Shane Snow

Through some remarkable stories Snow gives pointers on how to create and sustain diverse and functional teams. Stories are one of the main pointers to create empathy, so he is using the strategies (he likes the word heuristic) he wants us to use. I felt that the ending of the book was not as strong as the beginning - as if there was the realization that maybe story telling is not quite enough to keep diverse teams going.

Good: lots of it is interesting, the story about the London children's hospital and the Ferrari race team is beautiful, saving third world babies with free and almost free 'incubator' replacing sleeping bags brought tears to my eyes it did my old scone.

Bad: its soo, soo badly written: breathless (and irrelevant) cutbacks to a surfing competition, in a generally insipid, sub-magazine in style.

Solution: Get a *decent* editor and re-write the whole thing.

Did you know that most of our presidents did not grind out a long political career? They took Smartcuts to the highest position in the land. In Shane Snow's book, Smartcuts: The Breakthrough Power of Lateral Thinking*, he listed a number of smart ways to move faster to your goals. I enjoyed reading this book and the lessons learned. Read more

This books tells us the patterns (and the randomness) of people who rose to the top. This includes Michelle Phan, Jimmy Fallon, and the Presidents of the United States among of others. It's a relatively short book with lots of engaging stories about some fast rising successes.