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Larry's Book Club

For the last several years, I write for a quarterly CEO publication that is syndicated called Larry's Book Club.  I thought I would add it to these sites. If you want past reviews, let me know!

 Happy Holidays

by Matthew Syed


My kindle Highlights: 25.  Per Amazon 1,361 most highlighted book.

 

Mathew Syed references the following creed which must be signed by every participant of the Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Florida:

 

“Every endeavor pursued with passion produces a successful outcome regardless of the result. For it is not about winning or losing—rather, the effort put forth in producing the outcome. The best way to predict the future is to create it—therefore, we believe we have the best training methods to help each athlete achieve their dreams and goals and ultimately reach their ability level in the arena of sports and life.”

 

This represents a pretty succinct summary of a very interesting and insightful read.  Syed, a British journalist and sportscaster is a former table tennis champion and a two time Olympian.  While on a journey to debunk the justification of his own rise to the top of the ping pong world, he became heavily influenced by evidence which shows that the notion of raw talent, genetic predisposition, and chosen prodigy are essentially myths.  To that end, Syed’s book is quite the combination of Outliers by Malcom Gladwell, Mindset by Carolyn Dweck, and Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin (ironically the first two books were reviewed in Larry’s Book Club).  In fact, he quotes from them extensively.  Affirmation and repetition are not a bad thing and in the case of eradicating certain sports success myths probably very useful and when taken as the critical lessons from this book probably very purposeful.

 

Syed explores quite a comprehensive list of topics including practice, the productive use of prayer, conviction, doublethink, choking, failure as a means of success, focus, perception, anticlimactic emotions after winning, motivation, fixed vs. growth mindset, and race as a success factor in running.  

 

My top takeaways:

 

-Expert practice means purposeful practice.  Repetition and sustained effort towards progress in a continual way towards breaching what appears to be insurmountable.  And then do it again towards the next level of achievement.  The 10,000 hour rule is a consistent factor in success which often is a function of being in the right place with the right coaches and having the right opportunity rather than any sense of talent encoding or being an innate child prodigy. 

 

-As counterintuitive as it appears, the best fail more than anybody else.  Failure has to be embraced as a part of success.  Shizuka Arakaway fell down more than 20,0000 times on her way to becoming an Olympic champion.

 

-Feedback is, in effect, the rocket fuel that propels the acquisition of knowledge, and without it no amount of practice is going to get you there.  The best teachers and coaches provide the best feedback which is in the form of promoting a “growth” mindset.  Praise effort not talent.

 

-Choking in a competition is essentially too much focus which causes a neural glitch whereby mechanics become to intentional rather than on auto pilot.

 

-Mark Bawden, the sports psychologist  “In order to make all the sacrifices necessary to reach world-class levels of performance, an athlete has to believe that performing well means everything. They have to cleave to the belief that winning an Olympic gold is of life-changing significance. “But that is precisely the belief that is most likely to trigger a choking response. So, the key psychological skill for someone with a tendency to choke is to ditch that belief in the minutes before competition and to replace it with the belief that the race does not really matter. It is a form of psychological manipulation, and it takes a lot of work to master.”

 

-Rituals and routines work because they were used at some point of success.  Nothing wrong with maintaining these superstitious beliefs and in fact they should be encouraged.

 

-Regardless of religious beliefs, prayer or some form of meditation play a powerful and effective role in sports performance.

 

If you are looking for a good overall summary the integration of scientific evidence into success, particularly performance you will be well satisfied in your read of Bounce.

 

To purposeful practice,

 

larry@physicaltherapist.com


 

Delivering Happiness

A few years back at a TED conference,  I met Tony Hsieh (pronounced “shay”) the CEO of Zappos.  I was familiar with Zappos as on online shoe retailer, for their Kentucky warehouse presence, and embracing of twitter but I was not by any means a customer.  I was also vaguely aware that they were into customer service something that I felt passionate about since we had designed a highly systematic patient loyalty and service excellence program in our physical therapy clinics.  From that brief encounter, I received overnighted Zappos culture books, a variety of online tools that highlighted their program, and eventually took our entire EIM Executive Management Program on a Zappos tour as part of their class experience at graduation.  I also became an unabashed customer and delight in getting an anniversary card celebrating the boots I ordered 12 months earlier.  What I now know after reading Hseih’s book, is part of receiving such value before I had ever placed an order was his view that my lifetime value as a customer is due to more and more positive emotional associations with their Zappos brand.

As a blogger, I received advanced copies of Delivering Happiness A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh in return for doing a book review post.  Since I write quarterly business book reviews for a CEO organization, I was particularly glad that an evidence based physical therapy blog and myself qualified!  You can obtain a copy here as it gets officially launched this week.

Zappos sells itself as a service company that just happens to be selling shoes. This book should likewise can be described as a great business book that just happens to be about Tony and Zappos.

The book is comprised of 3 sections. The first entitled “Profits” is essentially a partial autobiography of Tony and his journey into Zappos.  It includes many stories including the culture that he grew up in and his on-going quest to make a lot of money which included attempts at worm farming, customized buttons, newspapers, food, and designing websites.  It is hilarious at times and he might be one of the best practical jokers to every become a CEO.  More compelling is that his journey to become wealth finally leads to a much better consequence-what he really wants out of life.  In that vein, it supports Daniel Pink’s contention in Drive that research shows such quests become addictive and although often leading to financial success but do not lead into happiness-a point that I think Tony would wholeheartedly agree.  In fact, after selling his first company, he literally walked away from tons of money to pursue his passion which ultimately includes in part building something, connecting with others, and purpose with a few red bulls in between, a climb of Kilimanjaro, and of course completing a marathon.  This section was a pure joy to read and provided the occasional outburst of laughter while also giving you great background for creating the “soul” of the Zappos culture as well as key lessons resulting from an intense interest in playing poker can provide for foundations of playing the great game of business.

The second section “Profits and Passion” really details the Zappos story as Tony goes from being an investor then adviser to running the show and having to make “bet the company moves” including selling key personal real estate assets off at losses to keep Zappos afloat as well as tough personnel layoffs.   It provides a lessons in the “hard” business parts-financing, cost of growth, painful lessons in outsourcing your core competencies but more importantly it provides the backdrop to the entire Zappos value proposition-culture, branding thru service, and core values.  A wise business sage told me once that great companies “will” themselves to success without ever relenting to unsurmountable obstacles.  While Zappos is the epitome of value creation with over 1 Billion in sales and a closing acquisition price of roughly 1.2 Billion, Tony’s details of the struggles, challenges, and eventual path are a history that needed to be told.  As a business book “junkie”, you will not find anywhere in my opinion better  example and instruction in how to enumerate your core values with key “take home” messages and real employee examples.

The final book section-Profits, Passion, and Purpose transitions to deploying the Zappos philosophy into delivering on happiness.  After detailing the exemplary way to handle selling of a company to your employees, it includes a great summary or melding of his personal takes from a variety of books on happiness including The Happiness Hypothesis, Good To Great, Tribal Leadership, and Peak.  It really is a culmination of his personal journey that took him from his growing years in Asian culture to financial success to the significance and transportability of the Zappos message.

This is a fantastic book-a wonderful combination of biography, business, and building significance. For the readership of this blog, I trust you will be able to apply quite a bit of it to your work, your clinic, your patients,and most importantly, to yourself.

larry@physicaltherapist.com