

• The Endurance: Caroline Alexander (1998)
  • I was exposed to this book at JetBlue Airways during manager training. The book documents Ernest Shackleton’s failed 1914-1916 voyage to Antarctica. His crew of 27 was stranded for two years, while his ship, the Endurance, was crushed by ice floes. Shackleton embodied a quiet example of servant leadership, without self-centered chest pounding. In a time without Gore-Tex, everyone survived, and was rescued. What makes this book unique, is that it includes the black and white glass plate negatives from the ship’s photographer, documenting the voyage, captivity on ice, and rescue.
• Team of Rivals: Doris-Kearns Goodwin (2006)
  • Goodwin is a consummate historian and prolific writer; in this book, she documents Lincoln’s unlikely rise to the presidency. Following his election, Goodwin details how Lincoln appointed his cabinet members, the same politicians who opposed his presidency; these same politicians became Lincoln’s most ardent and staunch supporters. Further, Lincoln broadened his perspective, by bringing into his cabinet, individuals with different or opposing points-of-view. Lincoln also possessed a degree of civility not often seen today; when Lincoln disagreed with his generals during the Civil War, he often wrote them scathing letters, which he filed in his desk, and never delivered.
• Man’s Search for Meaning: Viktor Frankl (1946)
  • I was introduced to this concise book as a second-year MBA student by Professor Alec Horniman. Frankl, who survived occupation in a World War II concentration camp, proposed that a person may endure any thing if s/he understands her/his purpose in life. Frankl asks, not what is the meaning of life, but rather, what is life asking of me. Frankl suggests that a person may not avoid suffering, but s/he may choose how to cope with suffering, and find meaning in suffering.
  • Faced with an absurd situation, Frankl suggests that “when we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” Frankl also suggests that a person’s initial response is often not appropriate, and may be more effective by injecting a pause between stimulus and response; “so live as if you were living already for the second time, and as if you had acted the first time, as wrongly as you are about to act now.”
• Do No Harm (2016), or, Admissions: Life as a Brain Surgeon (2018), Henry Marsh
  • Marsh, a UK neurosurgeon, and volunteer in Nepal and Ukraine, presents a sense of humility, in a world that often lacks humility. Marsh writes not about judgment and blame, but rather, writes so that we may learn from our mistakes, and not just in medicine, but in all fields, and in all parts of our lives. Marsh asks, how may we learn, if we cannot admit fault or responsibility. Marsh also describes fascinating patient cases; some cases went well, other cases went terribly wrong.

Mortality: I’ve been a community service volunteer for twenty years. When I moved to Houston, Texas, I wanted an opportunity that would stretch me outside my comfort zone. I volunteered at Houston Hospice Texas Medical Center. Hospice provides palliative care to terminally ill patients. I visited very ill patients at the in-patient unit, so they wouldn’t be alone; patients without family or friends in the metro area. Sitting with an eighty or ninety year-old patient, I hoped that the person had a wonderful life. Sitting with a forty year-old patient, however, was often humbling. One patient died when I was sitting with her; her death was not like television or a movie; it was quiet; there were no buzzers or alarms; there was no drama, no code blue, no trauma teams; she simply stopped breathing, and the moment was almost imperceptible. Volunteering with hospice, I came to understand that I too will grow old, fall ill, and die; and this same fate will be shared by my closest family and dearest friends.

• Being Mortal – Medicine and What Matters in the End: Atul Gawande (2015)
  • Gawande is an American surgeon, writer, and public health researcher, and recognizes how modern medicine has transformed birth, injury, and disease, but also recognizes how doctors often carry out procedures that don’t extend quality of life, and instead, often extend suffering. Gawande asks how may medicine improve end-of-life, and extend quality of life to both patients and families. He proposes some interesting solutions, including multi-generational housing, and the therapeutic value of incorporating children, pets, and plants.
• When Breath Becomes Air: Paul Kalinithi (2016)
  • Kalinithi was chief resident of neurosurgery at Stanford; at age 36, near the end of his training, he was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. Almost immediately, he was transformed from a doctor treating patients, to becoming a patient himself, and facing the stark and glaring end-of-life reality. Painfully, with great resistance, the reader may recognize that life doesn’t include a guarantee. Kalinithi always wanted to be a writer; he wrote this book before his death, and was also able to experience the joy of his newborn daughter. There are several YouTube videos of Kalinithi, including his wife, Lucy.
• Emperor of all Maladies – a Biography of Cancer: Siddhartha Mukherjee (2011)
  • Cancer will touch each of our lives, either as a patient, or bearing witness to our closest family or dearest friends. The average American has a 55% chance of being diagnosed with cancer during her/his lifetime. Cancer remains a black box, only 60% of cancer causes have been identified. Mukherjee uses the subtitle “Emperor of all Maladies” suggesting that the disease is a skillful adversary at evading and adopting to the most radical treatment. I read this book to better understand the disease after a dear family member was diagnosed with stage IV cancer. If you don’t wish to read the book, Ken Burns made a thoughtful documentary with the same title; Burns lost his mother to cancer when he was a young child. I heard Mukherjee speak in November 2018, as the keynote speaker at CRG’s annual investor meeting.
• The Premonition – a Pandemic Story: Michael Lewis (2021)
  • I read every book by Michael Lewis; some resonate more than others, and they are often compelling. If you’ve seen the movies, The Blind Side, Moneyball, or The Big Short, than you have been exposed to Michael Lewis, who wrote the books that inspired each movie. Lewis often finds fascinating storylines, and is adept at digesting and analyzing complex topics. The Premonition could be considered an un-planned sequel to his previous book, The Fifth Risk, which contemplates the US government as a manager of unknown, or unseen significant risks. The Premonition follows a group of scientists, doctors, and researchers who recognized the early signs of the COVID pandemic, recommended a course of action, but lacked permission to implement and execute. The book documents how the George W. Bush administration was the first to put in place a pandemic response plan, following the 9/11 attack, and how the response plan was later dismantled by subsequent administrations. After reading the book, it’s difficult to not critically judge the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) for its indecision, and unwillingness to take action, highlighted by a public letter from Dr. William Foege, retired CDC Director (1977-1983), to Dr. Robert Redfield, current CDC Director (2018-2021).

Public library: I typically read at least one book per week; I would rather read a book than watch television. At this pace, buying books isn’t cost-effective, and when I buy books, I’m often disappointed. I’m a great fan of the public library system; the public libraries in Ottawa, Canada and Houston, Texas were wonderful; multiple locations, easy to use on-line reservation system, wide selection of materials, and surprisingly good access to recently published materials.

Used books: If I buy a book, often use Thriftbooks.com; it’s possible to find titles for less than $5; good selection; easy to use website; orders greater than $10 qualify for free shipping.

Kindle: I own a Kindle, believing that I would use it while traveling; I have several books loaded onto the device, but have rarely used it; I prefer a real book in my hand.

Closing thoughts: I don’t consider this list of twelve books to be definitive; but rather, constantly changing. If I enjoy a book, I will often read it slowly, taking notes, and with a dictionary at hand to look up words that I don’t understand. If I don’t enjoy a book, I tend to read it quickly, and if the book is dreadful, I’ll stop reading. I’m always looking for a good book to read; please share with me your favorite book and its merits, thank you.

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