What I Read in 2012

The Goal

One of my recurring annual goals is to finish reading at least 26 books for the year. In 2012, I managed to finish 36. Although, 6 of those were lighter reads. So maybe I should discount those and bring it down to 30. In any event, I exceeded my goal. The full list is below.

Reviews

Some of the titles will look familiar since I gave them a longer write up here on Compliance Building. I also mentioned a few on Wired.com’s GeekDad and my personal blog. There are links that will take you to my reviews.

GoodReads versus LibraryThing

I’m still tracking my books in two parallel systems.  Library Thing has a superior platform for cataloging books. GoodReads has a better platform for interacting with other readers, sharing reviews, and sharing booklists. Each has their strengths and weaknesses. I’d like to jettison one of them to quit duplicating efforts. So far, neither one has made a compelling move to improve and elbow the other out of the way.

2012 Reading List

Title Author Rating
How: Why How We Do Anything Means Everything
Dov Seidman ***
Review
Defending Jacob: A Novel
William Landay ****
Review
The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways Earl Swift ***
Review
Ten Tea Parties: Patriotic Protests That History Forgot Joseph Cummins **
A Dance with Dragons: A Song of Ice and Fire: Book Five George R.R. Martin ****
Why the Law Is So Perverse
Leo Katz **
Review
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business
Charles Duhigg *****
Review
A Visit from the Goon Squad Jennifer Egan *****
The Richer Sex: How the New Majority of Female Breadwinners Is Transforming Sex, Love and Family
Liza Mundy ****
Review
Eden on the Charles: The Making of Boston
Michael Rawson ****
Review
The Walking Dead, Book 7 Robert Kirkman *****
Ruin Nation: Destruction and the American Civil War Megan Kate Nelson ****
Catching Fire (The Hunger Games, Book 2) Suzanne Collins **
Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, Book 3) Suzanne Collins **
Show Time
Phil Harvey **
Review
The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt
T.J. Stiles ****Review
Cutting-Edge Cycling Hunter Allen ****
Gone Girl Gillian Flynn *****
Pines Blake Crouch ****
Amazing Gracie: A Dog’s Tale Dan Dye ***
The Age of Miracles Karen Thompson Walker ****
Sharp Objects Gillian Flynn ***
Already Gone John Rector ***
Nine Steps to Sara Lisa Olsen **
The Walking Dead, Book 8 Robert Kirkman *****
The American Alpine Journal 2012 John III Harlin ****
Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author,Who Went in Search of Them Donovan Hohn ****
Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End Manel Loureiro ***
The Dead Room Robert Ellis ***
Make Magic! Do Good!
Dallas Clayton *****
Review
xkcd: volume 0 Randall Munroe *****
Save Yourself, Mammal!: A Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal Collection Zach Weinersmith *****

The Physics of Wall Street: A Brief History of Predicting the Unpredictable
James Owen Weatherall ****
Review
The Most Dangerous Game: A Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal Collection Zach Weinersmith *****
The Remaining D.J. Molles ***

No-Man’s Lands: One Man’s Odyssey Through The Odyssey
Scott Huler *****
Review

Why How We Do Anything Means Everything

An acquaintance in the compliance field sent me a copy of Dov Seidman’s How and I let it sit around  for months. (My “To Read” stack has grown very tall.)  I assumed How was vanity book and would rattle on and on about Seidman’s company: LRN. I recently moved and my “To Read” stack was tumbled around in a plain cardboard box.  How resurfaced in the stack and I noticed the forward was by President Bill Clinton. That was enough to catch my eye.

Seidman spends the first half of the book talking about transparency, trust, reputation, and the new inter-connected world. He does a fine job with these topics, but I’ve seen them handled better elsewhere. The second half of the book, which focuses more on Seidman’s philosophy of business, is when the book becomes more valuable.

Seidman highlights an empirical study about reputation using eBay’s seller reputation information. Chrysanthos Dellarocas used eBay as an experiment. In a study selling the same product, in the same way, through eBay sellers with different levels in the site’s reputation scores, the researchers found a measurable difference in price. A seller with a high reputation on average would get a measurable price premium over a seller who did not.

As you might expect, the book is full of stories as examples. One that really caught my eye was the description of four factories as examples of four types of corporate culture. The factories are to be toured and the measuring stick is the use of hard hats. At the first factory, one of lawlessness and anarchy, the factory tour guide does not offer hard hats to the visitors and many workers are seen without hard hats. At the second factory, an example of blind obedience, all workers wear hard hats and the tour guide says everyone has to wear one or they get fired. The tour guide admits that he doesn’t know why he needs to wear it or why the boss also makes him wear blue pants.

The third factory is the next step up the corporate culture ladder as an example of informed acquiescence. Hard hats are there for everyone with big signs saying everyone must wear one. But when one member of the tour group asks to be excused from wearing one, the tour guide scampers off trying to find a higher-up to approve the lack of a hard hat.

At the top of the corporate culture is the fourth factory, an example of Seidman’s self-governance. The tour guide insists that everyone wears a hard hat and when that same member of the tour group asks to be excused the tour guide says no. “I take personal responsibility for what happens to you. I don’t want to offend you, and you can call my boss or the owner if you like, but I believe your safety and the safety of everyone are paramount. “

The how of culture is broken into five parts: how we know, how we behave, how we relate, how we recognize, and how we pursue.

One common theme in the book is an indictment of a rules-based culture. Rules-makers “chase human ingenuity, which races along generally complying with the rules while blithely creating new behaviors that exist outside of them.” The example that caught my eye was the clerk who insisted on wearing ties with cartoon characters. His bosses fought him and finally insisted that he obey the rules on permissible neckwear. The clerk acquiesced and showed up the next day with Tasmanian Devil suspenders.

Ultimately, a rules-based governance focuses on the things you can’t do, while a values-based governance focuses on what is desirable.

This ends up with Seidman’s Leadership Framework. I think that is better left for more to readers of the book.

If this sounds interesting to you, I ended up with a second copy of How. Rahter than have it sitting on my bookshelf, I want to share it with one of my readers. If you are interested, leave a comment on this blog post or send an email to [email protected]. I’ll pick a winner on February 1.

The Power of How presentation by Dov Seidman

LRN published the transcript of a presentation by Dov Seidman at the Center for Business Ethics at Bentley University: The Power of How: Achieving Enduring Success Through Ethics.

Basically, in a world in which nothing stays hidden, you have to act as if you have nothing to hide. But before you can act as though you have nothing to hide, in fact, you must have nothing to hide. There is an opportunity to literally out-behave your competition. You might not be able to answer a phone faster. You might not be able to create an anti-tampering device and market your bottled water on the basis of that device, because all the manufacturers of bottled water have that nailed down. But you can out-behave someone.