Reviews and Comments

Primal Leadership is an in-depth look and analysis based on a collection of Harvard Business Review (HBR) articles and books. It's split into 3 parts; the first is incredibly lucid and valuable. The second part repeats many of the same points in the previous, detailing trivial examples that you cannot apply in your own position. It's overly generalized and would make you ask, "Oh, interesting. I see details A, B, and C. But how did they get from C to Z?"

In the first part, the book lays out the foundation for the idea of how Emotionally Intelligent leaders are the best leaders, detailing what makes up the different areas. Some leaders are good at some, but not others. The best leaders have some qualities of all. Emotionally intelligent leaders are consequently high in IQ (usually). EI leaders will drive to create resonance in their organizations, as opposed to dissonance, which some EQ traits expose. These are all great points, which is immediately disregarded until the last chapter of the book.

Chapter 10 finally ties it all back together, but it would have been nice to consistently tie it back to creating resonance in an organization versus the generalized anecdotal information.

Overall, a good read if you can get past the middle. Try some of the vague ideas in your own situations and see what works, and what doesn't. Be a scientist, continue to learn, and grow your EQ as a leader.

The Phoenix Project is a seminal read on the accumulation of thoughts and processes surrounding DevOps as we know it today. The story is a fictional take on a workplace that is rife with unplanned work and misuse of the process. You might find it similar to something you see in your organization. It has some great insights and relevant stories you can apply to your own practices. In 2020, these things should be less and less relevant, but in fact, they seem to be more relevant than ever with COVID-19 and companies shifting more and more to the cloud with their digital transformation, demanding quicker time to market, just like Parts Unlimited in the book. The characters used in the book are great, and the protagonist gets the shake at the end. I can't help but think one of the characters, Wes, is a bit over the top. To summarize, it's a great read on how you and your organization can start thinking about bringing Development and Operations people closer together and get their decisions aligned, ultimately leading to more quality output and faster.

Dennis Bakke gives a great take on how to transform your old industrial-age business to a modern, decentralized, employee-driven one where people actually fun (yes, FUN!) at work. His account of how he created and transformed his business in the energy industry with his company AES is very informative. If you work in the software industry then you will probably draw a lot of parallels to how your business and teams are ran and how he was trying to do this back in the 1980s.

Ultimately, what you should take from this book as a business leader is that you want to stop the "manager-employee" relationship and instead step back and let your employees make all of the tough decisions. It's not easy! You have to give up power, you have to be more transparent and actually give the employees the tools they need to make those decisions. It's a crazy thought for some, but if you do this, more often than not, you'll create your business' next generation of leaders as well as making people love your company and the work they do.

P.S.
Some reviewers have noted that Bakke is a religious man. This is true and he does make some mentions of it, but it's not suffocating. You can respect that a lot of his decisions in life and this book were driven from the morals he gained from his religion and then you can move past it.