El libro que me enseñó a tomar la iniciativa con dos cojones y otras 9 recomendaciones
Biblioteca CPS #2
Estas son las recomendaciones de la semana:
1. Freeway Rick Ross: The Untold Autobiography
Rick Ross y Cathy Scott
La increíble historia de un chico que sentía que no encajaba y debía ocultarse en el instituto para que ni sus profesores ni los demás chavales se dieran cuenta de que no había aprendido a leer.
Hasta que se encuentra con una actividad que se le da bien y con la que podría forrarse como nunca imaginó ni en sus fantasías más salvajes.
Esa actividad es el comercio a gran escala.
La complicación es el producto. Y una clientela que cuando está con el mono es capaz de asaltarte. Y unos empleados que no dudarían en coger una pistola y ponértela en la boca.
No voy a abundar en esta imperdible autobiografía porque ya he escrito un hilo bastante largo que puedes leer aquí:
Astucia Visual Freeway Rick Ross
Una muestra:
“What you got there, Ricky?” Kenny asked. Neither he nor his homies had the faintest idea what it was—though these guys always bragged that they were in the circle of homies who knew what was going on, that they were players and down hustlers with street smarts. Real cool dudes. But not one of them knew what was in the plastic bag. “Cocaine,” I answered. Cruz Dog looked at me and laughed. “You stupid motherfuckers just got beat!” he said. “Ain’t cocaine supposed to be white? This is yellow.” What? I wasn’t sure about it myself, since I didn’t know how to tell, but I wasn’t willing to let an implication that I’d been conned by a friend go unchallenged. Figuring they were more clueless than I was, I quickly shot back. “You don’t even know cocaine when you see it. This is the real deal, straight off the boat.” I didn’t want to hear what Cruz had to say. I wanted to believe that Mike wouldn’t have tricked me. I put the baggie back in my pocket, turned, and burst out the door, with Ollie trailing behind, and made a beeline for his car. “Get in,” I told Ollie. “Where we goin’?” he asked. “To find out if this is real from someone who knows, someone who can verify that it is.” Heading west on 87th toward Figueroa Avenue, we stopped at Irene’s Liquor Store to pick up something to snack on. Just inside the door, I saw an old friend, Barney, a shermhead known around the neighborhood who was hooked on PCP so bad, it caused him to tremble. I didn’t have a problem showing the powder to Barney inside the liquor store. That store was like an open market for marijuana and PCP sales. I pulled the baggie out of my pocket and showed it to Barney. He opened the bag, dipped a finger in, then put it on his tongue. “That’s cocaine,” Barney said after a couple of seconds as pointed at the bag. “It’s real.” “I knew it!” I exclaimed. The next day, I eagerly contacted friends and quickly sold lines from my first gram of cocaine. Just like that, I was a drug dealer. I was in the game.
2. Losing My Virginity: The Autobiography
Richard Branson
Otra gran autobiografía. Si tuviera que destilar su tema central sería: poder de iniciativa y agencia.
Steve Jobs, fundador de Apple, y Akio Morita, fundador de Sony, cerrarían esta trinidad de apretarse los cojones e ir a por todas.
Pero Sir Richard Branson se diferencia en que parece estar libre de rasgos sociopáticos, por el contrario pareciera ser un gran tipo.
Tuvo una crianza fuera de lo habitual. Sus padres le animaban a viajar solos a todas partes y se puede ver claramente cómo ese espíritu aventurero de ir a por las cosas que quieres aunque debas esguinzarte el cerebro para encontrar soluciones y parecer un subnormal hasta que el viento sople a tu favor en gran parte se lo debe a su madre.
El libro abarca hasta el 2007. Para leer la génesis y desarrollo de Virgin Galactic recomiendo la segunda parte de su autobiografía: Finding My Virginity: The New Autobiography
También recomiendo su clase sobre entrepreneurship en la plataforma Masterclass si puedes pillarla.
Uno de los mejores momentos del libro:
(...) the jigsaw of companies we have. As well as protecting each other, they have symbiotic relationships. When Virgin Atlantic starts a flight to South Africa, I find that we can launch Virgin Radio and Virgin Cola there. In the same way, we can use our experience in the airline industry to make buying train tickets easier and cheaper. We can draw on our experience of entertaining people on planes to entertain people on trains. Despite employing around 40,000 people, Virgin is not a big group – it’s a big brand made up of lots of small companies. Our priorities are the opposite of our large competitors’. Convention dictates that a company should look after its shareholders first, its customers next, and last of all worry about its employees. Virgin does the opposite. For us, our employees matter most. It just seems common sense to me that, if you start off with a happy, well-motivated workforce, you’re much more likely to have happy customers. And in due course the resulting profits will make your shareholders happy. Convention also dictates that ‘big is beautiful’, but every time one of our ventures gets too big we divide it up into smaller units. I go to the deputy managing director, the deputy sales director and the deputy marketing director and say, ‘Congratulations. You’re now the MD, the sales director and the marketing director of a new company.’
3. How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius
Donald J. Robertson
Un gran libro para iniciarse en la filosofía estoica. Junto con El pequeño libro del estoicismo de Javier Recuenco y Guillermo de Haro y algún libro de Massimo Pigliucci, serían la antesala perfecta a los Discursos de Epicteto.
Robertson es un terapeuta cognitivo conductual que enfoca el estoicismo enfatizando cómo puede cambiar nuestra actitud de vida y orientarnos hacia la acción constructiva.
Sobre Antonino Pío, padre putativo de Marco Aurelio y su modelo de gobernante:
In The Meditations Marcus contemplates how his predecessor never sought out empty praise or approval from others; instead, he was always willing to listen to other people’s views and consider them carefully. He was meticulous in examining matters that required careful deliberation. He never rushed making a decision and was always willing to question his first impressions. He would patiently think over the issue until he was completely satisfied with his reasoning. He honored genuine philosophers, though he didn’t necessarily agree with all of their doctrines. He didn’t attack charlatans, but he wasn’t taken in by them either. In other words, he was a very calm and rational man. His natural freedom from vanity helped him to follow reason more consistently and see things more clearly—unlike Hadrian, he didn’t always have to be right.
4. Serious Creativity: How to be creative under pressure and turn ideas into action
Edward de Bono
Si me tuviera que quedar con un libro de de Bono sería este.
No se enrolla, va directo al grano y después de leerlo puedes salir al ruedo aplicando varias ideas que te ayudarán a generar soluciones creativas.
Mi idea favorita es la del Simple Focus, que yo la llamo Creatividad Mínima Viable.
Es un ejercicio muy simple de observación disciplinada y cuestionamiento de lo que ves, que si lo adoptas como hábito te dará una ventaja creativa enorme con un esfuerzo mínimo de inversión.
¿Que no sabes cómo formar un hábito de manera consistente?
Tiny Habits, de BJ Fogg que discutimos en la newsletter anterior.
Hay muchas otras ideas valiosas en el libro, mis preferidas son las que juegan con conceptos, pero segurísimo que encuentras una técnica que cace contigo y que puedas llevar a la práctica en tu actividad o campo de acción.
The mere exercise of setting out to pick unusual focus areas has a high value. This can become a habit in itself even if no further creative action is attempted. In time a person can become very good at finding such focus points. Once the habit is developed then that person can choose to apply formal creative thinking to any chosen focus. In fact, to begin with, it is probably better to develop this habit of picking focus points as an end in itself – without trying to generate ideas. The attempt to generate ideas may lead to disappointment and may slow down the habit. Skilled focus with a little creative skill is probably better than poor focus with great creative skill.
5. Historia de la guerra del Peloponeso
Tucídides
Clásico episodio de la historia de la Antigua Grecia relatada por el "primer historiador moderno".
Parte tratado político filosófico, parte novela de aventuras, Tucídides se adentra por primera vez en la médula del acontecer histórico para extraer lecciones eternas sobre la naturaleza humana y la compleja psicología del poder.
Además es un narrador de puta madre y te engancha más que una novela de Juan Gómez-Jurado.
Cuando a Gilipo le pareció que era el momento, inició el ataque; y llegando al cuerpo a cuerpo lucharon entre los muros, en un lugar donde no se podía sacar partido de la caballería de los siracusanos. Y como los siracusanos y sus aliados fueran derrotados y recogieran sus muertos en virtud de una tregua, y los atenienses erigieran un trofeo, Gilipo reunió el ejército y afirmó que la culpa no había sido de ellos, sino suya, puesto que había quitado toda utilidad a la caballería y a los lanzadores de dardos con la formación que les había impuesto, al disponerla demasiado entre los muros; así pues, ahora iba a llevarlos al combate por segunda vez. (...) Gilipo llegó a su encuentro encuentro, haciendo avanzar a los hoplitas más hacia fuera de los muros que antes y colocando a los jinetes y lanzadores de dardos en el flanco de los atenienses y en campo abierto, allí donde acababa la edificación de ambos muros. En la batalla, la caballería cayó sobre el ala izquierda de los atenienses, que estaba frente a ella, y la puso en fuga; por ello, también el resto del ejército fue vencido por los siracusanos y empajado hacia sus fortificaciones. Y durante la noche siguiente los siracusanos se anticiparon a llevar su muro más allá de la fábrica de los atenienses y a sobrepasarla, de forma que en adelante ya no podían ser estorbados por ellos, y los atenienses quedaban totalmente impedidos, aunque vencieran, de circunvalar a los siracusanos.
6. La vida es simple: La navaja de Occam y la nueva historia de la ciencia y el universo
Johnjoe McFadden
Fascinante relato de la historia de un conjunto de ideas que surgieron en la Edad Media en el ambiente teológico como una herejía y que se convirtieron con los siglos en una herramienta epistemológica que daría origen a la ciencia moderna:
Es absurdo hacer con más lo que se puede hacer con menos y todo lo que es predicable de muchas cosas está por naturaleza en la mente.
Este sistema filosófico que sintetizó Guillermo de Occam se llamó nominalismo y tuvo una influencia subterránea en las grandes ideas y avances que contribuyeron a simplificar el universo y hacerlo más manejable.
En astronomía (las leyes de Kepler), por ejemplo, o en la biología (la ley de Sarawak) o en la física (las ecuaciones de Maxwell, la equivalencia entre gravedad y aceleración o el teorema de Noether).
McFadden hace un gran trabajo de divulgación para que podamos entender, paso a paso, las implicaciones de la semilla que plantó Guillermo casi siete siglos atrás.
La historia ha sido más benévola con Maupertuis, y lo cierto es que, en general, a él se le atribuye el descubrimiento de uno de los principios más importantes de la ciencia, el principio de mínima acción. Del mismo modo que la velocidad de la luz es la misma para todos los observadores, el principio de Maupertuis no se basa en ninguna ley que la preceda, sino que parece formar parte de los cimientos del universo. Esta «navaja» principal establece que, en lo que al universo se refiere, la acción no debe multiplicarse innecesariamente. No obstante, a pesar de ese principio, nuestro universo sigue siendo muy complejo y contiene numerosas piezas que parecen innecesarias. Por ejemplo, los neutrinos, esas partículas que Enrico Fermi predijo en 1931, aunque son extraordinariamente numerosos, apenas interactúan con ninguna otra partícula, por lo que son billones los que atraviesan inofensivamente nuestro cuerpo a cada segundo. ¿No sería el universo menos complejo sin ellos? Por otra parte, el modelo estándar, aunque es relativamente sencillo, pues tan solo consta de diecisiete partículas, podría ser todavía más simple. ¿Qué sentido tienen la mayoría de los quarks y leptones de las generaciones II y III que no aportan nada a la materia «ordinaria»?
7. The Recursive Mind
Michael C. Corballis
En este libro estupendo el psicólogo y paleoantropólogo Corballis explora las posibilidades y la influencia de una habilidad que nos dio un poder generativo sin par: el poder repetir una estructura dentro de otra para crear variaciones infinitas.
¿Que cómo afectó nuestra vida mental?
Poder manipular símbolos para generar un sinnúmero de ideas, reflexionar sobre nuestras propias mentes, simular las mentes de otros, concebir el pasado y el futuro.
Corbalis expone su tesis contraponiendo sus conclusiones con los estudios paleontológicos más recientes y las posiciones actuales de la psicología cognitiva y la linguística.
Benjamin B. Beck wrote, “Unquestionably man [sic] is the only animal that to date has been observed to use a tool to make a tool," and I know of no evidence to contradict this. In short, we humans manufacture objects recursively, and it is largely because of our recursive understanding of manufacture that we have polluted the earth with immense cities, not to mention the cobweb embrace of the Internet. Nevertheless advances in toolmaking were slow. There is little to suggest that the early hominins were any more adept at making or using tools than are present-day chimpanzees, despite being bipedal, and it was not really until the emergence of the genus Homo that toolmaking became more sophisticated. The earliest innovation seems to have been stone tools, with sufficient design features to suggest forward planning, and perhaps the beginnings of mental time travel.(...) At one time it was thought that these manufactured tools were the distinctive mark of humanity that set us apart from other species, but more recent research has suggested that other species can make tools of similar complexity. The champions may be the New Caledonian crows that manufacture tools from pandanus leaves that are precisely tapered for the extraction of grubs from holes. These tools seem on a par with those made by Homo erectus. (...) acceleration of technological invention from around 300,000 to 400,000 years ago, when the Acheulian industry gave way to the more versatile Levallois technology. Tools comprising combinations of elements began to appear, including axes, knives and scrapers mounted with hafts or handles, and stone-tipped spears. John F. Hoffecker sees the origins of recursion in these combinatorial tools which were associated with our own forebears, as well as with the Neandertals, who evolved separately from around 700,000 years ago.
8. Systemic Bias: Algorithms and Society
Michael Filimowicz (editor)
Librito de menos de 100 páginas sobre sesgos algorítmicos.
Organizado en tres ensayos cuyos nombres hablan del espíritu del libro:
1. From "diversity" to "discoverability"
2. Modern mathemagics
3. Reading the cards
Cargando contra Google, Meta, Amazon, Netflix, la "magia" de la IA, entre otras vacas sagradas, los autores analizan los riesgos de una manipulación social sistemática y del uso generalizado de la psicometría automatizada.
Mathemagics is an excellent concept that gets to the heart of tech culture and programming with all its allure, biases, and contradictions. I am not the first scholar to link magic and tech. For example, Nagy et al. (2020) studied time management technologies as "magic bullets" that help users become more organized and efficient and remarked on how these are sold as time-saving miracle devices. Frosh (2019) described tagging pictures on Facebook as technological feats of magic, connecting names to mediated bodies (images) with the aim of animating digital social networks.
Frosh connected this to the ancient magical power of incantation: the use of words to perform actions at a distance. The articulation of a name makes images of the named materialize instantly before others. The first day I set foot in a tech conference, I felt like I had entered an enchanted world with sagas and colorful unicorns. Magic was mentioned throughout many of the talks. For instance, Chris Dancy stated in his presentation that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, referring to Science Fiction author Arthur C. Clarke. To further link technology with the magical, he argued that wireless charging is another word for energy projection (...) I managed to catch Chris after his talk. "I see myself as a magician", he exclaimed, and he insisted that technology can be used for good things, so "don't unplug", which is also the title of his at the time newly released book.
9. Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works
A.G. Lafley y Roger L Martin
Un vistazo privilegiado a cómo se hacían las cosas dentro de P&G en un período de gran crecimiento y expansión.
Cómo se creaban nuevos productos, se descubrían y explotaban categorías.
Cómo se negociaba con los competidores y con los canales de distribución.
Lafley fue CEO de la compañía, pero ascendió al mayor puesto ejecutivo desde las trincheras del marketing peleando para sacar adelante productos y nuevas categorías, visitando laboratorios, probando productos, hablando con vendedores, negociando con los compradores de los grandes supermercados...
Es decir, esto no va de armchair armchair strategists, sino del real deal (por supuesto no el *raw* real deal sino que filtrado para el consumo masivo, se entiende).
Aun así, de lo mejor en estrategia de marketing.
Una muestra:
Rather than focus exclusively on wrinkles as a product benefit, Olay broadened the value proposition. The research showed that wrinkles were but one of many concerns. (...) Pricing was the next element. Traditionally, Olay products had sold, like most drugstore brands, in the sub-$8 price category (compared with department store brands, which could be priced anywhere from $25 to $400 or more). As Drosos explains, in skin care, there was the pervasive belief “that you get what you pay for. Women felt the products available in the mass-market channel were just not as good.” Olay’s advertising and packaging promised a high-quality, effective product that could compete with department store brands. Its pricing needed to hit the perfect note as well—not so high that mass consumers would be turned off, but not so low that prestige consumers would doubt its efficacy (no matter what those independent experts said). Listro recalls the testing that went on to determine the pricing strategy for Olay Total Effects: “We started to test the new Olay product at premium price points of $12.99 to $18.99 and got very different results at those price points.” At $12.99, there was a positive response and a reasonably good rate of purchase intent (a stated intention to buy the product in the future). But most of the subjects who signaled a desire to buy at $12.99 were mass shoppers. Very few department store shoppers were interested at that price point. “Basically,” explains Listro, “we were trading people up from within the channel.” That was good, but not enough. At $15.99, purchase intent dropped considerably. Then, at $18.99, purchase intent went back up again—way up. “So, $12.99 was really good, $15.99 not so good, $18.99 great. We found that at $18.99, we were starting to get consumers who would shop in both channels. At $18.99, it was a great value to a prestige shopper who was used to spending $30 or more.” The $18.99 price point was just below Clinique and considerably below Estée Lauder. For the prestige shopper, it was great value, but not too cheap to be credible. And for the mass shopper, it signified that the product must be considerably better than anything else on the shelf to justify such a premium. Listro continues: “But $15.99 was no-man’s-land—way too expensive for a mass shopper and really not credible enough for a prestige shopper.” So, with a strong push from the senior leadership team, Olay took the leap to $18.99 for the launch of Olay Total Effects. It was set as the manufacturer suggested retail price, and the team worked hard to convince retailers to stick to that price.
10. Predatory Thinking: A Masterclass in Out-thinking the competition
Dave Trott
Uno de mis libros de cabecera.
Trott comenzó como copywriter y fue director creativo de grandes agencias de publicidad inglesas, incluidas sus propias firmas.
No comentaré el libro, que me parece una pasada, en cambio transcribiré uno de sus breves capítulos:
Everything’s changed and nothing’s changed
My wife is Chinese, she’s from Singapore. We were about 30 when we met, and I was divorced. When we decided to get married, we went back to Singapore to meet her parents. Cathy’s dad had two wives. Cathy’s mum was the younger of the two. He had three children by his first wife, and five by his second. When they were young they all lived together in one house. Cathy told me that, when she’d meet new friends at school, a common question was: ‘Which wife is your mother: first, second, or third?’ She didn’t know that this was unusual until she came to England, to go to art school. I was brought up in London, so for me this was quite strange. The concept of one man having several wives. But of course, when I met Cathy’s dad it wasn’t something we discussed. Because he didn’t speak English. After a few days, Cathy asked me how I got on with her dad. I said I wasn’t sure I was comfortable with the idea of him having more than one wife. Cathy said, ‘That’s funny, because he’s not sure he’s comfortable with the idea of his daughter marrying a man who just divorces his wives when he’s fed up with them.’ It’s strange, seeing yourself through someone else’s eyes. In the West, we’ve got a system that makes perfect sense to us. If the relationship isn’t working, you call it a day and you both get on with your separate lives. But he didn’t see it like that. To him, if a man takes on the responsibility for a woman and children he takes it on for life. He thought I took marriage trivially. Changing wives the same way you’d change cars. When you get bored, trade the old one in for a new one. But, strangely enough, Cathy’s dad and I were fundamentally in agreement. We both wanted to treat our wives with respect. But we had very different ways of doing it. My way was to treat her as an equal, with all the same opportunities, but also the same problems and responsibilities that I had. His way was to shoulder all those problems and responsibilities himself. It was a real lesson for me. We learn to think there’s only ever one right way of seeing things. Our way. In order for me to be right, I must prove you wrong. But there’s no learning in that. Just closed minds. As the philosopher Bertrand Russell said, ‘The problem with the world is that the ignorant are arrogant and cocksure, while the intelligent are full of doubt.’ Because thinking is more difficult once we realise there is no right or wrong. Just the same thing viewed from different perspectives.
Si estás disfrutando de las recomendaciones te agradecería que me recomiendes o le des like a la publicación (el botón del corazón).
No toma más que dos segundos y me alegrarás el día.
Siempre ten presentes las palabras de Plutarco:
La mente no es un recipiente a llenar sino un fuego a encender
Hasta el próximo domingo.
-Álvaro de Biblioteca CPS