The Leader's Bookshelf, page 2
I’m using the word “success” rather carefully in this book because there’s a well-established link between being successful and being rich and famous, but there’s also a less appreciated one between the belief that fame and wealth bring happiness and low self-esteem and depression. In fact, people who pursue life goals more effectively are not motivated by the pursuit of wealth and fame but by other life goals. These are people who, for example, want to explore the secrets of atoms, rather than people who think there is money to be made from physics. It’s a small difference, in a sense, but a vital one. Harry Kroto, who I look at in detail in chapter 7, a Nobel Prize winner and discoverer of the carbon atom shaped like a Buckminster Fuller geodesic dome, illustrates just this. One of Kroto’s favorite books is Lord of the Rings, a work of pure imagination, and one of his favorite quotes from it is “All who wander are not lost.” After winning the prize and becoming quite a celebrity, Kroto spent his time not talking to business conferences for hefty fees but instead talking to young people in schools to try to communicate his vision of science as a voyage of discovery to be undertaken for its own sake.
Similarly, psychologists have found that people with a strong drive to become famous, or merely an all-consuming interest in those who are already famous, are likely to have deficiencies in their own language, learning, and thinking skills. Not here the ingredients of success! Celebrity worshippers tend to be moody, emotional, and neurotic, at least according to the British writer Paul Martin in a book called Making Happy People. Martin goes on to make an interesting connection between celebrity worship and what he calls “a more fundamental desire to emulate successful individuals.” According to this theory, which, like the best theories, on its face appears to be only common sense, we are evolutionarily disposed to take note of the successful individuals in our group, partly to learn from their behavior and partly to share their success. However, as Martin also says, the “malignant shadow of social comparison” is dissatisfaction with our own opportunities, activities, and indeed physical selves.
The bottom line is that success is about intrinsic motivation and rewards, not about extrinsic goals. It’s about finding something that you enjoy doing for its own sake, that you think is worth doing in itself, and not about strategies based on sacrifices now for rewards down the line. Reading for success, for example, should not be undertaken only as a means to an end but instead should be valued because the right sort of reading is itself stimulating and empowering. Contrast the vast pile of books that Buffett is contentedly munching through with the 80 percent or so of UK workers who equally cheerfully reported to researchers that they had undertaken no work-related learning at all in the recent past. The reason that they didn’t read? They enjoyed other things more. But the point such respondents miss is this: discovering new things and obtaining new insights can be both exhilarating and stimulating. Successful people are often those who found this out early on in life.
In exploring the life stories of such people, I’ve found that behind many great tales of achievement lies much more than a collection of smart tactics. Beliefs and values guide grand strategies too. But it’s not always the same plan or strategy, which, if you think about it, shouldn’t come as a surprise. If there really were just one recipe for success, well, everyone would be using it already. No, the thing that unifies these disparate approaches is that they all provided for their owners a kind of conceptual grid onto which a wide range of day-to-day creative, scientific, or business practices are able to develop and grow. For Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the founders of Google, for example, the grid was Charles Darwin’s notions of natural mutation and iteration. With Henry Ford, the man who pioneered the assembly line, the grid was an obscure, ethereal theory of life as a sequence of reincarnations. And for both Oprah Winfrey and Steve Jobs, the grid was existentialist ideas about the pursuit of authenticity. In all these cases, a grand, indeed often philosophical, theory meshed perfectly with a practical business strategy. I explore the life stories of all these remarkable people in this book.
This flexible interplay between the theoretical and the practical aspects of ideas is illustrated by two dramatically different cases: those of Jane Goodall and Walt Disney. Goodall is the inspirational anthropologist whose work living with and closely observing chimpanzees and other primates in Africa revolutionized our understanding of both these rare and endangered animals and ourselves. Goodall, who I look at in detail in my first chapter, admits that the germ of her future research lay in two children’s books about animals: Doctor Dolittle and The Jungle Book.
As for Walt Disney (who I do not look at in further detail), the mention of The Jungle Book immediately creates a link to the magic worlds brought to life in his animated films. But there the similarities end, as Disney was a committed social conservative and self-proclaimed God-fearing American patriot who openly admired fascist philosophers and even created his own totalitarian micro-republic originally called the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT). This later became a very different kind of escapist utopia called Disneyland, but even so, under the glittering surface, Big Brother was omnipresent, exerting an iron control. In Disneyland, homes belonged to the state. Long fingernails and long hair for male employees were punishable, and even the emotions that must be worn on their faces at all times were stipulated! And yet, the same philosophy also helped Disney to inspire his staff, to see the power of branding and marketing, and to grow from a struggling artist to a great filmmaker and entertainment visionary.
But let’s get back to the present. Rest assured the aim is not to send you off to the library to dig out books on twentieth-century fascist philosophers—or indeed to push any particular kind of books on you. Rather, I want to do something different and more direct by focusing on the big ideas that lie behind some of the world’s great personal stories. Skills will—the philosophical ideas often—still be part of it, and amazing insights too, but the vital ingredient of guiding strategies and framework beliefs will be given the attention I think they richly deserve but rarely get.
So this book has two big goals: first, to restate the power of books in an era when words are cheap, and second, to provide examples of people who’ve found in books the inspiration to achieve great things. Because after all my research, the one habit I’ve found successful people have in common is a very simple one, and it’s easily copied. They read a lot.
Here, in a nutshell, is the key to the relationship between innovators and books. Many people read books, but only a few search them for ideas—and then use them. It might be called the difference between active and passive reading. Active reading, reading for ideas, is an approach that amazingly few people use (or at least use properly), yet it is one that’s proven its worth time and again.
Remember all those examples of successful people dropping out of school or forgoing a formal education? (Check out how many people in this book fit in that category!) Less often noted is that many of these taught themselves, primarily from books But forget any idea of simply reading the same books that made other people great—far less checking Facebook groups or immersing yourself in the Sunday papers. No, the tricky aspect is that it is not just any old reading that will do; we must read books that speak directly to our aims and aspirations, our dreams and illusions.
And don’t even try to count on your daily reading of social media posts. Real reading is different. A good book may well be the product of tens of thousands of hours of thinking and research—quite different from the hasty cut-and-paste encouraged by the relentless churn of the Internet and news cycle.
In the chapters that follow, I’ll be taking a close look at some iconic examples of people who have been inspired by books that they read, often when they were young. I’ll pick out the key sections or ideas in the texts that they themselves mention, and sometimes I’ll suggest those that they just seem to embody. Each chapter will identify two great readers—one typically very well-known, even iconic, figure from recent history and the other a more contemporary figure but definitely someone we might wish to learn from. I’ll also sum up the books themselves, partly in the main text but also through book boxes—like the one below for Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. In the process, I hope you’ll discover—or rediscover—some of the reasons why books are an open and waiting doorway that can take you anywhere you wish to go.
THE ART OF WAR
AUTHOR: SUN TZU
PUBLISHED: CIRCA 700–800 CE
Historians aren’t sure when the book was written or even who wrote it, although traditionally it is credited to a Chinese military leader known as Sun Tzu. However, like many other Chinese classics, it is more than likely that the book is really a compilation of generations of Chinese theories and teachings on military strategy—but it’s not just that. The lessons of The Art of War apply across all areas of life, from businesses seeking strategic advantage to individuals looking for wise advice on the conduct of their daily lives. And it does so because the advice in it is very wise and still resonates with readers today.
It is said that, for more than a thousand years, rulers across Asia consulted the text as they plotted their military conquests. However, it did not reach the Western world until the end of the eighteenth century, when a Jesuit missionary called Jean Joseph Marie Amiot translated the book into French. (Some historians believe that the French emperor Napoleon then became the first Western leader to follow its teachings.) It was finally translated into English in 1905 under the title The Book of War. Ever since then, it’s sold pretty well too, but it is claimed that things really took off in 2001, when the television mobster Tony Soprano told his therapist that he’d been reading the book. After that, the book was in such demand that Oxford University Press had to print twenty-five thousand extra copies.
The Art of War offers specific battle strategies—for example, one tells commanders how to move armies through inhospitable terrain, while another explains how to use and respond to different types of weapons—but they also give more general advice about conflicts and their resolution. Rules like “He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight” and “Victory usually goes to the army who has better trained officers and men” can be applied to all kinds of disagreements and challenges.
The book also offers practical strategies for success, such as, “War is a game of deception. Therefore feign incapability when in fact capable; feign inactivity when ready to strike; appear to be far way when actually nearby . . . When the enemy is greedy for gains, put out a bait to lure him; when he is in disorder, attack and overcome him; when he boasts substantial strength, be doubly prepared against him; and when he is formidable, evade him. If he is given to anger, provoke him. If he is timid and careful, encourage his arrogance. If his forces are rested, wear them down. If he is united as one, divide him. Attack when he is least prepared.”
However, perhaps one of The Art of War’s most important and counterintuitive messages (although very much in keeping with Taoist principles of yielding) is that warfare is considered something essentially undesirable and to be avoided. Sun Tzu writes, “Those who are not fully aware of the harm in waging war are equally unable to understand fully the method of conducting war advantageously.” Instead, “he who is skilled in war subdues the enemy without fighting. He captures the enemy’s cities without assaulting them. He overthrows the enemy’s kingdom without prolonged operations in the field . . . This is the method of attacking by stratagem.”
Above all, the text emphasizes the importance of not only morale but morals too. It advises rulers very firmly to “find out which sovereign possesses more moral influence, which general is more capable, which side has the advantages of heaven and earth, which army is better disciplined, whose troops are better armed and trained, which command is more impartial in meting out rewards and punishments, and I will be able to forecast which side will be victorious.”
1
Meet the Wild Things
Barack Obama and Jane Goodall
For both Barack Obama and Jane Goodall, success in life seems to have come about through combining practical work with their most idealistic beliefs. For Obama, America’s forty-fourth president, it was the appeal of taming wild things; for the anthropologist, Goodall, it was Doctor Dolittle talking to the animals. In both cases, the idealism seems to have been planted in childhood by two very different children’s books. Ridiculous? Maybe not; psychologists often say it is at the most tender ages that ideas are planted and future paths are determined. So let’s consider first the deceptively simple case of Obama and Where the Wild Things Are.
Politicians seem to need to read books without actually having the spare time to do so. Studying the reading habits of presidents of the United States is therefore an activity that requires particular skepticism, especially as politicians’ words always seem to be carefully crafted for an ever-skeptical public audience. After all, is it really plausible that so many presidents from Abraham Lincoln down only loved the classics and rejected mere popular fiction, or is it more likely that they thought they should privilege the classics? Books are a more individual taste than that. I can well believe that Herbert Hoover, the engineer whose presidency started off with the Wall Street crash, kept himself stimulated and up to date with books on metallurgy. Yet, there too, I suppose that Hoover was projecting an image of himself as a political engineer.
Skepticism aside though, some presidents simply were book lovers, from Theodore Roosevelt, who consumed books at a rate of one a day, to Barack Obama, who not only reads voraciously but writes best sellers too.
Obama’s reading list offers plenty of texts that a president should be reading, like the writings of Abraham Lincoln, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela. Obama says that he found such books were “particularly helpful” when he needed a sense of solidarity, adding that “during very difficult moments, this job can be very isolating . . . So sometimes you have to sort of hop across history to find folks who have been similarly feeling isolated, and that’s been useful.”
Obama is a curious figure, though, and his claimed favorite books reflect that ambiguous side. Here we find two books of fiction feature prominently: Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, a ripping yarn that also deals with subtle issues of personal belief and political duties, and in very different vein, an illustrated children’s book, Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak.
As president of the United States, Obama needs only a little introduction—but he does need one nonetheless, not least because here is a man who started off, like so many remarkable figures, with little apparently in his favor. He was born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Obama Sr. and Stanley Ann Dunham. She hailed from Kansas, and I don’t know why she was given a man’s name, but in any case she was always called Ann. His parents divorced, and Barack spent most of his childhood years in Honolulu being looked after by his grandparents while his mother attended the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Just before his fourth birthday, his mother married Lolo Soetoro, who was originally from Indonesia, and two years later she took the young Obama with her to that country. Later, Obama returned to Honolulu to attend Punahou High School, graduating in 1979, and it was at this point that he finally arrived in the mainland United States, to study at Occidental College, Columbia University, and finally Harvard Law School. In the process he worked at various times as a community organizer, lawyer, and college lecturer.
Of all these roles, publicly at least, Obama has made his organizing days central to his political identity. When he announced his candidacy for president, he said the “best education” he ever had was not at colleges or universities but rather the time he spent discovering the science of communities in Chicago. Indeed, Obama’s inspirational chant, “Yes, we can,” goes back to these days when he wished to inspire Chicago’s citizens and groups to realize their dreams.
The flip side of listening to others to help implement their life strategies is that you don’t develop one yourself. And indeed, in his superb 1995 autobiography, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, no particular philosophy is offered. Instead, Obama says he sought as a youth to reject the values he had been fed from “TV sitcoms and philosophy books.” It is a strange combination and a worrying aside.
Morality is also absent from his book The Audacity of Hope, with one exception—Obama refers to his work ethic not once but seven times! Apart from this, Obama presents himself simply as a technician, an organizer. He doesn’t seem interested in ethics or solving other grand questions. In fact, when asked for an opinion about the origins of life, he short-circuited the debate, saying that it was “above his pay grade”—a characteristic response that would be funnier if it hadn’t come from someone whose real life would include ruling on the ramifications of such matters.
Indeed, the Obama administration’s record seems to reveal a tin ear for ethics, by which I mean a preference to see issues in purely instrumental terms, with precedents set in terms of data privacy, citizenship, and, most brutal of all, the use of drones to target—even at great cost to innocent civilians—the United States’ enemies. (This is a point Malala Yousafzai would make years later to Obama—see chapter 10.)
