Reviews and Comments

Basically 2 books in one, was originally going to be about Dorsey’s Twitter, then when he resigned became about Musk’s takeover. The first book is interesting but wasn’t what I was looking for, the second is ok but contributes little that wasn’t already covered in other sources.

Incredible

While it was written almost 30 years ago, it still feels relevant. Industry has been slow to adopt Deming’s ideas, and any manager who reads this will feel challenged. Managers are still treating every problem as a fire, instead of understanding their systems and reducing their unpredictability.

W Edwards Deming is the prophet of TQM, a process for building quality into products, and his book Out of the Crisis is a classic. Here, his disciple William Glasser summarizes many of the theories around getting the most out of people, without the math of Deming’s writings.

In short, stop telling people what to do and start listening to them and leading them.

Deming’s theories are both widely respected and rarely understood. Here, Wheeler gives a comprehensible, practical strategy for bringing chaos under control in an organization, with several examples of seductive traps in thinking.

Lots of great stories of technological failures. It could have used more stories and less abstraction, but overall brought up valid points explaining how to deal with technical failures.

Obsessively fair look at one of the strangest but most powerful cults in the world. Detailed with lots of food for thought on what attracts people to Scientology.

The meme stock craze around GME was a classic example of irrational exuberance, this book covers the saga with insightful commentary.