Now that The Black Swan is a best seller, everybody is talking (more or less) about what to do about these cataclysmic things that we can't specifically prepare for -- yet know are coming our way. This has been an issue for intelligence agencies for many years too, as well as for all governments and individuals. It's why insurance is such a big industry and I would guess it's one of the biggest segments of the world wide advice industry.

Now we have a book that can actually help organizations become better prepared for all that’s coming by becoming ... resilient. Managing the Unexpected isn't just any book, either. Karl Weick is one of those thinkers who have tremendous influence with management academics yet is almost unknown to managers and executives themselves.This is a mystery not be dealt with here, but it is worth noting. Weick and his co-author Kathleen Sutcliffe have taken several of their academically well-known articles and have crafted a very interesting and useful book out of them.

Their major arguments are both timely and very well documented -- a rare combination in management books To wit: they find that some organizations out-perform others in being "high reliable" organizations. They perform very well under extreme stress and do it mindfully, not at all by accident or happenstance. They are designed to be highly reliable. Think of fire-fighting teams, aircraft carrier crews, oil spill and oil fire-firefighting collectives. The best ones work in similar ways for similar reasons and we, in more formal organizational settings, can learn from such groups. This is what the authors are bringing us-how to operate more like a wildfire management group then like our boring and low-reliable selves.

There are several key points in their prescription. The overriding one is mindfulness. Being very conscious of variations in performance and the environment. Another key principle is avoiding over-simplification. They could have written an entire book on just this one subject, relevant to governments as well as business. A third point, dear to my own research heart, is understanding and taking advantage of rapidly shifting expertise. NASA provides several case studies in how not to do this (though the agency has radically changed its ways recently)

All of this is wonderful advice, backed up by deep reading and real grounded examples. A few pages of Karl Weick is more valuable then anything else you will read this week and this short and accessible book is fine place to start learning the Weick stuff.

Read all of Larry Prusak's Now Read This posts.

RECOMMENDED READING:
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Hardcover)
Predictable Surprises: The Disasters You Should Have Seen Coming, and How to Prevent Them (Hardcover)
Assessing Your Organization's Crisis Response Plans (Case Note)

How willing are you to read a blog by someone whose ideas you detest? No, not me, I hope, but let's say some rabid right- or left-winger? I was recently at a social function where some nutter was telling all who would listen that there is much evidence that our own government paid the 9/11 terrorists to do their acts. Of course, I couldn’t and wouldn’t listen to such trash, but in Republic.com 2.0 Cass Sunstein makes a very good point on this phenomena. If we just really listen and read those who are more or less like us (and we do, don’t we), our type of democracy may decay even further then it has already.

Sunstein, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, is a real public intellectual. He has written more books than many people have read, and sometimes he repeats himself or brings out new editions. In this book, a revision of his 2001 Republic.com, he is concerned with the political fallout of The Daily Me: the great number of blogs, etc. on the web and the fact that most of us only read a tiny bit of this and then just what we know will confirm us in our beliefs. This can lead to "excessive confidence, extremism, contempt for others, and sometimes even violence." Since so many people only read opinions and news on the web, the situation is getting worse. Sunstein also points out how "cybercascades" can and do occur among the believers of all stripes. This often noxious event happens especially in the absense of deliberative mechanisms. These mechanisms, which were very important to the founding philosophers of this country, are intended to slow down crazy enthusiasms that can sweep through people with horrible consequences.

I know many folks who view the whole blogosphere as an advance of democracy, and maybe it is. Somewhat. But if one filters what one reads, and the web makes this easier then ever before, how is that democratic? Why would anyone but a masochist choose to listen to all the other stuff they can't stand to hear? You have no choice in the U.S. Senate, lets say, because you have to listen in order for yourself to be heard. Same for many meetings, local governments, and other deliberate spaces. But not the web.

There is much more to this provocative book. Sunstein is far from a techophobe or -phile. He's a smart and thoughtful commentator, concerned for our growing isolation amidst so many voices.

RECOMMENDED READING:
Republic.com 2.0 (Hardcover)

Did you ever study much history at school? Hours and hours were dedicated to the innumerable squabbles between England and France that went on for hundreds of years and accomplished little or nothing. Coupled with this went the almost complete absence of any mention of the great Chinese, Persian, and Indian Empires that were extant at the time and doing so many interesting and important things. Needless to say no one ever mentioned Africa or Japan.

It's no wonder that the current obsession with India and China and the globalization of the world economy seems like such a bolt from the blue to many. Yet, there was a type of global economy, intercultural and long-distance, two thousand years ago between the roman empire, many central Asian middlemen, and China. Silk went West, Western ornaments went East, and everyone along the this enormous trade route prospered. There were many other types of interactions as well, as Nayan's very interesting Bound Together points out. The volume's subtitle, "How Traders, Preachers, Adventurers, and Warriors Shaped Globalization," gives a good description of what in store for the reader. I would also add that the author has two fine qualities that serve him well. He is Indian by birth so there is little danger of overestimating the influence of the West, and he is a journalist who has had a very rich career all over Asia.

This is a wonderful book. It is filled with odd and fascinating stories all put into a frame that makes much sense -- the everpresent interactions between all cultures at almost all times. It would be a great gift to any young (or not so young) person starting out in our new, but also, ancient globalized world.

HARVARD BUSINESS ONLINE RECOMMENDS:
Bound Together: How Traders, Preachers, Adventurers, and Warriors Shaped Globalization (Hardcover)
Doing Business in China, (HBR Article Collection)
The Chinese Business Toolkit (Collection)

Even though I read that fewer and fewer workers, especially my fellow Americans, take much vacation, I am writing to those who are sane enough to do so. Here are some recent books I have read that would do well read on a beach or just in a chair in a cool place. In any case here are some recent novels I have read, enjoyed, and learned from. Enjoy!

The Pesthouse by Jim Crace is a harrowing novel about the United States after some apocalyptic event. It's nuanced and has much to say about what life would be like without much of our infrastructure and knowledge.

Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra is a wonderful detective novel set in Mumbai. It's huge and sprawling, about everything contemporary India is all about, as seen through a sort of Godfather lens.

The Emperor of Ocean Park and New England White, both by the Yale Law professor Stephen L. Carter, examine life, love, and crimes among the black aristocracy. And they offer biting and very funny portraits of Ivy League types. Professor Carter has written, to my mind, two of the best mystery novels published in English during the past ten years at least. Since one of the books has several scenes taking place on Martha's Vineyard, I actually read it there and it "got it" just right.

What are you reading?

RECOMMENDED READING:
The Pesthouse (Hardcover)
Sacred Games (Hardcover)
The Emperor of Ocean Park (Paperback)
New England White (Hardcover)

The very title of Jerome Groopman's new book, How Doctors Think, gave me pause. Do doctors think, given the crazy economic pressures they operate under these days? Do other professions think? Consultants? Managers? Does anyone really think anymore -- or do we all just react?

Groopman is a thinker, a reflective actor. He does think about what he is doing, what his colleagues are doing and thinking, and what it all means. This book is a collection of short pieces, all of interest, based on real cases in which Dr. Groopman participated. This word, participate, is at the heart of what the good doctor is getting at. He focuses on what physicians actually do, and what they should do, when working with patients. What they should do most of all, he advocates, is listen to patients. Amid all the technologies, procedures, and processes doctors work with nowadays, that's almost revolutionary.

This point is also mixed with an allied one: the role of emotions in medical work. It's a subject Groopman explores with real emotion. And the last big lesson in this book is the value placed on how the patients present themselves and their problems. How patients tell their stories, Groopman shows, is crucial. We all organize our lives into stories, but the need of many medical systems to reduce the stories to mere facts deprives physicians of a valuable source of insight into what could be troubling the patient. The longer I live, the more the truth of stories becomes more and more real to me. It’s the way we live and make sense of our lives, either stories we create or those we adopt from whatever source we have at our command.

This is a wise and humane book. Managers will learn much here on how they can work with employees, how they can better understand their own lives, and what are the truly enduring tools we all have at our disposal.

RECOMMENDED READING:
How Doctors Think (Hardcover)

India, China. China, India. Has any subject ever in our lifetimes arisen so suddenly and with such force? It has become the subject of our time -- probably of our children's and grandchildren's times as well. It dominates not just economic discourse, but much political and social dialogue as well, since it has the power to change our whole society in unforeseen ways.

But what is the subject? Two countries, accounting for over one-third of world's population, have, after centuries of colonialism and stagnation, been reintegrated into the global economy. With a bang.

It's not that the two of them have emerged: They have reemerged. India and China were two very powerful global actors up until perhaps the beginning of the eighteenth century.

With spectacular economic growth (especially in China), the two nations are the subject of a staggering amount of analysis: books, articles, reports from every possible source, countless conversations. Everyone has an opinion. When I returned from a wedding in India last year, two cab drivers I encountered on my arrival back home each had detailed and passionate feelings about what's what in India (neither of them were Indian or had ever been there). What is a reader to do? How does one choose how to spend one's limited reading time?

The Dragon and the Elephant: China, India, and the New World Order is a pretty good place to start. Written by British journalist David Smith, who knows much about economics, it is one of the best of breed of such books. It offers short but smart accounts of the rise, decline, and rise again of the Indian and Chinese economies, and how they rate against one another in terms of wealth and power (the author is more inclined toward China; I'm more for India). The last chapter is especially useful. In the spirit of the other David (Letterman), he lists "Ten Ways China and India Will and Won't Change the World." The list is very well-balanced and makes good sense. Smith concludes that "the rise of China and India is fascinating, uplifting, and to some, very worrying. It is the biggest thing to hit the global economy and the most effective anti-poverty program the world has ever seen."

Once one starts reading about this subject, it's hard to stop. I'll write about some other books on this subject soon.

RECOMMENDED READING:
The Dragon and the Elephant
Harvard Business Review's Book Reviews