Birthday 2020 Thoughts

Once again, my friends you have surprise me with your outpouring of well wishes. Every year I unabashedly look forward to this outpouring of friendship because it gives me an excuse to recall those faces and names of friends who have reached out allows me to replay our times together.

There is a  great mix of people that appear on my timeline on Facebook and elsewhere: from my professional life, from my volleyball coaching life, from my Gradual School life, from my undergraduate school life, from my high school life, and even some from  my grade school life. We shall leave the time period unspecified for the protection of the innocent. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Your friendship means so much to me, it gives me strength and hope; it also gives me a chance to revisit memories created at another time and another place, when we were all younger, more idealistic, and much more innocent. For some of us of course, it meant that we had more hair that was of our natural colors, while for others it meant that they had more hair.

A friend’s Facebook posts stated that this particular birthday has got to be one of the most memorable birthdays because of the circumstances. I had to think about it and realized that he was correct and incorrect all at the same time. It was memorable because of the circumstances of which we were living. But each marking of our sojourn through space and time is memorable because of friends who care enough in these troubled times to reach out through social media to give us that little ego boosting touch of humanity. It gives us that unexpected spark, that extra burst of life in our daily routine.

My birthday ended in the most 2020 way. I had a Webex meeting with the people that I first met on the campus of University of Illinois, at Allen Hall. We were all freshmen together and we have remained in touch 40 years later. Meeting on Webex was unique, we should all be quite familiar with the environs presented by the virtual meeting, but some were better at the technology than others. We were all able to call in, some of us managed to not lock ourselves out of our laptops.

We raised many toasts, we talked of our lives and things. We all managed to stay awake beyond the dreaded 9 PM snooze attack, even though some of us were struggling; and we spoke as if forty years had not elapsed. Those of the things I will remember forever.

Peace My friends and Be Well

Book Review: Rebel Talent By Francesca Gino

I started this book because I had heard the author being interviewed on The Hidden Brain program on NPR. The topic seemed interesting and she told a great story.

As it is, I am not unhappy about buying the book, nor am I unhappy reading it. Francesca Gino is a great story teller, she is able to extract the lessons she wanted from the stories and her descriptions of the stories are excellent. Her firsthand stories of her teaching business executives at Harvard, her and her husbands venture in to the world of improv comedy, and most interestingly, her apprenticeship at the Osteria Francescana with Chef Massimo Bottura captured my full attention. In fact, it is her continuous reference back to the chef and the restaurant that kept me interested.

Her stories throughout the book, whether it is her tour of the Pixar facilities and the retelling of “Sully” Sullenberger story were well done and she is a very capable yarn spinner, and she is quite adept at focusing the stories into her main points about being a rebel in the button down world of today’s business.

The book is split into eight chapters and she lays out the landscape of what being a rebel means in today’s world. The main points that she emphasizes: having an eye for the new and the novel, having a different perspective that is well considered and consciously rational, the importance of diversity, being authentic in your actions, and being actively engaged, are actually gospel in today’s church of the innovative management. I don’t think anyone would argue with her conclusions.

That is precisely the problem: the points that she attributes to the qualities of a rebel has been covered ad nauseum in other business books. It seems that every important point she brings up are familiar to me. It means that either I have read too many of these kinds of books or she is treading old ground. It is probably a combination of both, but I was actually a bit disappointed that there is not more substance to the secret of being the rebel.

Having said that, it must be pointed out that the title is still apt: the status quo in American business is still at a point where all the points that the writer made are not the norm, that senior management are clinging to their old ways by reflex and familiarity. The behavior that she is promoting can indeed be seen rebellious. It is just that all this has been said before. If this book does play a role as catalyst in changing the status quo of American business and management. Then I am all for it.

In the end, I enjoyed the read, the author has a nice style, and when she talks about Osteria Francescana, I am fully riveted, because that is a world that I am unfamiliar, and I learned. I just wish that she had more original points to make.