Book Review: It's Not All About "Me" by Robin Dreeke

Robin Dreeke is former FBI Agent from the FBI Behavioral Unit. He writes in his It's Not All About "Me": The Top Ten Techniques for Building Rapport - book about how to build trust and connect with people.

The book is written well and it's easy to understand. Techniques as such are not magic, but something that everyone can take in to use if they wish. I've previously read about nonviolent communication and I think there are many similarities to the things Robin is teaching.

As the title already says, the main message is to concentrate to the other person. The key is to get rid of need to answer to other, but to concentrate on what the other one is saying. It sound so easy, but you can easily notice in everyday discussions the need to bring your own views and your ego to the discussions. NVC book already thought me about this skill few years ago, but I still find it very difficult to master.

Of course there are some other things to take in to account. For example there are tricks that help you make the person you want to approach, to feel safe and comfortable to open up. These skills are important for everyone in their personal and work life's.

In top of being interesting and easy to read, the book is also very compact and fast to read. I highly recommend everyone to read this book. I can't think of anyone who wouldn't benefit of the skills presented in this book.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book Review: Ghost in the Wires by Kevin Mitnick

For once I read something else than work, sports or self development books. I wanted to read something entertaining, fact based and hopefully interesting. I got my hands to Ghost in the Wires by Kevin Mitnick.

Kevin Mitnick is a hacker who for a reason or another became one of the most wanted hackers in the world. He claims that he hasn't done many of the things he was accused on, but I guess that's what he has to say to avoid further jail time.

Book definitely was interesting. It starts from the days that calling was actually done by wired telephones. Kevin learned to control the technical environment quite early, but I guess his social hacking skills helped him to raise to the whole new level. It was amazing to read how easy social hacking had been and I believe it might still be in some occasions. People are helpful by nature and that security vulnerability Kevin shamelessly used to exploit to many companies networks. Of course social hacking needs superb technical skills to complete the hackings.

For a trusty person as myself, I still feel bit disturbed by the book. Kevin of course brings himself up as good guy with noble purposes, but I'm not sure how noble he really is (or at least was). As a trusty person again, I would like to believe him, but I haven't heard the story from the other side.

At least how he was handled in the US court system was unbelievable. He was handled similarly as a serial killers, or even worse, almost without decent ways to communicate to outside world. He would have earned a better trial, but hacking was so new on that time, that caused some of the mix-ups.

All in all, I definitely got what I wanted. Book was really interesting and even though it was bit longish, it went really rapidly. I recommend the book to any one interested about hacking, security or history of IT and SW.


Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book Review: The Lean Startup

The Lean Startup by Eric Ries was a book I had heard about so many times that I had to read it myself. I had heard about Lean Startup methodology and read about it in many blog posts, but I hadn't read the book. In a way the topic was familiar even before starting, but still there were learning to gain from the book.

Ideology of Lean Startup is really valuable. I believe there's some truth behind what Eric Ries is talking about. The main idea of Lean Startup is that is valuable to measure the ideas in the market and be willing to learn from the results and pivot the course if needed.

I especially liked what Eric wrote about what actually is an MVP. In my own believes I often seen MVP to be much less than companies are themselves thinking it to be. Also validated learning, innovation accounting and the whole build-measure-learn loop were valuable parts of the book.

What I didn't like was that the book wasn't anywhere close to minimum viable book. It was utterly too long and once in a while even boring. I believe the ideas of the subject could have been delivered in 100 pages. That would have proven the value of the thinking. Now it was as any other ordinary book, lengthened to almost 300 pages in order to seem as a "normal" book. I just hate that approach. When there isn't that much to say, why to waste so many pages on it.

I feel bit bad to criticize the book since, I think that everyone should learn about the Lean Startup methodology. It is valuable and would help many companies and startups to succeed. I believe the book just isn't the best way to learn about the subject.


Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book Review: The Sports Gene

David Epstein's The Sports Gene was exciting read for me. I follow many different sports and I've been intrigued about how much success is about nature (genes) and how much about nurture (training, etc). This was the first time I got some concrete facts about the subject.

David Epstein isn't a scientist, but a sports journalist, who has made a long learning journey to be able to write about so technical subject. I believe this book is better, when it's written by a journalist and not by a scientist. Book goes quite deep into the genes and biology, so it's better when it's written in bit more understandable way.

Book tells stories and facts about athletics, basketball, sprint running, long distance running, cross country skiing, baseball and many others. It really tries to look for patterns behind athletes and their genes. For certain sports there are definitely genetic differences that make some athletes to have a superior change to succeed to others. Still success always needs lots of training.

In one way book is depressing for some sports. As an example, with current conditions in the world Kalenjin Kenyans will rule the marathon and long distance running field for some time. But actually not that long ago, Finnish people used to rule the long distance world (Hannes Kolehmainen, Paavo Nurmi, Lasse Viren) , before we got richer and didn't run that much anymore. So in a way we Finns still might have the genes for it, but our environment and training doesn't support those anymore. The same might happen to the Kenyans at some in the future.

The whole book bounces between nature and nurture. What is certain is that there are no genetically perfect athletes, because no one doesn't have any good ideas what genes actually are needed for which sports. There are some genes found which might prevent success in some sports and some genes that are common with the elite athletes in that sport. Most often still, the genes of elite athletes can be found from thousands of other who still are not elite. So there is no one answer for nature vs nurture debate.

One other thing that interested me was the trainability of people. Different genes actually mean that people develop differently. Populist journalism often tells that training like this and that will only give results. The fact is, people acquire skills differently. The famous 10 000 hour rule, isn't exactly true, but then on the other hand it gives an idea of the ball park people need to train. People need to train the way their body and mind adapts. That's the most important lesson of the book.

I highly recommend this book the everyone interested about sport training or coaching. It felt bit longish at some point, but reading this is time well invested.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book Review: 100 Things Every Presenter Needs to Know About People

Presenting, selling ideas to people and training has been part of my job for the past few years. Presenting as such is something I've always been comfortable with, but I know I could be much better. That's the reason I read 100 Things Every Presenter Needs to Know About People by Susan M. Weinschenk.

The author has Ph.D. in Psychology and has a strong background on behavioral psychology. This shows a lot in the book. I originally had different thought what the book would have inside. I wasn't expecting that much science and actual proof behind the things that presenters need to know. So the surprise was positive and made the subject more interesting.

The idea in the book is to explain and benefit from the behavioral psychology. Maybe it was because I had read quite a lot about behavioral psychology in the past years, that the psychology parts as such weren't that new to me. Some of the ideas how to use those in presentations where the ones that brought me the value.

Book is well structured. It was fun to read. It worked especially well for bus or train trips which I use when I visit our offices in Helsinki central. Like the title tells it has 100 of things that every presenter needs to know. Those things are short and backed up with a proper research. I have to admit that book would have been at least good enough with 91 or 93 things, but maybe 100 is just much more effective. Few of the things were there just to fill the hundred.

I highly recommend this book to everyone who wants to understand people's behavior in presentation situations. If you are presenter, you facilitate meetings or meet people for sales, this is a good book for you. It also reminds about many important psychological studies from the past decades. It's a good book and quite easy and enjoyable to read.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book Review: End This Depression Now! by Paul Krugman

Wow, wow, wow. That was the feeling I got from reading the book. Nobel Prize winner from Economics Paul Krugman, gives in the book his view what should be done to End This Depression Now! His view is quite contradictory to the politics that have been ongoing. He rates himself to be New Keynesian and he brings many views from old Keynesian macroeconomics.

First of all, as the best influencers, he knows his stuff well and has the ability to explain those entertainingly and easily. Book about macroeconomics and recession doesn't sound like the most interesting topic, but I wasn't bored even once with this book. He uses examples well and still backs up his stories with hard cold facts.

I don't even think that I would be capable of arguing against any of the ideas he presents in the book. His main idea is that markets do not work perfectly and increasing government spending would help economy (at least US) out from depression.  He brings lot of historical and scientific proof that solution could be so simple.

Other than recession, book is an excellent source to get more understanding about macroeconomics. He is such a good to explain things, that I at least had couple of aha! moments reading the book. It increased my understanding of macroeconomics.

Book is concentrates to US, but is has few chapters to Europe also. I admit being quite supportive for our common currency Euro, but Krugman was able to explain what has been so risky on it. Also he explains why Euro has been one of the main reasons for the recession in Europe and also in Finland where I live. Still he doesn't recommend of getting rid of Euro, but believes that bit higher inflation and few different moves from European Central Bank should do differently to get us out from recession.

I'm so glad I read this book. Few previous books I've read have been good, but this was an eye-opener. These are the feeling you get with best books. You feel that your thinking has changed after reading it. I highly recommend the book to everyone. It's essential book about essential subject.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book Review: Management 3.0 by Jurgen Appelo

Management 3.0: Leading Agile Developers, Developing Agile Leaders by Jurgen Appelo was one of the books that I've planned to read for a long time. The positive thing about reading it now and not earlier, is that I was much more ready to understand the book than I was few years ago.

Management 3.0 is an excellent book. Even though the name might promise a one more management model to learn, Jurgen Appelo tells that there isn't a model that would suit all. To be more precise, Jurgen tells that all models have their flaws. He does say that models are important, but we need to remember that all companies, products, people and environment are different in every case.

Jurgen does give his view on what is important in Management in the future. His model has six major themes, which start from energizing people and go all the way to improve everything. He goes all his themes through with very extensive walk-through of underlying knowledge on each of the areas. He explains things thoroughly, but still interestingly.

I really liked the book. It was excellent reading and widened my view of the importance of people in companies. It does discuss about many of the same issues that other Agile books, but it does add lot of new ideas to the discussion.

I recommend this book to managers in product development companies and others who are interested on how the whole companies should be organized. It's a great book and I promise you won't be disappointed.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book Review: The Fifth Discipline

This time I had in my reading list one of the business literature classics The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization by Peter Senge. It's a book that introduces systems thinking as we know it know.

Book is well written, but even more importantly the contents of it are really valuable. I had read about systems thinking before and I had been given so many recommendations about this book, that I had high hopes for the book. Luckily it matched my expectations.

The idea of the book is that organizations should become learning organizations to stay in business and have a good future. The book introduced a fresh way of seeing organizations as whole systems. It gives lot of value to personal development and human values ensuring that organizations learn to improve themselves in the long run.

Book introduces five disciplines of learning organization. Also it introduces eleven learning disabilities that prevents learning organizations to form. It has a lot good examples and it is easy to learn with this book.

I highly recommend this book to everyone working in organizations, small or big ones. So this would be a good book for almost anyone. It's a bit longish with over 400 pages. That's a pity, since it might scare few potential readers away from it.

It's great and important book. Many people have read it, but still only few organizations live to the values of the book. Learning needs understanding. Hopefully many more will read the book, understand the teachings and share the knowledge.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book Review: All The Devils are Here by McLean and Nocera

For some time I've wanted to understand more about the reasons of 2008 financial crisis. I did know the basics of the housing bubble, but not much more. That's the reason I got All the Devils are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis by Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera.

I was enthused to read the book. I had positive thoughts about the book and I really tried to like it. But I didn't. Book did explain why the crisis happened and introduced all the players who had played major role creating the housing bubble. The problem for me was, that the authors focused to people and companies so much that the actual problem was hidden behind all the blaming.

Authors Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera are both journalists and full time writers. This unfortunately shows in a bad way. The book would have worked in 40 separate articles, but it didn't work as long book. The full story wasn't well taken in to account with the separate twists to it.

I didn't like the blaming culture there was in the book. Most of the bankers and people mentioned in the book must have been money graving idiots, who made millions and millions with screwing others, but I don't still think blaming them gets us anywhere. This book wasn't only about blaming, it did discuss about the system a bit, but it focused too much on the individuals who had been creating the system.

I believe blaming culture actually creates the basis for the macho culture to exist. Then the macho culture creates these idiots who play the systems and create their own rules. So in a way I believe these kind of books doesn't solve the problem, but actually are part of the system that cause them.

Maybe it was my fault, that I didn't understand the book from the title. It really talks about the devils, not about global systems that created the devils. Still the book I would like to read, would search to understand the system. This wasn't the book I was hoping for.

I do believe there are people who like these kind of books. They are the people who like blaming others, I don't. I don't recommend this book to anyone. I didn't like it and I found it quite boring to read.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book Review: The Story of Human Body by Daniel Lieberman

The Story of Human Body: Evolution, Heath and Disease by Daniel Lieberman was waiting for me in my bookshelf for a month. I really looked forward to this book. So much that I had to hurry with previous books, to get this started. It turned out to be an excellent book, just different way that I had imagined.

Daniel Lieberman is professor of biological sciences and the chair of department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. This gives him the credibility that is needed to write about evolution, which has many aspects that have to be guessed. Basically only bones, some tools and DNA we have left from old generations to study the evolution, but still there needs to be much speculation about behavior and other body parts to tell the full story. I believe in these days, Daniel Lieberman is the man who can make the best guesses.

I have to admit, that I looked forward to this book from few articles and videos from Daniel Lieberman about barefoot running. I guess I'm not the only one, since that's the part that made him famous to non-biologists. This book is so much more than barefoot running. From 350 pages, there's about 10 pages about barefoot running. When I realized that, I felt bit disappointed, but the book turned out to be full gold. It will definitely be one of those books that made me understand the world and myself much better in the future.

The book goes through the whole human evolution starting from the time bit earlier than we divided from the apes. It goes through all the sides of the story. It really digs deep on what happened and why it happened. Then the book walks from times before homo sapiens through hunter gatherers to farming and also to the cultural evolution what we are facing currently. It is a story all of us should know.

Then at final part of the book, it goes through why we are fat, why we are sick and why we die on cancer and heart diseases. It opened my eyes to really understand what we should be doing to keep healthy. I feel currently that this book changed my life forever, but of course I can't be sure.

Unfortunately book isn't easy to digest reading. It requires concentration and interest towards the topic. It is longish book, but it is full of excellent and important information. I recommend it to everyone. With some of the thoughts in this book, we could improve so many lifes. I am realistic and know that too few will ever read this. I'm so happy that I did.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book Review: Adventures of Bystander by Peter F. Drucker

Adventures of Bystander was not a book I would have selected to be read myself, but when I got the book from my sister's husband when they moved abroad, I decided to read it. Author Peter F. Drucker was somewhat familiar to me, but this book was not.

Peter Drucker is famous management thinker, so I had expectations that this book would have had more about management. It really didn't. It's a book about Mr Drucker's life and interesting people he had known.
And he really had known many important persons from 20th century.

Book tells about interesting people, but also about life during and after World War II. Drucker is originally from Vienna and left Austria bit before nazis conquered the city. He lived in London and New York and worked with many magazines, universities and interesting companies.

Some people introduced in the book are genuinely interesting, others seem to mentioned because them being famous. The interesting people were interesting to read, the famous people not that much.

Book is divided to the stories going Mr Drucker's life through quite chronologically. Of course people are followed through their lifetime, but stories start from Drucker's order of knowing the people.

History is important and quite often interesting. Sometimes it's just plain boring with lots of names and happenings on politics. Time to time I was really keen on reading and sometimes I couldn't cared less to read. That summaries my thinking about the book. Half of it is really good, half quite boring.

It's difficult to recommend this book. If you are fan of Peter Drucker it's a must book to read. If you like history of Europe and US after 1930, this is a good book. If you like biographies, it's a different one and you might like it. For me, it wasn't that good.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book Review: Winning by Jack and Suzy Welch

Winning by Jack Welch and Suzy Welch was a book I wouldn't have selected myself. I got this book to my bookshelf while ago and decided to take it with me to a business trip. Book is about Jack Welch thoughts and for that reason book review is also mainly about Jack Welch.

Book itself is written in okay way and it's quite easy to read. Jack Welch is not that controversial person, but his position in business world has been so unique that I think his experience and thoughts are really suitable only for handful of people in the world. Years heading GE there where always 300 000 - 400 000 people working for him. That's quite unusual.

It's pretty hard to criticize a man who raised company value 4000% in 20 years. Still it's hard to say how much of the success is really coming from him. As an example, he mentioned in the book that he has experience in over 1000 acquisitions. If you count that those are from 20 years, when he was the CEO, it would mean 4 acquisitions in a month. With that kind of frequency his contribution to those must have been quite small.

I did enjoy some parts of the book. I love the way he tries to raise the importance of HR and hiring. He gives good tips about hiring and detecting the talent.

For me the best thing about this book was, that there is and will be people who are all about money and power. This book helps understanding them. I don't really want to work with them or become one of them, but once in a while I might need to. It's always good to understand different people, no matter how differently you value things.

If you don't read a lot, I recommend to skip this book. I only finished it due to being in airplane without having anything better to do. It's not an important book so pick something else to read.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book Review: Influence - The Psychology of Persuasion

I've had the book Influence - The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini long time in my reading list. That's the reason I had high expectations towards the book. It was a good book, but it didn't quite deliver to my expectations.

This book is a business classic and has been discussed and reviewed so many time in different forums. The contents of it are important dive to the psychology of decision making. Why some are better to sell and persuade than others? What are their techniques and why those work? There are many really interesting and important topics covered.

The thing is that this book is old. It was first published already 1984, nearly 30 years ago. Unfortunately this starts to show. The examples are not from this world and many have gone irrelevant already. The underlying psychological aspects are still relevant, but this book isn't anymore the best way to learn those.

Best part of the book for me, was the section of commitment and consistency. It opened up how giving a smallest commitment tricks you to do many following actions based on your unnoticed commitment.

I feel bit sad to give bad words of such a business classic. It's easy to understand why it had become classic and important book. World just have gone too far from year 1984. Psychology understanding has gone forward from those years, selling and marketing has taken huge leaps from those years and people's behavior is not what it was back then.

As good book as this is, I still don't really recommend it to many. The ones who want to read the business classics, this is a must read. For others, it's a good book, but please be aware that it's an old one.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book Review: The Principles of Product Development Flow

I was told already about three years ago, that I should read some of Reinertsen books to understand much more about product development. Finally I read The Principles of Product Development Flow. I'm actually happy that I didn't read it earlier. It is a great book, but I have learned so much about product development during past years, that I was myself much more ready to understand the book, that I would have been earlier.

This book is not normal SW development book. I'm not sure if Agile or Scrum was even mentioned in this book. There is lot of talks about Kanban, but mainly because of queue's and because Kanban is great tool for better queue handling. This book dives in understanding where the value really is in Product Development.

One important part of this book is that it goes through why Lean is different for SW than it is for manufacturing. There are different economical factors affecting SW than normal factory. In both handling queues are important, but for example variation might even be valuable in SW, when in manufacturing it mainly waste.

I have to admit, that even with my economical background and interest in theories, still sometimes book got bit too technical to me. It really digs in deep to all subjects and make sure it has enough scientific or case study based evidence for the presented principles.

It is really important book for product development professionals. The ideas as such are valuable to everyone, but this book isn't the easiest to read. I recommend it to everyone who really want to understand how the whole product organization should work.

To be honest, I believe many of the readers of this book, will not understand how important this book is. If I will ever get to the level of understanding Reinertsen has for Product development economics, I'll be really happy. Be brave and take the challenge.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book Review - Mindset:The New Psychology of Success

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck is a book about learning. It's a book about how people can learn their whole life when believing in learning and growth.

Book talks about two different kind of mindsets; the fixed mindset, which means believing that talent is given and born, and the growth mindset, believing that people can always learn to be better on everything. Book goes through examples and science behind it from many different views. It looks sports, business and arts. It introduces many good examples of people who are in growth mindset and some who are in fixed mindset.

Book goes through how this mindset difference affects on people's behavior in different challenges and daily routines. It also introduces reasons why people has grown in to either fixed or growth mindset.

Book has its own section for parents, coaches and teachers. I see parents to be most important ones. They can accidentally grow their children easily to fixed mindset with having good intentions to grow to be successful and open for learning. Giving credit for good grades for example can turn against the child, so that they are not taking challenges anymore in the future, since they become afraid of not being good at something. I actually believe this to be true, many of the people who got the best grades at school, haven't taken the challenge anymore at the work life.

I highly recommend this book to everyone who has kids, is a teacher or is a coach. There is lot of proof that genes don't mean everything and everyone really can learn. Also important is to understand that for learners, willingness to learn is more important than the immediate results and grades.

I really liked the book. It was entertaining with many good examples. I've read couple of books about the same subject from different perspectives , so the area starts to be familiar to me. Still I found some good new information from this book. It was entertaining.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen