Tedded - Business Book Review

“…enjoy your life. You only get one.”

If you have read previous Sir Richard Branson’s books; you have read most of it already. However, this book, “Business Stripped Bare: Adventures of a Global Entrepreneur“, Sir Richard Branson focused solely on the business side of his life. Actually, all his life is about business! Unlike other business book writers, he has the first-hand experience in Virgin. In this book, he covered lots of topics. A quote from the book “So all I can do for you now (and I firmly believe that this is all anyone can honestly do) is map the territory I’ve seen. The good news is, I’ve covered a lot of territory.”

Contents

Introduction

People: Find Good People - Set Them Free

In this chapter, he generally wrote about the culture in Virgin.

Brand: Flying the Flag

Richard Branson wrote exclusively on Virgin Blue in Australia and how he fought hard to beat the competition and established the Virgin brand there.

Delivery: Special Delivery

Among other things, he started the chapter with Virgin Trains and how it reshaped the industry in UK. He moved onto how he run Virgin Records and how he started Virgin Mobile in UK and in the US.

Learning from Mistakes and Setbacks: Damage Report

Failure to acquire the bank, Northern Rock, is the focus of this chapter. Richard Branson is also subjected to mistake and he wrote on how to bounce back.

Innovation: A Driver for Business

Virgin Galactic is going to be huge and tell me after you read this chapter that you don’t want to travel into space!

Entrepreneurs and Leadership: Holding on and Letting Go

He wrote about his experience with Nelson Mandela and how he set up Global Elders to tackle the humanity issues around the world.

Social Responsibility: Just Business

This chapter is fantastically inspiring. He separated it into two parts. The first is about his activities to relieve Africa from HIV and Aids. He also wrote about Bill Gates and how they shared philanthropy to make the difference in the world. The other part is the climate change issue. You heard it all before but instead of pouring fear to you, Richard Branson offers you hope.

Epilogue: Success

…

This book is not written as an autobiography. So, I’ll compare it honestly to the ideal business book; a book that is easy to read, distinct, practical, credible, insightful, and provides great reading experience.

Ease of Understanding: 8/10: Richard Branson wrote it in plain language and make the readers follow him easily. The drawback of the book is that sometimes, the issues jump back and forth from mobile to records to airline to health clubs to finance and so on! Anyway, the part on Virgin Galactic (the rocket science) is not rocket-scientifically difficult to understand!

Distinction: 7/10: Although his life experience is one of its kind, there are other books on this already namely “Losing My Virginity” and “Screw It, Let’s Do It” by… Richard Branson…! However, the way he explained the general ideas of people, innovation, brand, etc (the usual business terms) through his experience is unlike those typical business books that litter these contents with figures, theories, graphs, models, metaphors and so forth.

Practicality: 5/10: Richard Branson offers no solid steps to encourage people, enrich brand, turbocharge delivery, foster leadership, and so on. He believes that everyone has his/her own story and way. He did not say that following him is the best approach to business but he made you think of your own. However, his general comments (with his experience as the credentials) are valuable and you cannot really dispute them.

Credibility: 10/10: His ideas are proven; people, brand, delivery, leadership, and so on. He made it work. Where is the better place to find the idea of business and entrepreneurship other than the words of one of the greatest global entrepreneurs?

Insight: 7/10: Although Richard Branson do not describe the ideas of innovation, brand, people, social responsibility with academic researches and scientific findings, he wrote it from his experience which is more valuable than most researches. Not that researches are insignificant but his life should be taught as a module in business schools. But if you already read his other books, this book will offer you only few new contents.

Reading Experience: 10/10: This book is like a journey into one of the most adventurous businessmen in the world. Like he said, the book (his life) covers a lot of territory. If you like reading other people’s life, there is no better person to read than Richard Branson. This book is like an adventure that it starts out with serious business contents with sparks of excitement and ends with good causes and social responsibility that we can make a difference not on but to Earth.

Overall: 7.8/10: This book is encouraging; it encourages you to go out and start a business. This book is motivating, it motivates you to make your business exciting. This book is inspiring; it inspires you to make you business meaningful and virtuous. This book will not make you want to be Richard Branson but it will make you want to have a great business life. This autobiographical business book is for everyone who loves business. If you have read Richard Branson’s book before, do not expect it to be something totally new. If you have not, I don’t see a reason why shouldn’t you give it a try.

I’ve followed Mike King’s blog and his most recent post on Maximum Productivity: Focus. In order to avoid being labeled as a paparazzi; I will be more cautious!

From his post “Productive focus is narrowing your actions and time in on the areas that produce results.”, this is spot on an Mike later wrote about his technology distracts us, how can we focus on productive works and build our mind to be capable of doing them.

I’ll get back to my previous post: “Your Choice”. The post in Learnthis.ca by Mike King resonates with the quote by Sir Richard Branson in my previous post.

“To me business is not about wearing suits or pleasing stockholders. It’s about being true to yourself, your ideas, and focusing on the essentials.”

Here is the hardest part: “How do you focus on the essentials?”

My assumption is that your essence of living is your contribution; your contribution on what’s important.

I’ll borrow the words from “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen R. Covey that we need to identify our roles. His example includes;

1. Family

2. Work

3. Friend

4. Church/Community/Service

We have to specify the activities we need in each role. We thought of them separately;

We have different activities in each role.

Family: Take care of parents, have regular dinner - at least three times a week - with our spouse, take a dog out for a walk, or go to children’s football matches.

Friends: Have occasional parties, visit close friends quarterly, consult and support their businesses, or keep distant friends in touch.

Work: Work forty hours a week, close enough deals, initiate new business ventures, have regular informal dinners or lunches with subordinates, or encourage our boss through tough times.

Community: Go to church every Sunday, go to temple and meditate if you are a Buddhist (like me!), donate at least once a month to causes that need urgent help, etc.

I only state the activites omitting the personality or character such as “be a supportive friend”, “be a humble boss” because we will focus solely on “activites” or “what we do”.

The problem that most of us face is typical;

activities in our different roles are, more often than not, contradictory.

We always find out that, in order to have regular dinners with our spouse, we need to sacrifice our work hours and skip parties with friends. Sometimes, if we are eager to close urgent deals on Saturday, we could not go to our children’s football match.

Stephen Covey suggested us to be principle-centered but sometimes, we see a principle as a principle in loan that we need to pay back!

However, we have another approach; we “focus”; we cut all the unproductive, unethical, or useless activities such as partying with friends, pleasing our boss, and so forth, out.

From the diagram above, if we are successful focusing on our activities, we will be more productive and enjoyable in each role. It does not mean that less activities in work (as shown above) will deteriorate our work capability. Actually, it is quite the opposite, you can focus on the area of your work that you are most capable and productive while ceasing to do anything out of focus.

Successful focus is a challenging journey.

…

You are probably thinking that “this is what we are all trying to do” this is just a paraphrase of everything we have learnt with two corny circle diagrams! What a waste of time!

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If you think like that, maybe you are right.

I would like to give you another idea…

Instead of defining our roles and specify activities in each role, there are some people who could have activities that benefit all the roles we possess.

Sir Richard Branson could do activities that are enjoyable without losing his friends, families, or communities because they are also parts of his work because his work is not his “job”. His work is his life.

He has a gravitational force that could bring all these together. Money is a factor but could we do the same?

Success in bringing all the roles together with maximise the benefit and productivity of our activities. Simply said, it’s like killing four birds with one stone. In this approach, instead of cutting activities, we focus on merging activities.

An easy example is  what I notice from many people. Their working behaviours change; people work at home via e-mail and there are internet communities bringing freinds together without traveling. These activities will allow us to have more time with a family.

My belief is that this is another journey; a journey to converge activities in our lives.

We need to evaluate our work; whether it is contradicting with our family, friends, or community or not.

We need to leverage our activities with friends; whether they are enhancing or undermining our work, family, and community.

We need to understand our family; whether it is overwhelmed by our work life or it is threatened by our time with friends.

…

And switch off the television.

I have visited Tom Peter’s Blog (He’s one of my favourite writers) and I download a PowerPoint file from his latest post “The Talent 57″. The file is 4.6mb and I thought that I will see a lot of detailed pictures and photos.

I was wrong.

The file contains 544 slides

yes, five hundred and forty four slides.

I will get back to most of his contents later but I read a quote by Sir Richard Branson in his slide

“To me business is not about wearing suits or pleasing stockholders. It’s about being true to yourself, your ideas, and focusing on the essentials.”

Sir Richard Branson knew his self at the age of fifteen when he started the first venture (growing Christmas tree) and failed! He knew from the start that he chose to be an entrepreneur. He chose his path. He chose to be what we wanted to become.

The keyword is “Choice”

(photo: www.time.com)

For me, personally, at the age of fifteen, I was playing video games like crazy, reading comics, and getting grades in school.

That was what I chose. What did you choose?

…

One thing about Sir Richard Branson that stands out is that the more I read about him, the more I study about him, I could not separate his business and his personal life.

For some, personal life dominates business life and their businesses go nowhere.

For some, business life overwhelms personal life and their families shatter.

Sir Richard Branson pushes the two together, to the extreme.

(photo: outside.away.com)

From the quote above;

“It’s about being true to yourself, your ideas, and focusing on the essentials.”

Isn’t it what you need in your life?

…

The question is “Isn’t it too late to start living your life and your career together?”

We are not Sir Richard Branson and we could not turn back time. My time with the video games could not be changed but it starts from now.

We might not own a company like Virgin but isn’t it great enough if we could live both our career (business) life and personal life together to the fullest?

I just came back from the Chinese (Mandarin) class. I used to study once and now, I’m trying to brush it up.

My bet is that everyone of us probably knows someone who can speak Chinese as the second or third language.

I’m wondering about the Chinese (increasing) domination of the world economy. How could that happen or happenning?

I looked back into the history of Thailand, Chinese started migrating to Thailand during the beginning of the 20th century due to high tax and bad economy in China; most Chinese Thai came from Chaozhou district in the Southern China and they used Chaozhou dialect (not Mandarin or Cantonese). You can read the history here.

I’ll get to the point or I’ll be asleep. Anyway, extraordinary things about the Chinese pioneers in Thailand were that they became successful in business really fast and also in politics, to name a few.

Now, Chinese Thais are firmly settled for decades already and top businessmen in Thailand are “mostly” from the Chinese ethnic; Thailand’s 40 Richest - Forbes.com

I’m not a racist here because they are Thai and our society has never been divided ethnically (except a short period during 1930s).

What I want to suggest is that there is a unique capability of Chinese people and they are doing it now to the world like they did in Thailand, and many other countries in the Southeast Asia.

I’m speaking to you from the experience and thoughts from the country that was business-ly invaded by Chinese.

Most of them are “the hardest working people on earth“; not all, but most, stereotype if you like. The poorer, the harder they work. And I strongly believe in this thought.

Modern business and management try to make you a smarter worker instead of a hard worker which is indisputable. But when two people work equally smart, the harder worker wins hands down.

I’d like to read good literatures on “how to work hard”, call me crazy if you want. The closest thing I can think of is that you need to have fun in your work and you’ll work hard. A good example (I like) is by Sir Richard Branson in his book, “Screw It, Let’s Do It - expanded”. He wrote in the beginning of the chapter 2

“HAVE FUN!

Have fun, work hard and money will come

Don’t waste time - grab your chances

Have a positive outlook on life

When it’s not fun, move on”

And the furthest thing from reality of Chinese workers is probably Tim Ferris’s The 4 Hour Work Week. Tell this to old Chinese people and they will either LHAO or hit you in the face.

One reason why they work hard that I can thing of and arguments are welcome is…

“Family”

In the past, Chinese normally have large families; lots of kids for farm work and to have as many boys as possible since many kids died from diseases (a few died and there were still enough if you had plenty). Paradoxically, instead of having more kids to help the farm work, more kids led to insufficient money to support and raise all of them.

They need to work hard in order to “survive” since they were young.

Moreover, Chinese tradition strongly believes that you need to support your parents when they grow old. They hold this belief strongly and spiritually. So, not that they can just earn enough money for their spouse and kids and wait for their retirement, they need to support their parents and other less-fortunate family members. I don’t call it a force, or even a virtue, it was just their way of life.

That’s just my two cents