Leaders Are Readers -- Jan 2024

Welcome back and Happy New Year! Following a couple month writing hiatus following my military retirement where I was focused on resting, recharging, and reconnecting my family, it is good to be back, sharing where my time has been spent immersed in reading. Restarting this monthly missive, we're focusing entirely on the books consumed across the past couple months. Going forward, we will dive deeply back into the normal cavalcade of content we've been reading for the past decade plus.

BOOKSHELF

First up is a fictional story built upon technological realities. Several years ago, about the 2016-2017 timeframe, in these missives, we read about Ghost Fleet by Peter Singer and August Cole. Similar to this new book, they wrote compelling copy premised on real technological concerns and challenges. This offering, Burn In, grabbed and grabbed my attention from the first page and held it through the story's last page at 387, which I felt compelled to read through late one evening rather than wait until the next morning to complete.

Liner notes: "America is on the brink of a revolution. The science fiction of AI (Artificial Intelligence) and robotics has finally come true, but millions are angry and fearful that the future has left them behind. After narrowly stopping a bombing at Washington's Union Station, FBI Special Agent Lara Keegan receives a new assignment: to field test an advanced police robot. A series of shocking catastrophes leads the pair to a conspiracy whose mastermind is using cutting-edge tech to rip the nation apart. To stop this new breed of terrorist, their only hope is to forge a new type of partnership. With every tech, trend, and scene in the book based on real-world research, Burn In blends a techno-thriller's excitement with nonfiction's insight -- creating a new kind of "useful fiction" that both entertains and illuminates the world soon to come."

Thought about this book for days following completion. Not a Terminator doomsday story per se, here, the authors build their story based on current and emerging technologies. As we continue developing more and more dynamic digital tools, do we risk disconnecting from the real world, being more and more consumed, and conditioned, by the technological marvels meant to make our lives more productive, promising, and pleasurable? Perhaps ... highly recommend reading this fiction founded in relevant, real research.

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Next up is a very quick read gifted to me by one of our Readers, Col (Ret) Rob Bearden. Rob is one of the most generous, gifted, and genuinely intelligent people I know. He thoughtfully presented this book to help me think through hobbies I should take up during this next life phase. While I'm not yet certain or committed to going where the author went for a hobby, it was a really good read that did get me to start really thinking about the usefulness, utility, and understanding of hobbies.

Sir Winston Churchill, whose words, work, and wisdom we've often visited and voiced over the years, famously took up oil painting about mid-life. He created somewhere north of 500 paintings in his lifetime. In his inimitable and instructive way, he captured his collective thoughts about his favorite pastime (well, other than whiskey, which he is reported to always have had readily at hand, and cigars, a specific type which was named after him...).

This particular book is only 72 pages, and even quicker to consume given the pages are 5.5 inches by 7.5 inches and only about half of each page has words. Don't let the small size or small word count, especially compared to the authors volumes on both World Wars, lull into a sense of not much contained therein.

President John F. Kennedy, actually quoting Edward R. Murrow, said of Churchill's command of the English language, "He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle." Churchill's prose promises the reader will delight in also choosing to paint. The publisher of this book, Winston S. Churchill -- Painting as a Pastime, provides Churchill's masterful musings on the subject.

The book's liner notes are "Picking up a paintbrush for the first time at the age of forty, Winston Churchill found in painting first a passion and later a philosophy that were to remain his constant companions. He had found his other world, a world away from the private pressures of the public persona, a world where 'Happy are the painters, for they shall not be lonely.' This glorious essay on the joys of painting portrays his love for a pastime that gave him peace and hope and richly rewarded the world with a treasure trove of pleasure."

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Our third offering is The First Rule of Mastery: Stop Worrying About What People Think of You by Michael Gervais, with Kevin Lake. This was recommended by a friend, Dr Jannell MacAulay, who works with Dr Gervais. Unlike many books delving into mindset and related-psychological material, this is a very readable book. Meaning, good material, not overly dense or difficult to digest and understand for application.

Liner notes are: "High-performance psychologist Michael Gervais presents a groundbreaking guide for overcoming what may be the single greatest constrictor or human potential: our fear of other people's opinions (FOPO). FOPO shows up almost everywhere in our lives -- and the consequences are great. When we let FOPO take control, we play it safe and small because we're afraid of what will happen on the other side of critique. When challenged, we surrender our viewpoint. We trade in authenticity for approval. We please rather than provoke. We chase the dreams of others rather than our own.

But it doesn't have to be this way. In The First Rule of Mastery, Michael Gervais shows us that the key to leading a high-performance life is to redirect our attention from the world outside us to the world inside us. He reveals the mental skills and practices we need to overcome FOPO -- the same skills he's taught to top performers in the world, including sports MVPs, world-renowned artists and musicians, and Fortune 100 leaders and teams."

No matter where we are in our personal and professional journeys, novice or well-seasoned, there are good things to learn here.

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Fourth from the shelf is Annie Duke's latest book, Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away. This was a "retirement gift" from my last position in the Pentagon's leadership team. This was a surprisingly excellent read! My thought cracking the spine was, "what can a former world champion poker player have to say about better or best managing my time and focusing my attention?" Turns out, lots! Risking giving away part of her story as shared inside the book, Annie received her double major undergraduate degree from Columbia University in English and Psychology. She also nearly completed her PhD in Cognitive Linguistics from U-Penn. One month prior to defending her dissertation on how children learn their first language, she walked away from academia. She explains why in the book.

Sufficed to say, she has the academic and science-researching experience to share how we process information and how the brain functions. This is an easy read, but one that is extensively researched, cited, and buttressed by work from many of the most well-known and respected psychologists of the day. This includes the ubiquitously cited and Nobel-prize winning psychologist, Daniel Kahneman.

The liner notes are: "Winners never quit, and quitters never win! Many of us have internalized this message, which is so deeply rooted in our culture--and we are paying the price. Whether it's leaving a bad job, selling a poorly performing stock, or walking out of a toxic relationship, we often stick to the wrong course of action for too long. Psychologically, we're biased to work things out--especially when we've already sunk significant resources into the effort. But staying the course when it's no longer worthwhile wastes time, energy, and money that could be better spent elsewhere. Making smart decisions about when to quit is one of the key skills that differentiates those who succeed in the long term and those that don't. That's why winners quit a lot. In Quit, bestselling author and internationally acclaimed decision-making expert Annie Duke draws on thoughtful examples, behavioral science, and keen-eyed analysis to explain why quitting skills are integral to success in any part of life. She explains: how quitting on time often feels like quitting too early; why it's hard to walk away when it means not knowing how things will turn out; how to identify when it's best to persevere, pivot; and strategies for enlisting others to help you call it quits."

As I'm just weeks into my post Air Force life and career, I'm already failing at "retirement". May well be busier now than in my first career. I will employ lessons learned from this book to help me focus on what is most important, safeguard my valuable time, and be comfortable with "quitting" when and where the time(s) are right and necessary. I may also actually get to starting a hobby as explored above.

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Fifth is a classic that has been on my "to read list" for many years; Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. Hat tip to Major Lisa Cochran for gifting me a hardcover copy as I left the Pentagon and retired. This is her favorite book, and it is easy to understand why that is. The version Lisa gifted was published in 2014 and is either the 6th or 7th publishing, depending on how one counts as the first edition was differently titled, was published in his native German language in 1946, later republished in English.

Frankl, for those who haven't heard of him, was imprisoned in four different German concentration camps during WWII. Prior to his imprisonment, he was already a well-established, practicing psychiatrist. Liner notes are "This seminal book, which has been called 'one of the outstanding contributions to psychological thought' by Carl Rogers and 'one of the great books of our time' by Harold Kushner, has been translated into more than fifty languages and sold over sixteen million copies (as of 2022). 'An enduring work of survival literature,' according to the New York Times, Viktor Frankl's riveting account of his time in Nazi concentration camps, and his insightful exploration of the human will to find meaning in spite of the worst adversity, has offered solace and guidance to generations of readers since it was first published in 1946. At the heart of Frankl's theory of logotherapy (from the Greek word for 'meaning') is a conviction that the primary human drive is not pleasure, as Freud maintained, but rather the discovery and pursuit of what the individual finds meaningful. Today, as generations face new challenges and an ever more complex and uncertain world, Frankl's classic work continues to inspire us all to find significance in the very act of living, in spite of all obstacles."

Who were Carl Rogers and Harold Kushner, cited in the text above?

Carl Rogers was a renowned American psychologist and Frankl contemporary. He is known for having advanced psychotherapy for which he won the 1956 Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions by the American Psychological Association. He greatly advanced a "person-centered" approach to treatment.

Harold S. Kushner, who died just last April (2023), was the American rabbi emeritus at Temple Israel in Natick, Massachusetts, and the author of several best-selling books, including When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Living a Life That Matters, and When All You've Ever wanted Isn't Enough. He wrote the forward to the 2014 edition of Man's Search for Meaning.

There is so much learned from reading this book. Risking trying to distill this too much, one key takeaway for me is on page 69, "The prisoner who has lost faith in the future--his future--was doomed. With this loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay." Frankl focuses much of his writing, and his professional life, on helping people master mindsets. If we bake and bask in our "problems", they will eat away at us mentally, physically, spiritually. But, if we determine to accept where we are, and what we're enduring, with a focus on what we can do to act (as he imparts and intones) 'responsibly', man's ability to endure even the worst of circumstances, shines through. In short, we have a choice, be a victim or be a victor.

Curious to know if Vice Admiral James Stockdale, famous for his enduring catastrophic conditions as a POW in Vietnam for seven years, read this book. I couldn't find anything where he cited having done so. Admiral Stockdale credits the great Stoic, Epictetus, for helping him overcome and survive his tortuous imprisonment.

Regardless of whether or not he did read Frankl, he came to some of the same conclusions about surviving brutal captivity as Frankl had decades earlier. Positive thinking isn't, in and of itself, enough to survive. One must act to make the situation better, or as "positive" as possible. Again, mindset matters. Stockdale often shared that the optimists are the ones who mostly did not survive because they set unrealistic expectations, such as, "we will be free by Christmas". When that target time came and went, and those captives remained captive, their positivity was lost; they fell into deeper despair, and many did not, in fact, survive to see freedom.

Have been contemplating how I would respond in like situations and scenarios. Of course, I never want to find out, but Frankl's work, his experience, and practicing and proving his theory in real life, provide a roadmap for how to endure probably anything negative we may experience.

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Our sixth selection is one that, like others shared here, has been on my to read list for some time. Admittedly, this is the first book by Malcom Gladwell I've read. Others he's written are on the list as well. His The Bomber Mafia was a good first foray into his works. It is entertaining and informative. Despite having spent 30 years in the Air Force and considering myself a little bit of a history buff, Gladwell shares things that were knew to me.

Aside from detailing the history of parts of the WWII air campaigns in both the Atlantic and Pacific, there are lessons to learn here about the highest stakes decision-making when objective outcomes are incredibly hard to predict. Engaging from the first page, this is a quick read worth exploring.

Gladwell concludes some things where he and I have discernable disagreement. The potential life-ending decisions I made to order people to deploy were not at all like the decisions military generals had to make as described and depicted in this book, but having made Air Force-wide impacting decisions, I think I can better understand the perspectives of the decision-makers highlighted herein. Not meaning to indict Gladwell here, rather, he has the luxury of looking backward and questioning decisions he's never had to think through himself in crucial, crucible moments. No matter our conclusory differences, still highly recommend reading!

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This next selection isn't published or publicly available, so why am I including it? Because my father wrote this book. One of several he's written over his adult life, but hasn't found a publisher to push it, nor has he chosen to self-publish.

This book, Let the Magic Begin: How "Not to" Guide to Living Your Dream shares my dad's journey to living his dream of becoming a sailboat captain and sailing the ocean blue between his home in Virginia Beach on The Chesapeake Bay and the Caribbean during his retirement. Well, he bought the 37-foot catamaran, lived aboard her for several years, has since retired full-time, and no longer owns the boat. His life and focus changed over time, but he did pursue his passion and learned this wasn't going to become what he had long dreamed about. He wrote about his multidecade journey through that dream's pursuit, what unfolded, what he learned, and why he ultimately made different choices.

It is a good reminder to us all, pursue our purposes and passions, learn from them and be able to look back and know you at least tried. My dad still loves to sail, as he writes in this book, the allure of harnessing the wind and the elegance of making a multi-ton object move smoothly and swiftly at just wind power remains. His living that life full-time is not what he determined his current life's era would be all about. He didn't fail to dream or pursue it; he did both and learned a great deal about himself, including strengths and limitations he didn't necessarily know prior to pursuing, and finding new purpose and passion along the way.

It is a great reminder to me that life really is what we make of it and that one day, I may actually get around to writing the book I've been discussing with others for four or five years now. Let your magic begin!

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Our next, and final book from the shelf this month is one that would have been more helpful many months ago!

Mary Polanco's Your Final Debrief: Break Free from the Military Mindset and Design the Post-Service Life You Want. Similar to my pushing off taking the military's Transition Assistance Program late in my retiring cycle, I got to this book "late".

Herein, Mary offers great insights and information from her military retirement and transition to her next and new chapter. Was pleased to buy a (signed) copy both to support the author with whom I had very short overlap at the Pentagon prior to her retiring (whether or not she remembers that!). It also was in response to my wife, very wisely, asking me to seek out others as I went through (well, am still going through), the same significant life-shift upon my own military retirement and transition (recovery!) over the past few months.

Had shared over the 2023 holiday season with many who asked, "how is your military retirement transition going?" that it has been challenging in the sense that for the past several years, I've taken the time between Christmas Eve and New Year's off. In many respects, because I stopped working for the Air Force the first week of November and delayed going back to work until following New Year's, I really felt like I was just on vacation. I hadn't yet really entered the "retirement" or "transition" season. The next few months are likely to come with some withdrawal pangs as I get further and further away from the last day in uniform and understanding and appreciating my updated professional identity as it continues forming and firming.

Even if you never served in the military, I think there are applicable lessons from this book if you've spent more than a few years within the same organization and you lived and breathed that work with deep and deliberate depth. No matter what the profession, most pour themselves into the work and the organization. When we move to another life's phase or chapter, understanding who we really are is a necessary thing! This book might help you with that transition and focusing on what really matters.

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Read and Lead on!