Tag: BookReview

Netflix is an excellent company. The streaming giant has over 200 million subscribers and has grown so rapidly even during the pandemic. They are producing high-quality movies and TV shows and it is also a production company now. Netflix was founded in 1997 in Scotts Valley, California by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph as a DVD rental service company.

Why is Netflix different? It is because they have No Rules Rules. I leave some notes of what I found interesting while reading this book.

1. Great Workplace is Stunning Colleagues

One of story I have learnt in this chapter is Netflix care very much about the density of talent. After the company had to lay off a third of their workforce, they found they actually did far better with 30% fewer people. The company observed top dense top talented people can do much better, however, when mediocre (jerks, slackers, sweet people with nonstellar performance, or pessimists) joins the team, they push all down to the average. Their number one goal, moving forward, would be to do everything they could to retain the talent density and all the great things that come with it.

2. Say What You Really Think (with Positive intent)

Netflix culture welcomes very much feedback from colleagues. Openly voicing opinions and feedback, instead of whispering behind one another’s back reduced the backstabbing and politics, constructive feedback allows them to be faster. The more people heard what they could do better, the better everyone got at their jobs done, the better they performed as a company.

When we consider giving feedback, people often feel torn between two competing issues, they don’t want to hurt the recipient’s feeling, yes they want to help that person succeed. The goal at Netflix is to help each other succeed, even if that means feeling occasionally get hurt. More importantly, they have found that in the right environment, with the right approach, they can give feedback without hurting feelings.

So, we have to learn how to give constructive feedback as described in the book. In principle, we need to learn to give and receive feedback well to succeed together and well. There is 4A feedback guidelines: 1. Aim to assist, 2. Actionable, 3. Appreciate, 4. Accept or Discard.

3. a. Remove Vacation Policy

Leaders must model big vacation taking. Even the company suggest the employee take vacations but their boss doesn’t take them, the employees are influenced. so leaders have to lead to take the vacations. Netflix doesn’t track vacation days, so there is no data on how much vacation employees are taking. Giving employees more freedom led them to take more ownership and behave more responsibly.

3. b Rmove travel and expense approvals

Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings says “Spend company money as if it were your own”. It is a great idea every employee could control the company money as their own however some employees are frugal but some employees like spending very much. That depends. Then, employees need to think about they are using the company money for Netflix’s best interest. Some people still cheat. So some expenses may increase with freedom, but the costs from overspending are not nearly as high as the gains that freedom provides. The responsible employees move faster with more creativity. The great gains are free, fast, and surprisingly frugal.

4. Pay top of personal market

There is a concept referred to as the “rock-star principle” which is rooted in a famous study in 1968. In the group of nine programmers who were in the experiment, the best guy was twenty times faster at coding, twenty-five times faster at debugging and ten times faster at program execution than the programmer with the lowest marks. That’s why some software giant pays so well to retain top-level programmers. Reed’s experience also says the best programmer doesn’t add ten times the value, she/he adds more like a hundred times. Since the main reason workers quit their current job is “For more money”, if you need to retain top talents, you should pay it well. And bonuses or incentives are not a good idea, just raise the basic salary. Teach employees to develop their networks and to invest time in getting to their own team. Research market value of top talent on an ongoing basis and adjust salaries accordingly. Netflix wants to pay what will attract and keep talent.

5. Open the books

Netflix has a culture of transparency. They open up the books to their employees. They teach employees how to read P&L. So they can make better decisions. If open up the books, it could some anxiety and destruction, but the trust they have built outweighed the disadvantage.

6. No decision making approval needed

Don’t seek to please your boss. Seek to do what is best for the company.

The Netflix Innovation Cycle -> If you have an idea you are passionate about, do the following: 1. Farm for dissent or socialize the idea. 2. For a big idea, test it out. 3. As the informed captain, make your bet. 4. If it succeeds, celebrate. If it fails, sunshine it.

7. The Keepers test

We are a team, not a family.

If a person on your team were to quit tomorrow, would you try to keep she/he or accept a resignation letter? If the letter, you should give a severance package now. You should look for a star, someone you would fight to keep. The Keeper test.

Avoid stack ranking system, the system can create internal competition and discourage collaboration.

8. Circle of feedback

This chapter talks about their Open 360 Feedback. Netflix embraces high talent density but they don’t accept brilliant jerks. That was an interesting point. I used to think some good scientists are brilliant jerks, but now I think they are not first-class talented people. If you have a high talent density without brilliant jerks, the circulation of feedback allows the company and employees to grow much faster.

9. Lead with context, not controll

If your focus is on eliminating mistakes, then control is best. If you are in a safety-critical market, its sites need hundreds of safety procedures to minimize the risk of people getting hurt. The control mechanisms are a necessity. However, if your goal is innovation, making mistakes is not the primary risk, if you have got high-performance employees, leading with context is best.

When one of your people does something dumb Don’t blame them. Instead, ask yourself what context you failed to set. Are you articulate and inspiring enough in expressing your goals and strategy? Have you clearly explained all the assumptions and risks that will help your team to make good decisions? Are you and your employees high aligned on vision and objectives?

10. Bring it all to the world

This chapter was also an interesting one. Even Netflix has expanded so rapidly and worldwide, they are still a good company as a whole. I can imagine that was not an easy job to create a great working environment around the world where they have different cultural backgrounds. This chapter shows some experiences in Netflix and the cultural map they made through that. It was great to see they could map out to analyze the culture of the countries they are working on.

In conclusion, I enjoyed reading this book, I learned a lot from this book. There are some of the ideas I can try from tomorrow. Hope I can be a good member of a team with high performance from tomorrow.

The nudge final edition was very insightful and fun to read. I remember the time, more than 10 years ago, when behaviour economics got popular. I was very impressed and fascinated by the ideas. But for the nudge, I had not read by now and I regret it now. I believe this book is the result of accumulated knowledge of the field. I felt I am lucky to read the book. I have used the ideas in the book by myself but I should have known better. I could have done much better to architect my choice. I can’t digest all the ideas in this book all at once so I will read this book again. I leave some notes here to remember.

There are a lot of chances we can use nudge ourselves, an example in the introduction is the school cafeteria. The school could make more money by architecting students’ choices better however should the should maximize the profit even by making students less healthy? We could choose to nudge the student to make them more healthy by organizing how to get the foods properly, by architecting their choices.

There are several ideas I have learnt this time,

Loss aversion (1: Biases and Blunders): We like profit but we hate loss. There is an asymmetry here. We are happy when our stocks go up but we panicked when the stocks go down. I knew it but the book tells us that loss aversion can be used as a nudge. So if you want to discourage the use of plastic bags, should you give people a small amount of money for bringing their own reusable bag, or should you ask them to pay the same small amount of money for a plastic bag? Yes, the latter works!

The single most common mistake (4: When do we need a nudge): We are a choice architect. We are trying to decide how to design the choice environment, what kind of nudge is to offer and how subtle the nudge should be. What do we need to know is the best possible choice environment. However, perhaps, the single most common mistake any of us make is just forgetting something, as if this is a self-control problem. This is a great reminder of reminding people. People just sometimes forget it is OK for us just remind them to make sure they remember. I sometimes need to remind my collaborators to submit proposals to us before the deadline, maybe a week before the deadline! Since I am the one who cares most about the number of proposals to be submitted, reminding my users to submit for us can be a good nudge. People would just say “Oh, thanks for reminding me, I was gonna submit”

Omakase (4: When do we need a nudge): At a sushi bar, a tradition is to let a chef decides what you eat. Just ask for Omakase. You might get what you have never thought and you will eat well. It is particularly hard for people to make a decision when they have trouble translating the choice they face into the experience they will have. So making decisions is a hard job, even choosing music, so streaming music services got so popular. We don’t need to choose what music we should listen to.

#Sludge (8: #Sludge): Learning sludge is also an important thing. Many organizations appear to make this asymmetry between the ease of joining and the pain of leaving an important part of their business model. In the U.S., gyms and cable companies are notorious practitioners of this strategy. Some gyms required members to come to the gym in person if they wanted to cancel their membership that is a sludge. If the business subscription is easy to get by clicking a button but to cancel it you need to make a phone call and submit the signed document, that is a sludge. So we should be aware of them.

From Chapter 9 -12, the book is talking about money. Chapter 9, how to save money better for later in our lives, such as pensions. Let’s make savings automated, so you don’t need to think about it. Chapter 10, how do we build up a portfolio? People often chose a default fund provided and stick to like forever. Chapter 11 is about borrowing money like credit cards and mortgages. Chapter 12 is about insurance. The money is important for us, however I can imagine how much we avoid thinking seriously about these things. I have to nudge myself to make decisions better, I have learnt so much from each chapter.

Chapters 13 and 14 are talking about social problems. Chapter 13 is about organ donation. It is a difficult decision how society or country currently architect people’s choices about organ donations. Chapter 14 is about climate change, everyone has the same goal but it is not easy to reach. “If the goal is to make the environment cleaner, a simple idea is to make the green option the easy option. And if the goal is to make it really easy, make it automatic”. These two chapters are difficult problems to solve. By examining these problems seriously, we can find what we value.

Chapter 15, I believe the authors are trying to explain where, when and how the nudge can help us. That chapter was for showing their standpoint about the nudge by answering critiques they have gotten since the first edition of the nudge was published. I like this chapter because the authors explain what the nudge is and their philosophy on the nudge. There is someplace where mandates, bans, taxes, economic incentives make a lot of sense. However, while we keep our freedom of choice, a well-designed choice architect can achieve a lot.

I have learnt a lot by reading this book. Even I read this book a week ago, there are some ideas I keep thinking about. I want to make a better decision so I will keep coming back to this book to see what I can do.

I have read this book because I wanted to know what is happening in China. Michael Smith is a north Asia correspondent of Australian Financial Review and he is currently based in Tokyo. I am grateful for him reporting his experiences in China. I like to visit China if I have a chance after this pandemic.

I have been to China three times in my life, the first time is sometime maybe 20 years ago in Beijing for a high school trip. I remember I brought some Chinese yuan and that was big money for Chinese people at that time. I enjoyed negotiating what to buy at shops in the street for souvenirs which I could not do in Japan. I remember several places I visited and friends I was with. Also, there is a picture of me being with my friend. I remember I wore a Chinese dress, it was a boys school, we were kidding around. The 2nd time is for an international conference in Beijing in 2011. I was a PhD student at that time. I enjoyed going there. I remember on the first day, my laptop was broken and I went to some Sony shop somewhere in Beijing to get it fixed. I went to Macdonald there to eat my lunch. I was lucky I had the laptop fixed by the end of the day. I am grateful to the hotel manager and the sony engineer for helping me out. The third time, I went to Shengyang for a workshop that my friend hold in his institute in 2019. It is supposed to have the workshop every year after that, but it does not happen because of the pandemic.

In this book, Michael Smith writes about his experience especially in 2018 – 2020. He writes about Xingjian, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the beginning of the pandemic, how he left China and so on. The western media and Chinese media could have their stories as always. The information in this book could be getting old since the book is published. However, writing like his personal memoir helps me to feel better about what happened there. I enjoyed his writing. To be honest, he didn’t write much about his view or opinion on that book, I see he writes his observations based on his experiences. So you don’t get more information you can get from the news however if you want to get the feeling of a journalist being there, you can get it from this book. I will recommend reading this book.

China is a big country it is hard to grasp at a glance. I want to travel there to see more. I am especially interested in going to Chongqing sometime in near future. It looks very beautiful there. Now, Michael Smith is in Tokyo, I want to expect him to write something more about Japan.

This is one of book I should have read earlier. I found this book my wish list on my kindle. I personally admire myself not having thrown away this from my wish list. I decided to buy this book because I was interested in “listening” in general these days. I was thinking I wasn’t listening to the other people’s thinking and talking. The book is consist of two part, one is interview of a conductor and the other is the author adapt what he learned to his business. Unfortunately, the business part is redundant and less information.

I was interested listening because I believe the person who listens always is smarter than who speaks. If he has, let’s say, knowledge = 1, if he talks all the time to people, his knowledge would be still 1. But, if he listens, then he would get more than 1 + alpha. Even he did not learn anything from listening, but we can still keep 1 with deeper understanding. I know listening is better than speaking. But, the problem is “am (was) I listening to people talking, really?” Listening is always chance to learn more but I was feeling I needed to listen to their talk more.

As a musician, I am not a good listener. I actually am dumb. That’s why I am not good at music. But, I would like to listen to music better. I believe having good ears is most critical part of talent to be a good musician. So I really wanted to know this.

A great conductor leads orchestra by listening. He does not order to play. How that works? By the way, orchestra consists of best musicians. They can play perfect without the conductor. So, the question is why they need conductor. You can find out from this book yourself. But what I found on this book are three things mainly.

One is the great performance happens when both musician’s and conductor’s motivation spring at same level. The conductor’s job is to create the environment where that happens. The second one is some musicians are busy, others are not. Yet all of this is coordinated with pinpoint precision. That is not easy to achieve. The musicians have to expand their awareness in both time and space. The third one is the role of conductor is to lead each musicians to play what they have never played. So he needs to understand composition very well. And then, they are challenging and motivating musicians to the music has never been played before by listening.

The scene I particularly like is the way he teaches conducting. The conductor let student conduct orchestra and then he does after. When he finishes the same passage and turned to student and says to him,

Conductor “So what was the difference? Could you hear it?”
Student “I heard it for sure but I can’t say how you did it”
Conductors “Well, let’s try to understand this.”

The conductor is very thoughtful. He is a great thinker. He really tries to explain how he is thinking about the music he achieves. The conductor study music very well. He knows of course the music very well, but so do musicians. That’s 21th century music.

It’s time to find ticket to listen orchestra. I can listen to music better and more enjoyable now.

I would love to thank God, give me a chance to take this book. And I seemed I was ready to enjoy reading this book. Bill Bryson describes the science from Big bang to Life. I am very impressed by this book and him. I am excited, I am not sure, how hard I have to learn to write this level of book. But, I am excited now.

You can enjoy each topic, carefully chosen and its good introduction in this book. He is good at writing motivate you read the topic. Actually, this book is relatively long, like 500 pages. But this writing is very inspiring. You will realize you read faster than you usually do.

I just am excited to read. Many physicists have been contributing to the science. A lot of geniuses were there our history. Each big innovation in science sometimes is not triumphant in short term but beautiful in long term. Sometime I am struggling for science not to have enough achievement though, I can see my work in long term now. Even if I do my best today but end up nothing today, I have tomorrow to pursuit as long as God gives me. I need to be careful to go up each scientific process, but I don’t need to be trapped by them. When I am tired, when I feel failing, I could see long term. Let’s challenge tomorrow again.

So as a scientist, I have 2 things I am pursuing. One is the study of magnetism. The other is development of experimental techniques.

The magnetism: In short, the physicists who are working for magnetism are trying to answer two questions. One is “What is the magnetic structure like?” The other is “Why is the magnetic structure?” There are many kind of magnetic structure though. I will use two of them here. The ferromagnetism which is every spin aligned in the same direction in the material, antferromagnet in which every spin aligned alternately in the material and we have several more kind of magnetic structures. Once we know the structure of magnet, the next thing we would love to know is why they aligned like this? To know this we hit one of spin in the material and make wave. By looking close at this wave we could know how the spins are connected.

Neutron scattering experiment techniques: I am using neutron scattering to study magnetism. Neutron is very useful study of material. Since neutron has no charge and so small. So it can penetrate inside of materials. And also neutron have spin, this spin have interaction with the spin in the material. Because, the spin is the source of magnetism, neutron can be strong tool to study magnet directly. I am also responsible for the development of experimental techniques. The neutron scattering has almost 80 years of history. However, we have still lot of things to do.

I am excited to read this book. Of course, I am a professional scientist. My first responsibility is to find out the origin of magnet by using neutron scattering techniques. But, I realized, I also want to know the history of this science. Like a puzzle game, what part of pieces I am going to fill for the collection of knowledge of science. And then, I would love to pass on the map for the next generation. I am enjoying science now. I really love to do that.

This book was written in 1989 by Bill Emmott who was Tokyo bureau chief of the economist. It is said that this book anticipated the bubble economy happened to Japan in 1989. At that time, He pointed out the problem Japan had that people overlooked. As Japanese, I have complex feeling because he pointed out everything very clearly. Why couldn’t Japanese do this? It may be because the people believed what the people wanted to believe.

And also when I was reading this book, I am not thinking about Japan. It seems there are a lot of similar problems are happening in China. And there is also difference, China also is ageing though, the problem is they are not rich enough to start aging society. To be honest, I can’t believe statistic from China but some says the fertility rate in China is 1.18, and too many man compare to the number of women because of one child policy. People want a boy for first born child because he has to run their family. The aging in China is much faster than that of Japan. I know how hard this aging society because Japan is now facing. I don’t know how China will be able to fix this. Also, there are a lot of promising things in their future, I would love to talk this later.

I believe that Bill Emott is brilliant. Unfortunately and surprisingly, he explained very well Japanese society and economy. Many things he pointed out became true in Japan, such as the problem about women work force, aging society, Japanese as reluctant to leader, and so on. Almost every problem, we are facing now was pointed out this book already. Why couldn’t Japanese fix these?

So then, I am very angry with the older generation of Japanese. A lot of problems he pointed out have never been solved. They just left this problem for our generation because they didn’t take things seriously. But, I want to change. I would never run away from the problem we are facing now. Our generation will stop this.

While honestly speaking, I believe Japanese can manage many problems described in this book. I am an optimist and I think Japanese can fix almost all problems, except this aging society. This is biggest problem in Japan.  There are several options to save, Japan should do everything. Frist step we could do is raising up fertility rate, we need to set up the society women are comfortable for working and having children. The second step is immigrant. Japanese is not taking immigrant officially, but the government started.

However, I am not sure immigrant policy is good for Japan. I don’t think immigrant policy in like Canada and Australia went well. I believe ever the U.S has a lot of problems with immigrant. But, basically the immigrant policy in the U.S. is working well, that is one of reasons the U.S. is strong. They can collect world’s best talents. Talents want to go to the U.S., because they have chances, they have opportunities, they have education, and they might get investment.

I hope that Chinese people are reading this, if they don’t and they are arrogant enough to believe they are doing well. That is relief for Japanese people. We don’t need to be afraid of rising of China. Because we know what would happen and the problem we are working now, we can do business to fix because we will already have already fixed that problem. To avoid, please read this, Chinese people!!

This is the memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew who became prime minister of Singapore in 1959 at 35 years old, Cambridge educated, and third generation of immigrant from China to Singapore. Singapore has been lucky enough to have this man on their country. He is strong, diligent, smart, open minded, reliable leader and a man of vision. I have any doubt Singapore is one of most competitive countries in the world because of him and the people.

He talks about what he had done to Singapore, and then talks about the relation between Singapore and the countries and their leaders. When I read this, I was thinking whether or not I could be prime minister by 35 years old. Most people might say “please wait”, I would say “please wait”, but he did. Of course I am scientist, I don’t need to be a politician but why shouldn’t I learn this attitude how we could contribute our own country. The country which lost this kind of men has to obsolete.

Since I am Japanese, I was interested in the section talking about Japan.  I realized that we young generation of Japanese had to take over everything from the older generation of Japanese whatever they had done good or bad.

For the bad side, I was reluctant to believe what Japanese had done to Asian countries. The cruel and brutal Japanese army had threaten to and beaten Asian people. Lee Kuan Yew says we did not apologize. I disagree with this though, at least this book changed something what I had believed.

On the other hand, for the good side, we could take over the richness the older generation left us. And I am proud of Japanese who came back from full of ashes in our country caused by air raid and nuclear bomb. Japanese have complex feeling for American about this. And also Japan has invested a lot to Asian countries to industrialize the country. Lee Kuan Yew was insightful enough to ask Japanese industrialize, not give soft loan to Singapore. Singapore had succeeded, and then Asians realized the value of training and knowledge, and were more likely to cooperate with Singapore and Japan.

Sometimes I say to Asian people, we should see the future of ours, that’s why we are here. We are here to create. That is the only thing we could do for now instead of complaining each other. At least, we are not complaining American anymore. I personally am responsible for the development of Asian physics. I am happy to serve the Asian physics when they need me. I promise I will do my best.

Unfortunately, I found this book at used book store and it was sold at just $1. Do you believe this? If many Japanese don’t read this book, Japanese shouldn’t have right to lead Asian countries. Japanese, please read. Not only this book, we have to read a lot more. I believe the strength of Japanese and the quality of education to survive this global world as Lee Kuan Yew believes us.

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: Read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.”

I have nothing to say more. Fortunately, I love to read and I would love to write. So I just could enjoy it. But, I try to read a lot more. To achieve this, one thing I do is keep the record about what I read. As for writing, I am trying to write this blog, 500 words for a post.

“I suggest a thousand words a day, and because I’m feeling magnanimous, I’ll also suggest that you can take one day a week off, at least to begin with. No more; you’ll lose the urgency and immediacy of you story if you do.”

This suggestion would help a lot of writers. I am writing 1000 words. I am just writing something not story just for me. I think it is important to build the habit of writing at first, and then I will care more about quality of writing.

“Description is what makes the reader a sensory participant in the story. Good description is learned skill, one of the prime reasons why you cannot succeed unless you read a lot and write a lot. It’s not just a question of how-to, you see; it’s also a question of how much to. Reading will help you answer how much, and only reams of writing will help you with the how. You can learn only by doing.”

So then, good description is learned skill. For now, I could just enjoy writing and reading. But, one thing I have to promise is, even though I feel I have nothing to write and I am afraid of making mistake, I will keep write. I will read a lot, write a lot and never stop writing. I don’t know but I think I can because I am enjoying writing.

“The key to good description begins with clear seeing and ends with clear writing.”

I understand this. When I was writing paper, I could not write well if I don’t have clear picture of physics. We have to have clear ideas what to write and then you have to figure out how we can explain it to readers. If we are excited what to say,  we would care how we can make people understand.

“Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It’s about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, O.K.? Getting happy.”

 Remember. Why are you writing? I am writing for fun and for me.

 Some of this book – perhaps too much – has been about how I learned to do it. Much of it has been about how you can do it better. The rest of it – and perhaps the best of it – is ha permission slip; you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will. Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up.

If writing is hobby, that is good, you don’t spend money on that. I will drink as much as I can!!

On writing by Steven King, since I am not native English speaker, I am worse than bad write he mentioned. Even though, I could learn a lot from this book. I am a scientist. I have to be a good writer enough to describe the truth we found to the other scientist and sometime to general people. I will quote sentences from Steven King, which has encouraged me to write more and better.

 “When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story’, “When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story” (This is actually from Gould who is New England humorist or novelist)

When I finish my draft, I usually leave it at least for a day, and then I revise what I write. My first draft usually has a lot of mistakes that I have to avoid. I can find them with fresh eyes when I read next day. And more important, it usually has a lot of unnecessary words and sentences because I am ashamed of writing too little.

 “If you can take it seriously, we can do business. If you can’t or won’t, it’s time for you to close the book and do something else. Wash the car, maybe.”

I am writing. I need to be serious. No, I want to be serious. I want to be better writer because I like it. I do make mistakes and but I will improve. I prefer quantity to quality for now. Only I can do now is keep writing as seriously as I could be.

“Common tools go on top. The commonest of all, the bread of writing, is vocabulary. – – It ain’t how much you’ve got, honey, it’s how you use it.”  

 “Put you vocabulary on the top shelf of your toolbox, and don’t make any conscious effort to improve it. (You will be doing that as you read, of course … but that comes later.) One of the really bad things you can do to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you’re maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones.

When I was a student, beginner in English, I wanted to improve my vocabulary as many as I could. And, I was trying to use difficult words or phrase to impress someone. Yes, I was immature. We don’t need dress up by using the vocabulary we barely know. We just need simple sentences to express our ideas. For vocabulary, I also believe reading would help to improve a lot, not at once, but surely that would happen sometime.

“The subject is just letting it happen; you should avoid the passive tense.”

Mr. William Strunk said so in “the element of style”, and also Mr. William Zinssern wrote in “On writing”. They said the same thing. Think about it. If you have to read passive tense, sometime you need to read back. To let reader’s eyes move forward.

This is not end of book review, I will keep write this review later.

This book was written in 1975 in Japanese by Kenichi Ohame. The American version of this book was published in 1982. He was a chairman of the McKinsey & Company in Japan. He holds a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from MIT. Since I am a scientist too, the way of his thinking are very comfortable for me. I happened to find this book in the used book store in Japan. Guess how much? Just one dollar!! While I was excited to buy, I was wondering what Japanese business men are reading now. What are they doing, while leaving this book at used book store???? They must have the Kindle version of this book, mustn’t they? Otherwise, we will fall “Lost 3 decades”

He was called Mr. Strategy. Even the strongest chess in the world Gary Kasparov referred this book. Anyway, this book consists from three parts, which are the art of strategy thinking, building successful strategy, and modern strategy reality. Even though he used Japanese companies as examples, you can easily adapt this idea. Why not trying?

I am writing this for Japanese business men. Japanese companies have to be innovative companies in this 21th century. I can tolerate if you can’t agree with this approach. That is fine. As Mortimer J. Adler or Charles Van Doren (The author of “How to read a book”) said, either way that you agree or you disagree with the book, you need to understand what exactly the author claims. But, if you don’t read this, you should not be a manager at top level company. Please don’t be.

If you read this 20-25 years old: You are excellent. This book is a little bit earlier for you, but you can try to apply this idea in you dearly life. When you start your work seriously, let’s apply this idea.

25- 30 years old: You are very good. You would be able to a manager in top-leveled company somewhere in the world. Since you are still young, you can watch who will win, who lose by looking up your bosses. You can use this idea to build your hypotheses, and test again and again. You can still have time to fail. And then, you have to be careful enough not to waste your time. You have to be most knowledgeable person about what you do in your company until you become 30. Know yourself, invest efficiently, and win.

31 years old: You are almost late, but there is still hope. You might just need to only adjust what you have done.

32 years old: I want to say you are late but you can do some. But, I want to point this out.  Dr. Ohmae wrote this book when he was 32 years old, you are reading now. Do you understand what I mean?

33-34 years old: I don’t know what to say.

If you read this book when you are older than 35 years old, you will never be a manager at top-level company.

This book was written 40 years ago. Just an idea in 20^th century, you are surviving 21th century, you need to acquire these kind of skills until you turn 30, and otherwise you can’t be an effective executive because the others can. Since I am leaving Japan, I can give you this book and explain it to you if you want. Please let me know.