To be quite honest, the name David Lynch is one that merely rang a bell, I wasn’t too familiar with any of his films, and the closest I had gotten to his work was out of a recommendation from an old friend to watch Twin Peaks, a recommendation I got, as some would say, in a previous life. I’ve been meditating for quite some time - if you follow me or know me closely you likely have already and repeatedly heard my thoughts on mindfulness and meditation as indispensable elements towards realizing one’s own potential.

The innovator’s dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen is another one of those books that have become obligatory reading in Silicon Valley circles. The author looks at a handful of industries that have gone through multiple cycles of technological disruption, and attempts to identify what was it about some companies that allowed them to survive, while the majority, once exposed to such dramatic change, failed to adapt and succumbed. There were quite a few concepts exposed by Christensen that triggered my curiosity in terms of technological evolution, regarding organizational elasticity, and of course the controversial concept that doing the right thing might be the cause of your demise.

You are much less in control than you think We love to think we’re in control, actually, up to a certain extent we must to think that way, in order to live our life reasonably adjusted and with some ability to plan into the future. What if we were not that much in control? What if all the news we read, and the reasons we come to believe are causes to events that occur, are really just an illusion that we create to make sense of things in a world that is simply randomness unfolding?

I’ve already said it before, some books just seem to find you at the right time. David Goggins’s life has not been ordinary, from a very troubled childhood to achieving seemingly super human feats of endurance and strength, he has proven that the limits you think you have, are mostly in your mind. I can’t quite remember how I learned about Can’t hurt me, what I can tell you is that it came to me at a very critical point in time.

Being mentored by Intel’s CEO I’ve yet to have the opportunity of being mentored, of being taken under the wing of somebody I aspire to, someone who, demonstrating the skills of a honed leader, empowers me and gives me the perspective of a life of experiences, successes and failures. I’d really love to find that, even closing in on 40 years and having made good progress in my career. The closest I’ve gotten so far to having such an experience is through reading.

Culture eats strategy for breakfast The quote above comes from Peter Drucker, “the founder of modern management”, a brilliant thinker that left us with abundant theory on how to succeed in building and running a business. Business, and any other human endeavor for the most part, can be reduced to a very simple pattern: “groups of people working together”. This basic tenet speaks volumes on the relevance of understanding and dedicating targeted effort towards enabling those groups of people to efficiently work as a collective.

There’s a lot of capacity being wasted How would you feel if I told you, give me $100 and I’ll give you $20 back, and nothing else? Or think about purchasing a car capable of going 200MPH but it will be capped at 40MPH? This is precisely the situation many leaders within organizations produce every day! Now, think about it in the other direction - wouldn’t it be great if I told you, give me $100, and I’ll give you $200.

A guidebook for the challenges of the founder-CEO Most people in the technology industry know who Ben Horowitz is. Founding partner at a16z, he’s been involved with most of the technology companies I’m sure you engage day to day, from Facebook to Twitter to AirBnb. But he didn’t choose the VC life by chance, he did so after living the challenging and sometimes nerve wrecking life of the founder CEO.

A before, and an after Overwhelming, pivotal, life changing. Those words merely begin to describe the wisdom condensed in two small books, wisdom that has come to redefine my views on leadership, on people and myself. The impact of the work of Max de Pree on two of his books, Leadership is an Art and Leadership Jazz was a surprise to me, not often do you run into words that are transformative and that redefine the vision of what it means to become that which you’ve always wanted to become.

What does it take for a company to excel? I’m sure if you were to ask most people: what do you consider critical to guarantee revenue and client satisfaction in a corporation?, most of them would likely think in terms of “a great product”, or “a customer first vision”. Those responses would not be wrong, they are certainly components of what success in business requires. What First, Break All The Rules shows is that, as much as you can have that great vision and product, a key component to business success lies at a much more ground level.