Tag Archives: Business

In My Hands Today…

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How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors That Determine the Fate of Every Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration and Everything In Between – Bent Flyvbjerg, Dan Gardner

Nothing is more inspiring than a big vision that becomes a triumphant, new reality. Think of how the Empire State Building went from a sketch to the jewel of New York’s skyline in twenty-one months, or how Apple’s iPod went from a project with a single employee to a product launch in eleven months.

These are wonderful stories. But most of the time big visions turn into nightmares. Remember Boston’s “Big Dig”? Almost every sizeable city in the world has such a fiasco in its backyard. In fact, no less than 92% of megaprojects come in over budget or over schedule, or both. The cost of California’s high-speed rail project soared from $33 billion to $100 billon—and won’t even go where promised. More modest endeavors, whether launching a small business, organizing a conference, or just finishing a work project on time, also commonly fail. Why?

Understanding what distinguishes the triumphs from the failures has been the life’s work of Oxford professor Bent Flyvbjerg, dubbed “the world’s leading megaproject expert.” In How Big Things Get Done, he identifies the errors in judgment and decision-making that lead projects, both big and small, to fail, and the research-based principles that will make you succeed with yours. For example:

  • Understand your odds. If you don’t know them, you won’t win.
  • Plan slow, act fast. Getting to the action quick feels right. But it’s wrong.
  • Think right to left. Start with your goal, then identify the steps to get there.
  • Find your Lego. Big is best built from small.
  • Be a team maker. You won’t succeed without an “us.”
  • Master the unknown unknowns. Most think they can’t, so they fail. Flyvbjerg shows how you can.
  • Know that your biggest risk is you.

Full of vivid examples ranging from the building of the Sydney Opera House, to the making of the latest Pixar blockbusters, to a home renovation in Brooklyn gone awry, How Big Things Get Done reveals how to get any ambitious project done—on time and on budget.

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The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives – Ernest Scheyder

Tough choices loom if the world wants to go green. The United States and other countries must decide where and how to procure the materials that make our renewable energy economy possible. To build electric vehicles, solar panels, cell phones, and millions of other devices means the world must dig more mines to extract lithium, copper, cobalt, rare earths, and nickel. But mines are deeply unpopular, even as they have a role to play in fighting climate change. These tensions have sparked a worldwide reckoning over the sourcing of these critical minerals, and no one understands the complexities of these issues better than Ernest Scheyder, whose exclusive access has allowed him to report from the front lines on the key players in this global battle to power our future.

This is not a story of tree-hugging activists, but rather of industry titans, scientists, and policymakers jostling over how best to save the planet. Scheyder explores how a proposed lithium mine in Nevada would help global automakers slash their dependance on fossil fuels, but developing that mine could cause the extinction of a flower found nowhere else on the planet. A hedge fund manager’s attempt to resuscitate rare earths mining in California relies on Chinese expertise, exposing the paradox in Washington’s quest for minerals independence. The fight to end child labor in Africa’s mining sector is a key reason, supporters contend, to dig out a vast reserve of cobalt and nickel under Minnesota’s vulnerable wetlands. An international mining conglomerate’s plan to extract copper for electric vehicles deep beneath Arizona’s desert would destroy a Native American holy site, fueling tough questions about what matters more.

In The War Below , Scheyder crafts a business story that matters to everyone. If China continues to dominate production of these critical minerals, it will have a profound impact on the geopolitical order. Beyond China, countries such as Bolivia, Indonesia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo aim to wield their vast reserves of key minerals. There are no easy answers when it comes to energy. Scheyder paints a powerfully honest and nuanced picture of what is needed to fight climate change and secure energy independence, revealing how America and the rest of the world’s hunt for the “new oil” directly affects us all.

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Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well – Amy C. Edmondson

We used to think of failure as the opposite of success. Now, we’re often torn between two “failure cultures”: one that says to avoid failure at all costs, the other that says fail fast, fail often. The trouble is that both approaches lack the crucial distinctions to help us separate good failure from bad. As a result, we miss the opportunity to fail well.

After decades of award-winning research, Amy Edmondson is here to upend our understanding of failure and make it work for us. In Right Kind of Wrong, Edmondson provides the framework to think, discuss, and practice failure wisely. Outlining the three archetypes of failure—simple, complex, and intelligent—Amy showcases how to minimize unproductive failure while maximizing what we gain from flubs of all stripes. She illustrates how we and our organizations can embrace our human fallibility, learn exactly when failure is our friend, and prevent most of it when it is not. This is the key to pursuing smart risks and preventing avoidable harm.

With vivid, real-life stories from business, pop culture, history, and more, Edmondson gives us specifically tailored practices, skills, and mindsets to help us replace shame and blame with curiosity, vulnerability, and personal growth. You’ll never look at failure the same way again.

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The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore – Evan Friss

Bookstores have always been unlike any other kind of store, shaping readers and writers, and influencing our tastes, thoughts, and politics. They nurture local communities while creating new ones of their own. Bookshops are powerful spaces, but they are also endangered ones. In The Bookshop, we see those stakes: what has been, and what might be lost.

Evan Friss’s history of the bookshop draws on oral histories, archival collections, municipal records, diaries, letters, and interviews with leading booksellers to offer a fascinating look at this institution beloved by so many. The story begins with Benjamin Franklin’s first bookstore in Philadelphia and takes us to a range of booksellers including The Strand, Chicago’s Marshall Field & Company, Gotham Book Mart, specialty stores like Oscar Wilde and Drum and Spear, sidewalk sellers of used books, Barnes & Noble, Amazon Books, and Parnassus. The Bookshop is also a history of the leading figures in American bookselling, often impassioned eccentrics, and a history of how books have been marketed and sold over more than two centuries—including, for example, a 3,000-pound elephant who appeared to sign books at Marshall Field’s in 1944.

The Bookshop is a love letter to bookstores, a charming chronicle for anyone who cherishes these sanctuaries of literature, and essential reading to understand how these vital institutions have shaped American life—and why we still need them.

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The PARA Method: Simplify, Organize, and Master Your Digital Life – Tiago Forte

Living a modern life requires juggling a ton of information. But we were never taught how to manage this information effectively so that we can find what we need when we need it. In The PARA Method , Tiago Forte outlines a simple and intuitive four-step system that will help us sort all the information flooding our brains into four major categories—Projects, Areas, Resources, and Archives—allowing us to manage our commitments while achieving our goals and dreams.

  • P rojects are specific, short-term efforts that you are actively working on with a certain goal in mind, such as completing a website or renovating your bathroom.
  • A reas are the larger, ongoing areas of responsibility (health, finances, etc.) that encompass those specific projects.
  • R esources include content on a range of topics you’re interested in or that could be useful for your projects and areas.
  • A rchives include anything from the previous three categories that is now inactive, but you want to save for future reference.

With his easy-to-understand and engaging voice, Forte outlines his best practices and tips on how to successfully implement PARA, along with deep dives on everything from how to adopt habits to stay organized to how to use this system to enhance your focus. The PARA Method can be implemented in just seconds but has the power to transform the trajectory of your work and life using the power of digital organization.