Harvard Business Review - The Mind of the Leader

At this crazy stage in my life, I feel like I'm running with three spoons in my hands and all the paintings along life's path are fast becoming a big blur. Finally have a little hard earned time to make a post on a book I read today. And it is indeed hard-earned - I spent so much time working this weekend that I even sacrificed my tennis game!

Anyway! This book is a fast read (and thankfully so!). It is a compendium of essays showcasing different views of leadership by academics. It provides another perspective as compared to the books that leaders help to write from their own perspectives.

Some learning points:

• Leaders are prone to being influenced by their followers, in two key ways. One is through followers who with-hold information. Second is through followers who, through a majority, push for a decision that may not be the wisest in reality. A few ways to deal with this. Having a clear vision will help a leader stay guided to his objectives. Making sure that people disagree on a decision is key to actually hearing alternative points of view - an overwhelming consensus may not necessarily be a good thing. Find people that you can trust, and depend on them. Delegate, but verify.
  
• A Freudian take on leaders - they often have issues during their childhood that propels them to have insane drives or need for achievement. This could be a strong need to have control over their lives (leading to a quest for power + money), or parents who never gave enough validation. Interestingly, the piecce states that many male leaders have very nurturing moms and a plain dad (who didn't have much impact on their lives). This article even went as far as to say that leaders are often people who can evoke transferrence behaviours in their followers, which leads to unwavering loyalty. This usually involves making followers respect or perceive certain "parental" traits in them.
  
• Daniel Goleman makes a case for emotional intelligence. That basic intelligence and drive are threshold requirements, but EQ really makes leaders shine - which is quite intuitively in line with what I've always believed.
• That leaders are all a bit crazy! This one I'm still trying to figure out, but apparently, this is an essential ingredient for those bursts of creatively that sets them apart from the rest.
  

Amartya Sen - Identity and Violence

This was a short book, but I took close to a month to finish reading it. I blame it on the never-ending flow of work that I had to do!

This was a thought provoking piece of writing for me, even though the idea was simple. Essentially, the crux is that human beings possess many different identities (e.g. I am a brother, an agnostic, a civil servant, a Singaporean, a tennis player, an anime lover), and I can be all of these identities at the same time while being a totally coherent individual with a unique set of beliefs. When exercising my rational judgments or forming moral decisions, I will sometimes be constrained by the boundaries of these identities, but I can choose how much weight to give to the potentially conflicting values that come with affiliation to these identities.

The root of much violence in the current world is a result of people dichotomising the world by choosing to see people only in terms of one dimension of identity, in particular that which divides along racial or religious lines.

I have yet to read Huntington's book on clash of the civilisations, which Amrtya's book attempts to rebut, but I am quite convinced by Amartya's arguments here. In an increasingly globalised world, partitioning people categorically according to what we perceive as his or her dominant identity precludes us from understanding other people on a much more complete manner, and foists unwarranted prejudices that are associated with these identities upon these individuals. It may be more cumbersome, but a learning pt is that I'd strive to be more discerning in assessing people and not rely on lazy categorisations as a crutch to make decisions.

What on earth happened? - Christopher Lloyd

Wanted to learn a little more about History, and hence picked up this book. I got the condensed version and it was a very fast read - finished it within a couple of days.

It was quite a humbling experience to be reading about the whole of earth's history and realising that humanity (and also my life) are but an extremely small blip in the whole scheme of things.

And looking at everything in a greatly condensed timeline also made me realise how transitory events, people and countries' destinies are. No one stays at the top forever, and when one's fortune changes, nothing seems to be able to stop it.

I think I live in a fortunate time - at a time when Singapore as a country is doing great, my family background is decent, and I've been given opportunities to do the things I want. At the very least, I'm not born into an era where people's lifespans are a mere 30 years - otherwise I'd be near the end of my life!

Chris Patten - What's next?

One of my forays into international relations, politics and (most) things concerning the globe. All in all, this was a great read. Patten writes very eloquently, and with style to add too. His thoughts are lucid and well presented, and he does not hesitate to take a stand and give his own view of issues.

But it is a thick book, and it sure took me a really long time to finish reading it.

Some of my key takeaways from the book:

1. At the personal level, it is often said that it is the way we choose to react to an issue that says more about our character and has more impact on the future than the issue itself. The same goes for larger and more complex entities such as the nation state. In this regard, the way that the US and the rest of the world chose to react to the Sep 11 attacks has brought the world inevitably down this path of an ever-growing fissure between the West and Islamic world.
   
2. Dealing with issues on your own terms and never compromising on your principles, even if the enemy is ruthless. Democracies should live by their principles when fighting terrorists - in this regard the previous administration has lost much of its credibility in the eyes of countries that look to it as model, and increased cynicism amongst those who believe democracy is but a hypocritical veil for what ultimately are unbridled pursuits of self-interests.
3. I never knew this connection existed - the drug consumers in NYC and the rest of US are indirectly financing the military in Afghanistan. (Drug trade is about 40-60% of its GDP.)
4. "Solutions to the problems of global warmings are primarily issues of politics, not economics or environmental policy, and politics should be the answer..."
5. Chinese leaders face an existential crisis with regards to their centrally managed industrial economy. If they give the industry too much rein, the party may lose control of the state. On the other hand, if they continue to hold on to these industries with an iron fist, they also risk foreign investment flagging and leading to a slowdown / loss in competitiveness in their economy. The failure on the part of the party to fulfill its end of the social contract will result in it losing control of the state.
   
6. The world is built along the boundaries of nation-states. However, the issues that face the world are increasingly global in nature. (Disease, drugs, terrorism, etc) How nations can work together to deal with these issues will be critical in how the world develops in the new millennium.

Great People Decisions - Fernandez Araoz

This was also a birthday present from a friend :) Couldn't have been more appropriate, given my current work related to personnel and the fact that I'm supervising with a small team of people.

Took me a few weeks to fill this in, cos I was interrupted by a number of other books in the process. This book is a gem. It resonates strongly with many of the things that I intuitively believe in but never had the opportunity to hear from a source that's more credible (than own self-affirmation!).

1. The higher you climb, the more impt hiring decisions become. First you hire great people, then you assign the right person to the right job.
2. The trend now is for HR to be increasingly decentralised. As such, there is greater responsibility for managers down the chain to take charge of hiring and managing talent.
3. When hiring, experience, IQ and EQ all matter. However, the combination of EQ and experience is the most powerful predictor of future performance. The lack of EQ alone is the factor which is strongly correlated with executive failure.
4. Essential competencies for managers / leaders include: (i) results orientation, (ii) team leadership - the ability to build high performance teams, (iii) strategic orientation, or big picture (iv) collaboration and influencing. Is starting to sound like the AIM model eh.
   
5. Potential comprises the following components: (i) ambition - the need for achievement, affiliation and power, (ii) ability to learn from experience and (iii) specific competencies relevant to the particular job.
6. Finally! Integrating the new hires and talent. One on one time cannot be substituted. As a manager, this is the one thing that cannot be delegated or solved with technology.
   

Bench Strength - Robert Barner

This is a must read for people hoping to learn strategies on how to manage talent in an organisation. The book explains how different strategies trade-off in terms of benefits, strengths and drawbacks, depending on the structure of your organisation.

Here are my three main takeaways:

1. A useful framework to analyse future leaders uses three dimensions- ability, engagement and aspiration. It gives a manager an idea how to unleash the potential in an underperforming leader. Based on a study, 10% of managers are missing ability (engaged dreamers) - these hv little success climbing the ladder. 43% are missing engagement, and these have hv 13% chance of success at the next managerial level. However, 47% of the employees who are missing aspiration hv 44% chance of success at the next level. Hence, target the employees who are underperforming due to aspiration first.
2. Capstone vs Foundation strategies for talent management. Capstone - use when resources are limited and there's little line of sight to talent - want to create competitive platform for leadership talent. Good in deploying the best people, but may lead to overlooking of solid performersFoundation - use when resources are ample, you know where your talent are, and cultural indoctrination is a key objective. Supports strong value / cultural messages, but dilutes the focus on the high performers. To effectively use the Capstone strategy, one needs to hv a process for tracking the hiring source for HIPO leaders.
3. Stream or pool strategy. Based on the assumption that most talents can fit into most places, the company maintains and steadily recruits into a pool of talent that it taps on to fill positions. A pool strategy offers flexible arrangement for both talent and organisation, as both can select from a range of optionsUseful for fluid organisational structures and where there is a broad base of talent to draw from. On the other hand, the stream strategy presumes a stable and organised hierarchy, and critical leadership positions that require pre-identification. Streaming allows for more intensive and effective use of talent resources. In an organisation, a hybrid can be used - i.e. pool for the lower rungs of the management ladder, and stream for the highest positions.
   

The Talent Advantage - Alan Weiss and Nancy MacKay

Another book I picked in my effort (perhaps an overly ambitious one) to understand the talent management space as quickly as possible.

This book is more relevant to a CEO audience than to a HR executive-wannabe. But there are still lessons to be learnt that can be applied to managers keen on recruiting and retaining talent in their own teams.

Some of the interesting insights:

1. People do follow tough bosses who exact high standards and deliver. People hungry for success want to work for successful people and learn from them.
2. Don't blindly promote people from within based on their technical expertise
3. All the divisional leaders / supervisors have to be engaged in the talent game. HR policies have to be executed well for talent to be attracted, groomed and retained.
4. Hold people accountable to generate results
5. Prepare a strong bench - have at least 2 people groomed and on track for the key leadership roles in one's organisation
6. To retain talent, one has to go beyond financial incentives, into giving people learning and growth opportunities, providing career certainties for the top talent, and giving top talent variety in their jobs
7. Need to keep an eye out for future talent trends and demands - cos we are grooming people for the future

Talent Force: : A New Manifesto for the Human Side of Business - Rusty Rueff /Hank Stringer

Reading up on this to learn more about talent management.

I think that this is a good "overview" book on talent management, but it does not go into much details which I feel would have given me a better understanding of the considerations and processes related to the subject.

Here are some of my key thoughts inspired by the book:

1. Talent management is a continuous process - talent has to be groomed at every level of the company. Waiting till the post has been vacated would be too late already. For example, in GE, when Jack Welch retired, there was a row of capable leaders on the bench that could be readily deployed. This process had taken many many years. These leaders were so good that they went on to head other MNCs.
2. Using the internet to give recruitment an edge - the internet offers a range of tools to recruiters like never before. It is much easier to stay in touch with job applicants even after they are rejected, or people who may be interested in yr company but are not ready to take up the job offer yet. This relationship management process is critical for talent recruitment.
   
3. Talent branding - need to ensure that one's corporate image is consistent with the brand that recruiters are selling to talents.
   
4. Understanding of a company's strategies - talent recruitment and management cannot exist in a silo. The Head of talent management has to be keenly aware of the strategies of the company before he/she can know what kind of talent to recruit and how to groom them.
   

Daily infusions of Drucker's words

Got this as a gift from Alan. It's exactly what I almost got myself. Pretty excited about reading this book!

Ripped it open and gobbled up the few lessons for this week.
The theme centres around time.
Managing, recording and consolidating time.
Drucker suggests that we record how we use our time to enforce discipline and to better understand how we use this precious resource. Might be a little too extreme for me!

But what I liked was his advice on consolidating time. To be effective, we have to be able to chunk time properly. On paper, a day filled back to back with an assortment of 30 min, 60 min meetings may seem to work. However, for me, there's a lag time in switching from one task to another ... and often the creative juices (the higher value added returns on my time) only comes after 15-20 min when concentrating on a task. Am seriously shortchanging myself if I don't try to chunk!

Will be writing more about the book as the days progress ....

Strategy bites back - Henry Mintzberg

A very short book giving various perspectives on strategy and planning. It is rather hilarious at some parts as i could certainly relate to the issues that I encounter in the workplace.

There are some takeaways from the book about strategy, even as it pokes fun at the subject. Here are the gems:

• Strategy cannot only be the function of a strat planning team, which simply takes information from the ground units and then churn out grand plans which must be followed. It has to be distributed across the organisation.
• Often times. strategy and prediction are "wrong" when applied to reality. However, the true value of strategy in these situations is that it galvanises the imagination and commitment of the people to get them to do something, anything at all. The reassurance of a plan enables people to act.
• However, of course, badly founded statistics, forecasts and plans can also lead people to take disastrous actions.
  
• The current structure of organisations places reason above experience, and hence we often have young officers with little experience leading people with experience on the ground. i.e. separation of strategy from tactics is the norm.
• Many times, strategic planning becomes obsessed with the processes and frameworks, and does not generate new insights at all. (I'm very familiar with this!)
• Even experts cannot agree whether strategy is a top down or bottom up thing. However, some companies have managed to embrace both and make it work ... so maybe that's the soluti0n!
• Culture and strategy may be more similar than one thinks. I'm still trying to digest this point ... so till I manage to, it will remain as a short and abrupt sentence :)
  

The Differentiated Workforce - Becker, Huselid and Beatty

A good friend Alan had introduced me to the first book in the series - the HR scorecard. Which I tried my best to complete, but found great difficulty - which I think owes to the fact that my dearth of HR experience makes it hard for me to relate to the concepts in the book. And also, as he had warned, the book may have been written with a slight academic slant.

After that tough struggle, I made the commitment to go back to that book again someday. As fate (or my winding along the aisles of Times bookstore) would have it, I came across and decided to pick up the third book in the series - the differentiated workforce. It was a very insightful read, and one which will be very beneficial for my upcoming posting. The crux of the book is as follow (mixed in with some of my interpretations):

• Instead of putting people first, organisations should put strategy first, and then recruit / place people according to strategy
• To achieve this, the organisation would need to learn how the different positi0ns map to its final strategic outcomes, and then determine which are the "A" positions that contribute disproportionately.
• The rest of the positions are identified as "B"s - where they perform supporting functions to the "A" positions, in contributing to the strategic outcomes and "C", where the strategic impact is minimal.
  
• The characteristics of "A" positions are employee performances have huge variations, implying that talent can then be fully exploited in such positions.
• An organisation's positions aside, employees can also be grouped according to "A, B,Cs" by their talent and performance.
• Studies show that "A" employees contribute disproportionately and positively to KPIs in his/her role, while "C" employees can sometimes have negative impact.
• The differentiated HR strategy works when "A" employees are placed in "A" positions - and this process must first be led by a firm understanding of what the strategic positions are.
• To achieve this, the responsibility of HR staffing cannot reside only within the H. function. Line managers have to be held accountable for developing the workforce under his charge, giving appropriate assessment and rewards, and designing work to maximise the returns from each position.
• On the compensation framework, pays used to be differentiated on experience and performance solely. Now the authors propose that given the recognition that certain positions are "A" list strategic positions, compensation be differentiated on the basis of positions as well.
  
• Once this architecture is in place, there has to be constant emphasis to the workforce on the organisation's strategic outcomes and how they contribute to it.

There are many other useful information (esp on how to implement this architecture tactically) in the book, but I hope I have brought out the key running theme.

Who's Your City - Richard Florida

Have been doing a quick read of a number of Richard Florida's books lately. His thinking surrounds the creative class - a segment of the population who have the potential and are engaged in jobs that involves the creation of meaningful forms. This would include professions such as scientists and engineers, university professors, poets and architects. people in design, education, arts, music and entertainment, etc.

Florida's arguments are compelling - that the world is not becoming flat. Rather, talent is congregating in ever increasing concentrations in specific places, and this effect feeds upon itself, for talent is naturally attracted to other talents.

Other aspects of a place that attract talent includes cultural and intellectual diversity. Florida attempts to measure the "openness" of a place through proxies such as the Bohemian index (concentration of artistic talent in a place) and the Gay index (concentration of gays in a place).

In this book, Florida introduces the idea that different cities actually have different personalities, attracting people of certain characters and talents to cluster. For an individual, choosing a place to live is as much about finding a place to be at home emotionally as it is for one's full economic potential to be realised. I find this concept behind a place very interesting. Florida further introduced the idea that there are different locations for different stages in an individual's life. Given that talent is going to be increasingly mobile, a different kind of housing model that lies between home ownership and short rentals should be explored. I, for one, am very open to this idea :)

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man - John Perkins

This is certainly a very riveting story. Overall, I find tht the facts and claims in the story rather logical and coherent. However, I wish there could be an easier way of verifying them. (I could potentially do some internet research, but I think that it won't bring me much nearer to the truth.)

If I were to suspend my skepticism, the implications of this story is serious and scary. And depressing too - cos we appear so helpless against such nefarious and gargantuan capitalist machinery. Many of these companies have GDPs greater than my country!

Even if it were largely fictional, there are still lessons on greed and corruption that I can learn. My current desire for success may eventually bring me closer to decision points that could lead me life down paths where the temptations are strong. I do hope that my moral compass continues to point the right way and may I have to strength to choose to follow it then!

Screw it, Let's do it - Richard Branson

This was a very short and fast read. But it was a really awesome read nonetheless. It's a cross between a quick and dirty autobiography of Richard Branson and a summary of this thoughts on how he lived his life. The autobiography is inspiring and exciting to read (this guy has got real guts and brains!); the summary of life advice is simple but not easy to follow :)

Have listed out the key things that Branson feels we should follow when leading our lives. They are actually pretty much aligned with my own beliefs. However, acting on them (beyond just believing them) is the harder thing to do. And he has shown, with much credibility, that it can be done.

• Just do it
• Think yes, not no
• Challenge yrself
• Have goals
• Have fun
• Make a difference
• Stand on yr own feet
• Be loyal
• Live life to the full
• Nothing ventured, nothing gained

Feeling inspired!!

See you at the top - Zig Ziglar

Bought this book quite a while ago but never got down to finishing it. Just read it last night and I guess it is true that there is indeed a time for everything - my brain was craving for such a book then. I gobbled it up and felt really satisfied at the end of it all.

This is one of those classic motivational books, which I am (unabashedly) a huge fan of. They are a fuel for my brain and soul, and often gives me new perspectives / ideas from the comfort of my own home while (this is the more impt part) giving me the boost to want to do more.

I think this is a book that I'll read time and time again to extract the motivation from. The main thing that I felt last night after reading the book was a sense of urgency. It came from this paragraph in the book which asked the reader to imagine having to go on a holiday for the rest of the week. With the acute knowledge that one only has one day left to do all the work for the rest of the week, one suddenly develops a new ability to prioritise aggressively and attack tasks with an unquenchable sense of urgency. Zig's advice is to live everyday like that.

Duct Tape Marketing - John Jantsch

This is the first book that marks my entry into the subject of marketing. Decided to choose this book after seeing the numerous good reviews. But more importantly, I have been subscribing to the Duct Tape Marketing blog for some time, and I thought that it was quite a good resource.

The contents in the book are extremely practical and easy to understand. The main audience that the book targets is small business owners - people who need marketing strategies that are simple yet effective. The overarching theme to the book is that marketing is "getting people, who have a specific need or problem, to know, like and trust you". I like this definition, which is straightforward but has much impact on many of the points that were highlighted later in the book.

Some ideas that I've picked up along the way:

• Alot of marketing is commonsense but such simple stuff often gets lost when one aims for the glitz that is associated with marketing that can be seen.
• Segmentation of the client development process to into: suspects, prospects, clients, repeat clients and champions, with different strategies for each group. Never really thought abt such a differentiation strategy before, but it makes perfect sense.
• Another simple fact, but very useful to keep in mind - there are two ways to increase sales: getting more new customers and selling more to yr current ones. As with the segmentation strategy above, these require rather different strategies.
• If you market well, sales is redundant.
  
• Several methods to generate referrals, which is a key in expanding yr customer base.
• Using stories to target yr PR / media channel as a marketing tool - how to use news releases, pitch letter and PR kits to engage the PR industry.
  
• How to do a two-step direct response ad - the first step aims to get the customer motivated enough to respond to yr ad, which signals a permission for the marketer to step in - the second is a more in-depth marketing process.

All in all, this was a good primer to the world of marketing which I had (up to this point) very little clue about. Having such knowledge is important if I want to run my own start-up in the future.

Nudge - Richard Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein

A pretty good read! This book can be broadly cut into two parts. The first part explains in pretty layman terms the idea behind "libertarian paternalism", while the second part goes in depth about how this idea can be applied across a range of issues, from healthcare, saving the planet, to even marriages.

Will just touch on what the authors refer to as libertarian paternalism, and what an understanding of this issue will allow us to do about it. The line of logic goes something like this:

1. In a perfect world, all humans are rational and can make economic decisions accurately. In such a world, free market will ensure that humans optimise their choices and any increase in the complexity (or simply, number) of choices, is beneficial to humans.
2. However, in the real world, humans are really bad at making such rational economic choices, due to the following "interferences" - tending towards rules of thumb (anchoring, availability, representativeness, overconfidence in one's abilities, larger aversion to loss than gain, bias towards status quo, laziness, following the herd, or simply being overwhelmed by the complexity of the decision.
3. In such a situation, the Government can step in to influence humans at moments, when they are irrational or slightly weak, towards decisions that are beneficial to them without actually forcibly removing options from the table. e.g. giving citizens a large range of healthcare plans to choose from but gently influencing them to pick a better choice. This is known as "libertarian paternalism", which at times seems pretty oxymoronic, I must admit.
   
4. Such a framework that influences the behavior of the decision maker makes use of the very "interferences" that could potentially cause the human to make a wrong choice in the first place, but applies it for the good of the human. This framework is known as "choice architecture".

I think the ideas behind this book is extremely useful in policy-making, especially in areas where a mandatory option is politically unfeasible, and/or if there is clearly a "better" solution that the human should take. (The authors go through lengths to defend their point of view towards the end of the book, and I must say that they did quite a good job!) The applications towards sales and marketing is significant, as far as I can see.

First break all the rules - Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman

This book is built around a fundamental idea - that each individual has his own talent (defined as a recurring pattern of thought, feeling or behavior that can be productively applied) and talents cannot be changed. This is the basis for breaking all the rules supported by conventional wisdom with regards to managing people, e.g. that we should keep working on people's weaknesses, that we promote perfomers regardless whether the person's talents are suited for the job, that given enough practice, most people can do most jobs well.

Some other takeaways!

1. The role of a manager to is to spot and fully harness the talents of each employee. To do this, one must recognise the difference btw talent, skills and knowledge. The last two can be taught. The former, it will have to be selected, and the employee will also have to be casted in the right role.
2. There are three main dimensions of talent - striving (what motivates the employee), thinking (how he thinks, strategise and process information) and relating (how does he deal with people, praises, etc).
3. Management by exception - manage each individual differently, according to their talents, and spend the most of yr time with your top performers. This is a natural step following from the understanding that the manager's role is to cultivate strength, rather than focus on weaknesses.
4. Tough love = uncompromising focus on excellence and genuine care for employees. Balancing the two well is the key to successful management.
   

The rest of the book contains many insightful steps and details relating to these issues. This will likely be the last management book that I'm picking up for now - will start diversifying into other areas :)

The Audacity of Hope - Barack Obama

Had always wanted to read one of Obama's books. I have been quite taken by his charisma and eloquence on screen, and am eager to indulge myself in reading his thoughts on paper. I must say that this is indeed a very good read. Obama writes in a very simple, clear yet beautiful prose, and somehow he manages to use the most appropriate metaphors for every occasion. And I do not think that the issues that he is writing about are simple at all, which makes his delivery all the more impressive.

Some key takeaways that I have from his book. (I just found out that it is alot easier to remember what I've reade by scribbling all over the book when reading it. That also effectively renders the resale value of my book zero. Haha.)

1. The beauty of policy making
I must say that after all these time I had spent pushing papers, I am finding it harder to appreciate the greater value and beauty of the work that I am doing, nor the people whom I am serving. It may be Obama's compelling way of writing, or the clarity of his ideas, or perhaps even the book's oversimplification of what really are complex and stubborn issues, but I do feel inspired by Obama's vision and discussions on how tough problems can be solved with logic, persistence, and a little hope. And how everything shifts with the change in perspective! For example, all the endless tussling that I deal with at work appears worthwhile if I can see it his way - "through debate and competition, we can expand our perspectives, change our minds, and eventually arrive not merely at agreements but sound and fair agreements".

2. Politics
I always thought politics too challenging and crazy an area for me to even think of going into. The glimpses I have of American politics (and the ways which could potentially be applicable to Singapore) did not convince me otherwise. My thoughts, however, kept drifting to how the Senate functioned - and how this was so very different from what goes on here. It seems that issues are really debated and picked apart thoroughly in the case of the US, something which I wish we have more of here. However, the bipartisanship in the US has indeed led to a polarisation of issues to an extent that has not always been helpful.

3. Integrity and trust
It is probably a combination of alot of things. But immediately after (and throughout most of the book in fact) reading the book, I felt like I know this man, and I am willing to be led by him. (Perhaps it is also the fact that I now know that he is the 44th President of the US.) I suspect that he has managed to cook up a well balanced concoction of wisdom, vision, ambition, ability to slug it out with other equally ambitious and bright men, while at the same time exuding humility, a sense of the ground and ability to bring hope to impenetrable issues. (His unique background definitely helped in building his credibility.) These are all useful traits to learn from!

The Return of Depression Economics - Paul Krugman

It's been some time since I've blogged - almost 1 whole month to be exact! It was a combination of factors - being overworked, feeling sick of work, and then being sick of being sick of work and yet being overworked ... haha ... one gets the idea. But the root of it all is that my increasing skepticism of the value of my work (both to myself and if I could, the rest of the world) relative to the amount of time that I'm draining into it was close to smothering out the drive that was sustaining me all these time. I don't think I've actually figured a way out - althouth I've come to know alot of people who haven't either - but I've enough left in me to continue churning out a decent amount of work. The energy that I've conserved - I'm starting to put it to better use :)

But anyway! Ramblings aside! Have just finished reading Krugman's book. He has a knack for making long periods of history and economic intricacies sound short and simple to a layman like me.

Some of the lessons I learnt, apart from how nations' economies crash, many of which would sound like primary school math to those schooled in econs!
(i) The Fed and Alan Greenspan - Greenspan's pursuit of a laissez-faire capitalism, in particular, his reluctance to regulate derivatives, had contributed somewhat to the bubbles that formed during his time. In fact, the stock market bubble may have only been saved by a housing bubble.
(ii) Supply and demand side issues - Krugman made the statement that "for the first time in two generations, failures on the demand side of the economy ... have become the clear and present limitation on prosperity for a large part of the world". As such, we cannot stick to the Bush era tax-cuts-to-promote-production as a means to climb out of the current situation.
(iii) Psychology in economics - That it is difficult to apply the same set of economic principles to all situations without factoring in the human element - which is difficult to predict. There are two aspects that Krugman raised. First is that speculative attacks (such as by hedge funds) can have exceedingly high impacts on a nation's economy. Second is that the level of confidence in a nation's financial market can either spiral its economics into a meltdown or cause nothing more than a benign blip when policies such as the devaluation of its currency is made.