Yes, Minister: Ten Management Lessons for the Modern Technical Leader

Last year, I re-read Graham McCann's A Very Courageous Decision: The Inside Story of Yes Minister and followed it up with Antony Jay's Management & Machiavelli. I had written about both books in my 2023 book list. But this time, rather than reading them as a fan of the show or a student of Machiavelli, I was reading them as someone who has spent over two decades managing engineers and products at scale. I was struck by how much the dynamics of Whitehall resemble the dynamics of any large technical organization. The satirical genius of Jonathan Lynn and Antony Jay is that they didn't just write political comedy — they wrote the most honest organizational behavior textbook that no business school has ever assigned.

For those unfamiliar: Yes Minister (1980–1984) and its sequel Yes, Prime Minister follow Jim Hacker, an idealistic but inexperienced cabinet minister, as he tries to reform his department and is thwarted at every turn by Sir Humphrey Appleby, his Permanent Secretary — a brilliant, articulate bureaucrat whose primary mission is to preserve the status quo. Bernard Woolley, Hacker's private secretary, is caught between the two, loyal to his minister but with a career controlled by the civil service. Jonathan Lynn, one of the co-creators, once described the British system as having "the engine of a lawn mower and the brakes of a Rolls Royce." The observation applies well beyond Westminster. I have seen the same pattern in every large organization I have worked in.

What follows are ten lessons I have distilled from the show and the books behind it, reframed for the modern technical leader. I wrote these not as abstract principles, but as things I have either experienced firsthand, coached others through, or wish I had understood earlier. The job of every technical manager is to ensure that they are serving the needs of the customer, period. But there are things that get in the way and it is also their job to remove obstacles.

1. Declared vs. Real Motivations

Lynn and Jay made an important observation in a 2009 Daily Telegraph article about what they called the "classic actors' studio question" behind the show: what's my motivation? They noted that there are always two answers — the expressed, publicly acceptable motivation, and the real motivation. The minister's declared motivation is to serve voters. His real motivation is to get promoted and re-elected. The civil servant's declared motivation is to implement policy. His real motivation is to raise personal status, expand the department, avoid blame, resist change, and minimize work.

This maps directly to what I have seen in large engineering organizations. When a VP pitches a reorg as "improving velocity," it is worth asking who benefits from the new reporting lines. When an engineer resists a platform migration, the objection may be genuinely technical — or it may be about ownership and career capital. Daniel Kahneman's work on framing and cognitive bias (which I discussed in my Continuing Education post) is directly relevant here. The best leaders I have worked with and for don't treat this with cynicism. Instead, they make it safe for people to surface what they actually care about — because once real motivations are on the table, you can design solutions that address them.

2. Creative Inertia

Sir Humphrey's most powerful weapon is what a previous minister called "creative inertia" — a portfolio of tactics to delay and block proposals without ever saying no outright. He forms interdepartmental committees that never converge. He buries critical documents at the bottom of thick briefing folders. He requests additional studies before any action can be taken. He strategically appoints allies to supposedly impartial review boards. The beauty of these tactics is that they look like process, due diligence, and collaboration. They are, in fact, the opposite.

In tech organizations, the modern equivalents are easy to spot if you know what to look for: API bar raising processes with no decision deadline, the request for "just one more benchmark" before approving an architecture change, or escalating a decision to a committee that meets quarterly. The antidote is to set explicit decision deadlines, assign a single decision-maker (a DRI, or directly responsible individual), and — this is the important part — treat inaction as a choice with consequences. Ram Charan's Execution, which has been one of my foundational management books, makes a similar point: execution discipline means decisions have owners and timelines, not just discussion threads.

3. Headcount Without Output

In one of the most famous episodes, "The Compassionate Society," a newly completed hospital has 500 administrative employees but zero patients. Sir Humphrey gives an eloquent explanation of why every single employee is absolutely necessary. The hospital is up for a Florence Nightingale Award. It is a triumph of process over purpose — perfectly staffed, perfectly managed, and perfectly useless.

I have seen versions of this in every large tech company. The platform team or the internal tools team that grows to serve its own ecosystem rather than the product. The internal dashboard with more maintainers than users. The question I ask (and recommend others ask periodically) is simple: if we deleted this team tomorrow, what customer-facing capability would degrade? If the answer takes more than thirty seconds to articulate, that is a signal.

There is a deeper structural reason why this happens. In organizations that aren't directly measured by business output metrics — typically revenue or profits — the only visible mark of success becomes organization size. To paraphrase Sir Humphrey: the leader with the larger organization is thought to be more successful than the one with the smaller organization. Headcount becomes the scoreboard. This is why it is essential that an organization's output metrics are tied to something directly connected to business outcomes, not to something that is actually the cost of doing business. Infrastructure size, internal tool adoption rates, number of services managed — these are costs, not outputs. When costs become the metric, you get hospitals with five hundred staff and no patients.

4. Language as a Power Tool

The show codified the civil service's coded language. "I think we have to be very careful" means we are not going to do this. "Have you thought through all the implications?" means you are not going to do this. "It is a slightly puzzling decision" means idiotic. "Not entirely straightforward" means criminal. "With the greatest possible respect, Minister" means you are an idiot.

Every organization develops its own version. In tech, "let's align on this offline" often means I disagree but don't want to fight publicly. "That's an interesting approach" means I think this is wrong. "Non-trivial" means this will take months. The proliferation of euphemisms is not just a communication problem — it is a diagnostic signal. When people stop saying what they mean, it usually indicates that psychological safety has eroded. Amy Edmondson's The Fearless Organization, which I read in 2023 and used as a book club read with my leadership team, makes the rigorous case for why this matters for team performance and innovation. Sir Humphrey's coded language is funny on television. In a real organization, it is a symptom of dysfunction.

5. The Information Asymmetry Problem

Sir Humphrey's greatest structural advantage is that he controls what the minister sees and when. Critical facts are concealed within innocuously titled reports buried underneath mammoth piles of papers. The minister, overwhelmed with volume, rarely reaches the important material. And when he does, he only has time for a skim-read. The civil service can legitimately claim they made the information available — while making it nearly impossible to discover.

This maps directly to how information flows in engineering organizations. Dashboards that show green while customers are complaining. Weekly status reports that bury risks in appendices. Architecture review boards where the real constraints are understood by only one team. I came across Didier Sornette's Don't Tell the Boss! in my 2023 reading, and it reinforced what I had observed empirically: the catastrophic failures in organizations — from the Challenger disaster to the financial crisis — often trace back to information that existed somewhere in the system but never reached the people making decisions. The counter-measures are not complicated, but they require deliberate effort: skip-level 1:1s, blameless post-mortems, and a culture where surfacing bad news early is rewarded rather than punished.

6. The "House-Trained" Manager

The show introduces the concept of a minister becoming "house-trained" — gradually adopting the civil service's worldview and defending the very status quo they were hired to challenge. Within months, the reformer starts speaking in the language of the institution. They begin seeing obstacles where they once saw opportunities. They develop empathy for the bureaucracy's constraints that crosses the line from understanding into capitulation.

This is also a familiar pattern: the new VP of Engineering who arrives with a mandate to "increase velocity" and within six months is defending the exact processes they were supposed to reform. The engineer who joins a legacy team, initially frustrated by the tech debt, but within a quarter is explaining why the migration is "more complex than it looks." There is a fine line between gaining necessary context and losing your original perspective. My advice: revisit your original assessment of what needed to change at regular intervals. Maintain external perspective through advisors or a peer network outside your organization. And if you find yourself defending things you originally intended to fix, ask yourself whether you have new information — or whether you have been house-trained.

7. The Five Universal Excuses

The show catalogues the civil service's standard excuses for failure. The Anthony Blunt excuse: there is a perfectly satisfactory explanation, but security prevents its disclosure. The Comprehensive Schools excuse: it only failed because of budget cuts. The Concorde excuse: it was a worthwhile experiment that provided valuable data. The Munich Agreement excuse: it occurred before important facts were known. The Charge of the Light Brigade excuse: it was an unfortunate lapse by an individual, now dealt with under internal procedures. Sir Humphrey claims these have covered everything so far — even wars (small wars, anyway).

You will recognize every one of these in post-mortems, quarterly business reviews, and performance discussions. Healthy engineering cultures replace excuses with systems thinking: what process allowed this failure? What guardrail was missing? The goal is not blame-free culture — accountability matters — but shame-free root cause analysis. This connects to what David Marquet writes about in Turn the Ship Around!, which I read in 2024: when you shift from a "leader-follower" to a "leader-leader" model, people take ownership of failures because they also own the outcomes.

8. The Gap Between Vision and Execution

Hacker repeatedly arrives with ambitious ideas — cutting bureaucracy, increasing transparency, reforming local government — only to discover that execution requires navigating a system that is optimized for its own preservation. His ambition is genuine; his leverage is limited. The system absorbs his energy and outputs committee reports.

This is the gap between strategy and delivery. A CTO can declare "we're going microservices" or "AI-first across the board," but if incentive structures, team topologies, and hiring pipelines aren't aligned, the strategy will be absorbed and neutralized by the existing system. Clayton Christensen's Innovator's Dilemma, which has been an early influence on my strategic thinking, describes a similar phenomenon at the company level: incumbent organizations develop antibodies against disruptive change. Effective technical leaders don't just set direction — they redesign the organizational machinery that determines whether direction is followed. In Machiavelli's language (from the Discourses): "he who proposes to change an old-established form of government in a free city should retain at least the shadow of its ancient customs." Even in reform, you need to work with the existing structure.

9. The Power of the Permanent Class

Ministers come and go — the average tenure in the show is about eleven months. Sir Humphrey and the civil service are permanent. This asymmetry means the permanent staff always has more institutional knowledge, deeper relationships, and more patience. They can simply wait out any reformer they don't like.

In most tech companies, the "permanent class" is the senior individual contributors and the middle managers who have survived multiple reorgs. They know why systems were built the way they were, where the bodies are buried, and which stated priorities are real versus performative. I recall writing in my review of Will Larson's Staff Engineer that operating at the staff level means "working on what matters" and that "title-chasing is less effective than doing the work at scope." The senior ICs who have been around longest are the ones who understand scope and leverage. New leaders who ignore this group fail. Those who genuinely listen, respect their knowledge, and find alignment between the permanent class's interests and the new direction — those leaders succeed.

10. Aligning Incentives Is the Only Durable Solution

The rare episodes where Hacker wins are those where he finds alignment between his political goals and Sir Humphrey's bureaucratic interests. When both parties benefit, cooperation emerges naturally and smoothly. No amount of authority alone can substitute for aligned incentives.

This is perhaps the deepest lesson, and it connects to a principle I have returned to throughout my career. You cannot mandate cultural change, force adoption of new tools, or decree that teams collaborate — unless the people involved see how it serves their own goals. Career growth, reduced toil, increased autonomy, more interesting work — these are the currencies. The most effective technical leaders I have known spend less time issuing directives and more time designing incentive structures: promotion criteria, team charters, OKR frameworks that make the desired behavior the path of least resistance. As Antony Jay wrote in Management & Machiavelli: the secret is not in commanding people to do what you want, but in making what you want become what they want. Machiavelli, I suspect, would have enjoyed Yes Minister.

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If you haven't watched Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister, I strongly recommend it. Both the complete DVD set and the book adaptation (The Complete Yes Minister) are available. And if, like me, you are a student of both Machiavelli and modern management, Antony Jay's Management & Machiavelli is the bridge text that connects the two traditions. I remain convinced that to understand the human impulses driving a modern corporation, studying medieval history is a better alternative than just the last 70 years of modern management. Yes Minister proves that studying 1980s British political satire works just as well.

Books I read in 2024

It was another busy first half of the year, so it took me longer to write my 2024 book list. Other than reading, I spent a chunk of my time learning and experimenting with the AI tools and using them to simplify my own daily usage. And also wondering what a future workplace would look like. But that's for a separate post.

After 1177 BC: The survival of Civilizations, by Eric Cline. This book is the sequel of the earlier book by Eric Cline - "1177 BC: The year the civilization collapsed". It follows the Eastern Mediterranean and Aegean world through the four centuries after the Late Bronze Age collapse, asking why some societies perished while others adapted and thrived. Cline reframes the “First Dark Age” as a period of resilience and reinvention: as palace economies fell and long-distance trade faltered, new actors and systems emerged—the Phoenicians, Philistines, Israelites, Neo-Hittites, Neo-Assyrians, and Neo-Babylonians—alongside transformative innovations such as widespread iron use and the alphabet. The narrative moves region by region to show uneven outcomes—some polities failed to adjust and disappeared; others reconfigured their economies, networks, and political orders to fit the new constraints, laying groundwork for the Greek resurgence by 776 B.C.. I loved how this book offered a lens for the present: complex systems absorb shocks through adaptation, redundancy, and decentralization, and societies that diversify and learn can turn collapse into a pivot rather than an end. This book seems very relevant in the age of change that we are living in; and offers lessons to individuals, communities, and nations on how to adapt to change.

Staff Engineer: Leadership beyond the management track, by Will Larson. I would recommend this book to any senior (or even entry-level) technical individual-contributor and their manager. The book lays out what senior individual-contributor leadership actually looks like once one is past the senior level: not more code, but durable influence across roadmaps, quality, and cross-team outcomes. Larson frames four archetypes: the Tech Lead (owning execution and cohesive delivery across a team), the Architect (shaping systems over time and holding the long-term line on quality), the Solver ( parachuting into ambiguous, high-stakes problems and making them tractable), and the Right Hand (a trusted partner to an executive, amplifying org-wide priorities). Operating at staff means working on what matters (stack-ranking leverage), writing and socializing engineering strategy, guarding technical quality without being a blocker, and creating space for others to do their best work. A recurring theme is that title-chasing is less effective than doing the work at scope; the title tends to follow when your impact becomes undeniable and visible to the calibration process. The author used to maintain their web page and a podcast (last episode is from 2021). On my favorite topic of coding, this was a fun line: “Most do, some don’t, but almost everyone codes less than what they have ever done at their peak”. I remain convinced that coding is the best way to stay connected to reality, even as the primary coding language moves from C/C++ to Java to Python to English.  

Je devais être impératrice: Mémoires de la dernière princesse héritière d'Autriche-Hongrie, by Princess Stéphanie of Belgium. This was part of European royalty rabbit hole last year. It started with the Netflix series Die Kaiserin (The Empress), about Empress Elizabeth ("Sisi"), who was the Empress of Austria-Hungary from 1854-1898. Then, that led me to watching a two part German series: "The Crown Prince", about her son and Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria-Hungary who died in a suicide pact with his mistress. It also merged with my fifth year of learning French: I can now read simple books in French, albeit a little slowly. This book ("I should have become Empress") is the memoirs of the wife of Rudolf, Princess Stéphanie of Belgium and the Crown Princess of Austria-Hungary. The first part of the book described her life as the daughter of Leopold II of Belgium, and a member of the Royal House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the same house as present King Charles II of England (renamed to Windsor now to pacify the anti-German sentiment in the first World War). The narrative turned from melancholy to tragedy and the realization that the world that she had been raised for was slowly disappearing around her.

Creating Christ: How Roman Emperors Invented Christianity by James S Valliant and CW Fahy. This is a controversial book. It advances a provocative thesis: early Christianity’s public shape was decisively molded under the Flavian dynasty (Vespasian, Titus, Domitian), aligning Christian symbols and narratives with Roman imperial propaganda to pacify and unify a volatile post–Jewish War world.  The authors lean heavily on numismatics—imperial coinage motifs like the dolphin-and-anchor, victory palms, and personified virtues—arguing these migrate into early Christian iconography visible in catacombs and later ecclesiastical art, signaling a deliberate convergence. They argue that as the imperial cult sacralized emperors and empire, Christianity synthesized comparable themes—peace after conquest, submission to authorities, a universal mission—recasting them in a theologically acceptable register that served order as much as faith. Whether or not one accepts every linkage, the book’s core contribution is reframing Christian emergence as a political-theological settlement: a faith whose surviving public form was shaped, in part, by Rome’s need for stability and a universalizing narrative that could sanctify it.

The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention by Guy Deutscher. I got this book recommended by my friend's high schooler daughter who was researching languages and working on a conlanging project. This is probably the most fascinating book I read this year. The book describes how languages evolve, with examples. He also explains how ancient languages look more complex and structured than later ones: how languages lose their strict structure and complexity through usage and change. The chapter on metaphors was fascinating, where he describes how metaphors become the standard way to describe abstract things. For example, the English word "decide" derives from a Latin verb (decidere) that means "to cut off". Turns out that is true in German (entscheiden), Greek (diaireo), Swahili, Basque, Indonesian, Ancient Akkadian, Biblical Hebrew, and Chinese have the same pattern. Reading this book reminded me how a recent study says that teenage girls have led language innovation for centuries.

The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World by Peter Schwartz. A classmate recommended this book to me when we were discussing scenario planning for an uncertain world. The book teaches scenario planning as a disciplined way to make better decisions under deep uncertainty. The method starts by surfacing the focal issue or decision—what you must choose or design for—so scenarios are built to inform an actual choice rather than abstract speculation. There are case examples (e.g., Shell, EPA, market entrants) that show how scenarios can reframe capital bets, policy positions, and innovation agendas by distinguishing what’s truly locked in from what remains malleable. Schwartz argues that scenario planning builds organizational resilience: it teaches teams to ask better questions, hold multiple futures in mind, and make choices that remain sound as the environment shifts. I ended up using this book in my staff book club at work.

Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction, by Philip E Tetlock and Dan Gardner. This was another book under the forecasting theme. The book distills the lessons from Good Judgement Project's forecasting tournaments: a small group of "superforecasters" that consistently outperform typical experts and prediction markets. The book combines elements of psychology, behavioral economics (e.g. Kahneman-Taversky's research), math, statistics (e.g. Laplace and Bayes'), military strategy, (Helmuth von Moltke and Carl von Clausewitz) and brain teasers by Enrico Fermi. 

Demanding More: Why Diversity and Inclusion Don't Happen and What You Can Do About It, by Sheree Atchison. I read this book before extending an invitation to the author to speak at my leadership offsite last year. I felt that this was a different diversity book, where the author speaks through her personal experience as a woman in science and tech. Sheree talks about bringing DEI as an integral part of product making (to ensure that every customer's needs are represented) and organization building (job design, perf review and promotion process, pay equity audits, using middle management as leverage points). Atcheson integrates her own story with interviews and data, emphasizing that culture change comes from operational choices—what’s measured, who is sponsored, how decisions are made—not from slogans. 

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. This book was on my wishlist for many years. This was a slow read as the author went through the details of the lives and careers of the rivals before explaining how they worked in Lincoln's cabinet.

1001 Days: Memoirs of an Empress, Farah Pahlavi. I found this book at the reception of our local Persian restaurant and started reading it while waiting for my takeout order. This is the memoirs of the Farah, the third wife of Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran. It was, like the memoirs of Crown Princess Stéphanie, a story of a world that does not exist anymore.

Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders, by L. David Marquet. This book was recommended by a team member and I got the chance to incorporate ideas from this in a Senior Manager workshop for the team last year. This book is based on the author’s real-life experience as a U.S. Navy submarine captain. Marquet was sent to command the submarine USS Santa Fe, which was known for its poor morale, performance, and low retention. The turning point came when he gave an impossible order, and the crew tried to follow it without question. Marquet decided to switch to a "leader-leader" model—empowering every member of the crew to take responsibility, make decisions, and act as leaders in their own right. Over time, this bottom-up approach transformed the Santa Fe: performance, morale, and retention soared, and a remarkable number of officers went on to become submarine commanders themselves. The book has a lot of actionable principles and real-world examples illustrating how any organization can benefit from empowering people at every level. 

Divan e Hafez - Farsi and English : Ghazalyat This is a selection of poems by Hafez, the 14th century Persian poet. The translations are good, but Hafez and Tagore's works remind us that deep poetry is best understood in the original language. Like Tagore's poems, Hafez's poem addresses both the divine and the lover: 

                        "Esgh-e-to nahal-e-heyrat aamad
                         Vasl-e-to kamal-e-heyrat aamad
                         Bas gharq-e-haal-o-vasl kaakhir
                         Ham bar sar haal-e-heyrat aamad"

The translation from the book: "Your love, a sapling of bewilderment has come; union with you, the pinnacle of amazement has come. Deeply immersed in the state of union, at last; still, atop the state of bewilderment, it has come to pass".

The English Constitution (Oxford World's Classics), by Walter Bagehot. This book was on my wishlist for a few years and felt like an appropriate read before the 2024 US elections. Parts of this book reminded me of John K. Galbraith's American Capitalism, the concept of countervailing power that I had read a few years earlier. Bagehot explains the evolution of the English system that merged the legislative and the executive power in the Cabinet, with the Prime Minister at the head; and how the Cabinet navigates the House of Lords and of course, the Sovereign. This also reminded me of Jonathan Lynn's quote about the differences between the British and the American system. "The essential difference between the British and American governmental systems is that the British system, which doesn't really work, was arrived at by accident. The British government has the engine of a lawn mower and the brakes of a Rolls Royce. The official Opposition, currently the Tories and Liberal Democrats, are merely the opposition in exile. The Civil Service are the opposition in residence. Thus, as in most bureaucracies, many people can say no but almost nobody can say yes.

The Americans, starting from scratch, foolishly copied this situation, called it the Separation of Powers and enshrined it in their Constitution. Their legislative body (Congress) has very little executive power. The Executive (The White House) has no legislative power. The Supreme Court can rule any legislation unconstitutional - hence, the same sort of gridlock. The only difference is that American gridlock is more public than British gridlock. Though it is also true that most of Congress is theatre in the same way that The House of Commons is theatre."

Songs of Love and Grief: A Bilingual Anthology in the Verse Forms of the Originals, by Heinrich Heine. This was to round up my poetry reading for the year. It is a great collection of Heinrich Heine's poems, but the collection didn't include my favorite: Nachtgedaken. There is almost a Mirza Ghalib-like quality in his poems (for example, from "Wenn ich an deinem Hause"):

                    „Ich bin ein deutscher Dichter,
                    Bekannt im deutschen Land;
                    Nennt man die besten Namen,
                    So wird auch der meine genannt.
                    Und was mir fehlt, du Kleine,
                    Fehlt manchem im deutschen Land;
                    Nennt man die schlimmsten Schmerzen,

                    So wird auch der meine genannt.“

Even the sadness: (from Die Lorelei):

                     „Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten,
                      Dass ich so traurig bin;
                      Ein Märchen aus alten Zeiten,
                      Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn.“ 

The collection included "Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen". 

My previous book lists:

2023    2022     2021    2020    2019     2018     2017     2016    2015    2014    2008    2007

The US led liberal world order: where is it headed?

(I had started writing this in late 2021, but never finished the last 5%. I decided to put in a few hours this Sunday, almost four years later, to complete it)

In an earlier post, I looked at how world orders changed over the last 400 years, and how we entered the US led unipolar liberal world order after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Here, I am trying to analyze where it is headed.

The basic framework of the liberal world order rests on the following tenets:

1. Individual rights, including freedom of speech and freedom of religion; and "no taxation without representation".
2. Separation of church and state: the state not establishing a religion and not favoring one religion over another. 
3. Free enterprise: the rights of a business to set prices (without collusion) and to invest according to their interests. This also implicitly promised "free movement of goods, capital, and labor" and free trade among nations. 
4. Minority and civil rights and the commitment to the universal declaration of human rights. 

Although the philosophical principles of this order were laid early in the 17th and 18th century, and gave birth to the revolutionary republics like the US and France, it wasn't until 1945 that it became the accepted principle of the nations west of the iron curtain. Well, the UK still had the Church of England, but it slowly turned into a social organization, not a religious one. And when the iron curtain fell in the collapse of 1989-1991, the world assumed that the liberal order had triumphed. Francis Fukuyama declared the End of History. The US and the West thought that by the wave of a magic wand, the rest of the world will become copies of the western democracies. They thought that even the people of communist China, after tasting capitalism, will clamor for democracy. Well, that didn't happen.

That triumph, and the inability of the Western nations and leaders to understand the underpinnings of their successful system, their military, economic, and political over-reaches had sowed the seeds of the challenges that the liberal world order faces now. This was accompanied by two "once in 500-year” events (a) the return of China and India to their pre-existing position (pre-1805) in the global economic order, and (b) the internet.

The US and NATO led-unipolar world, the rise of India and China, the birth and growth of the internet, and a border-free, single-currency European Union brought about a few over-reaches of the system.

1. Earlier, the ideas and news that used to become mainstream were vetted through a hierarchical system. It was hard for a rogue idea to become mainstream. The internet and social media changed that. Freedom of speech does not guarantee freedom from falsehood, so it became easier to pursue polarized politics backed by questionable claims under the guise of "free speech". The internet and freedom of speech also enabled religious radicalization and indoctrination.
2. Secularism extended into godlessness, or denial of religion. Although every bit of early liberal writing derived the individual's rights from the divine, over time, the western liberals, bit by bit, drove religion out of public discourse. 
3. Inconsistent application of the free enterprise tenet led to the belief that the system is designed to socialize the risks, a lack of skin in the game. The bailouts and the bonuses handed to the very people who triggered the 2008 financial crisis was further evidence of the collusion between business and government. "The system is rigged", some said.
4. Immigration and manufacturing in low-wage countries helped keep inflation in check, but it came at social and economic costs. The middle class in the liberal economies stopped feeling financially secure. It is hard to pursue a global free trade regime with countries with one-tenth the labor costs, and still expect the same standard of living. 
5. Civil liberties over-extended to social justice, and then to woke-ism and cancel culture to a point where even traditionally liberal publications like the Economist, or traditional liberal commentators like Bill Maher have started pushing back.
6. Globalization of the liberal world order took a few new forms. 
• The Washington DC fantasy that it had a god-given duty to impose democracy around the world, and it had a right to depose dictators it didn't like, but only the ones without nuclear weapons (Saddam, Ghaddafi). There was no Soviet Union to balance misadventures, and China was still too weak. The experiments to build liberal democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan, and elsewhere in the Arab world failed.
• The expansion of NATO and the European Union to the Russian border. 
• The urban-financial integration that not only integrated the major US cities (NYC, Boston, DC, Miami, Atlanta, Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco) and the elite universities into a mono-culture, it also brought European and Asian cities (London, Paris, Berlin, Zurich, Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Seoul, Taiwan, Tokyo, even Shanghai and Beijing) and universities in the mix. Suddenly, the distinction between the Capitol and the districts of the Hunger Games didn't feel that unreal. 

All of this generated pushback from individuals, communities, and nations who did not benefit from the globalization of the liberal world order.

After the collapse of communism, the liberal world order has been great for the college educated, urban or suburban elite who were able to take advantage of the economic expansion to build a good life. It lifted hundreds of millions of people in Asia out of poverty. But the blue collar workers in the western liberal democracies and the uneducated or the under-educated in rest of the world did end up getting the short end of the deal. And, after the financial crisis of 2008-2009, where they had the right to vote, they expressed their dissatisfaction at the polls. 

(Source: The American Prospect, using data provided by Branko Milanovic)

In June 2016, I was in the UK and watched the Brexit campaign very closely. Two things, a few days before the vote, convinced me that Leave would win. In a radio program, a caller outside London called in to say "how is it that I can't afford a flat in London, but the foreigners who have been here for just a few years can?". The other was when my driver, who was himself a Kosovo-Albanian refuge said "Oh, yes, there are too many refuges here". In my visit to France, our driver-cum-tour-guide in Cannes said "I hope the British leave, and I hope the French also have a leave election so that we can leave too". A friend of mine who worked at an investment bank in London, who, obviously was a Remainer said, "I don't know if I will have the time to go and vote". The Brexit results gave an early indication that Donald Trump had a chance in November. 

Over the years, the populists and nationalists won elections in Italy, Brazil, India, Poland, Hungary, Philippines, and consolidated power in Hungary, Turkey, Russia, and China. Hungary's president openly talked about the emergence of the "illiberal democracy". It was clear that the working class were demanding a system that works for them, through the ballot box. It was also clear that after the great recession, immigration issues (legal and illegal), and the rise of China as a manufacturing hub; the working middle class in the west were not satisfied with their political, economic, and social situation.

The response to the over-reach of the liberal order in the west has been two forms of populism: 

1) Left-wing populism of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, AOC, Jeremy Corbyn. They tended to blame capitalism and big businesses for the situation and advocated for a centralized redistributive state. 

2) Right-wing populism, or Trumpism. They tended to blame immigration and free-trade, and wanted to advocate for a "nation first" solution by bringing back manufacturing jobs and closing borders.

The centrist, even where they are, or were in power (like Joe Biden in the US, or Macron in France) lead a fragile coalition of left-wing populists and some center-rightist, but have a hard time getting anything done. 

So, is the liberal world order over? Globally, I think it was over on August 15, 2021 when the US & its allies admitted that they didn't have any more reason to stay in Afghanistan, and left the country to status quo ante, handing it back to the Taliban. This, along with what we have seen in Iraq has demonstrated that liberal democracy isn't universal, and an effort to impose it top-down ignoring national history and politics is futile. The rise of China, the Russian reconquest of Crimea, and the rise of openly illiberal regimes in Hungary and Turkey is showing that there are other ways to govern. I am very skeptical of US willingness of sending their own citizens in another foreign war, be it in Ukraine, or in the South China Sea. The best we can expect is the US selling military equipment, a new lend-lease perhaps, but with more strings attached.

In the US and the west, I think the institutions (local government, courts, police) are still strong enough and will prevent a slide to either outright fascism or communism, but the political system has to re-invent itself to deliver what the voting public wants. Deng Xiaoping famously said, "It doesn't matter if the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice." Similarly, in the west, the voters will end up saying that ideology doesn't really matter if the political system can deliver progress, peace, and prosperity. 

The first six weeks of the second Trump administration is indication that the United States is not willing to lead and maintain this liberal global world order, unless there is some direct economic benefit to the United States. Marco Rubio, US Secretary of State, in his first interview as Secretary of State, talked about returning back to a multi-polar world. It is still unclear if a new world order will became a new "Great Game" with little to no rules, or if there will be an effort, similar to 1815 (Congress of Vienna) or even 1945 (United Nations and Bretton Woods) to write down the rules of the game and to secure commitment from the major players to play by the rules.

Books I read in 2023

It was another busy first half of the year, so it took me longer to write my 2023 book list.

The Storm before the calm: America's Discord, the Coming Crisis of the 2020s, and the Triumph Beyond, by George Friedman. The book builds the historical context on how generational changes happened in the United States and shows that there is an eighty year cycle: 1780-1860, 1860-1940, and 1940-2020 for every new system that adjusts to the changes. A period of crisis creates a slightly new system that adapts to the new social, economic, and political needs. The book ends on an optimistic note, saying America's best years lay ahead.

The Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, by John Perkins. This book almost reads like a conspiracy theorist finding the hand of the CIA in every global disturbance, regime change, and coup all over the world. It is an interesting read.

Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis in Europe, by George Friedman. This book is less optimistic than his book on the American Crisis of 2020 (Storm before the calm, discussed above). It sets up the current situation in Europe and how the institutions of NATO, EU, and the Euro as a currency emerged out of the two world wars. Then, it sets up the current flashpoints: the Balkans, Azerbaijan-Armenia, the German question (once more), the buffer lands between Germany and Russia (that includes Ukraine), of course, the question of Russia, of Turkey and that of Islam in Europe. The book concludes with the short answer that Europe's history of conflict is far from over.

After Europe, by Evan Krastev. This book almost continues from where George Friedman's book concluded. Ivan Krastev is a Bulgarian political scientist. His other book, "The Light that Failed" examined how the democratic euphoria after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1991 is fading. In this book, very provocatively written, he examines the future of today's European Union. With examples, he explains how the European meritocratic elites are disconnected from its masses. How democracy in some of the Eastern European countries is a tool of majoritarian led exclusion. He concludes that the disintegration of the EU is a likely possibility, by saying "It's less important that European leaders understand why the Habsburg Empire collapsed in 1918 than why it did not disintegrated earlier, in 1848, 1867, or any number of other occasions. Rather than seeking to ensure the EU's survival by increasing its legitimacy, perhaps demonstrating its capacity to survive can become a major source of its future legitimacy". Without explicitly mentioning it, perhaps he wants us to learn from the Holy Roman Empire, that survived for over eight centuries?  

Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry, by Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff. This is a story of the rise and fall of RIM (Research in Motion), the makers of the Blackberry. A good book for someone who studies how companies that are earlier adopters of new technologies rise and get big, and then how the same big players get disrupted because of strategic mistakes and a new wave of technologies that they are unable to adapt to.

The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East, by Eugene Rogan. The author was a guest at the Empire Podcast and it was a nice refresher for me to go through the story of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed, by Eric Cline. This is a book about Bronze Age civilization collapse when a number of civilizations from the Mediterranean to the Indus Valley collapsed almost simultaneously. The author reviews various reasons: pandemic, attack from Sea Peoples, economic collapse, political instability and concludes that it was a perfect storm of causes that collapsed a bunch of interlinked civilizations and ended the Bronze Age.

River Kings: A New History of the Vikings from Scandinavia to the Silk Roads, by Cat Jarman. I bought this book after listening to Cat Jarman on the Empire Podcast. The story starts by investigating how a bead made in Gujarat, India ended up being found at the site of a Viking settlement in Northern England. I learned a lot about the Viking domination of Europe from the 8th to the 10th centuries and their trading links with the rest of the world. 

The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth, by Amy Edmondson. This book introduced the concept of Psychological Safety and its role in managing teams and leaders. I liked the book so much that it became my next book club read with my leadership team. 

Don't Tell the Boss!: How Poor Communication on Risks within Organizations Causes Major Catastrophes, by Didier Sornette, et. al. This is a combination of my interest in exploring collapse, strategic mistakes, and psychological safety. The book goes through a case studies of failures and determines the role poor communication and hiding information plays in systemic failures. Didier Sornette has spent his entire life building the math and science behind failures, including rocket engine failures and the stock market collapse.

Angrynomics, by Mark Blyth and Eric Lonegran. I have been a fan of Mark Blyth ever since I watched his talk "Why do people vote against their interests". In this book, he analyzes the current economic, social, and political unrest and explains what's behind it. The audiobook is a fun listen. 

Judgment in Managerial Decision Making, by Max Bazerman and Don Moore. This book turned out to be very different from what I was expecting, in a good way. It started out almost like a psychology book, talking about biases, blind spots, framing, and loss aversion. It talked about things I learned as part of probability, like the Monty Hall problem. But then, it ended with a summary of strategies to improve decision making: using decision analysis tools, acquiring expertise, debiasing judgement, reasoning with analogies, taking an outsiders view, understanding biases in others, and nudging ethical decision. It gives a good decision making framework in being right a lot.  

The Green Sea of Heaven: Fifty Ghazals from the Diwan of Hafiz, by Elizabeth Gray with an introductory essay by Daryush Shayegan. I have found Hafiz to be very untranslatable and appreciate every scholarly endeavor to translate Hafiz's ghazals. Elizabeth Gray picked fifty ghazals from his Diwan and translated them. All I can say is that the translations helped me in peeling a few more layers on some of the Ghazals that I am more familiar with. My favorite couplet, is the ma'aqta (the last couplet that has the poet's name embedded in it):

        Gharaar o khwab az Hafiz tama'a madaar ay dust/gharaar cheest, saboori kadaam, khwab koja?

        Do not covet rest and sleep from Hafiz, O friend. Where is rest, which is patience, where is sleep?

Rome: Strategy of Empire, by James Lacey. The author serves as Professor of Strategic Studies and Political Economy at the US Marine Corps War College. This was a fascinating mix of history, politics, diplomacy, and military strategy. There is also an uncanny similarity how Rome maintained her Empire through her legions and how today's United States maintains its global naval dominance through the carrier strike groups.

The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, by Karl Polyani. This book got recommended through Mark Blyth's talks. I must admit, it is a heavy book and a slow read. But very thought provoking, perhaps because it challenged my own belief in self-regulating markets. Karl Polyani was an Austro-Hungarian economist who fled from Hungary to (post WW-1) Austria to the UK and then to the US. The book has a Foreword by Joseph Stiglitz, who summarized, "Polyani saw the market as part of the broader economy, and the broader economy as part of a still broader society". The tremendous social and political change that we are seeing now across the western liberal world as a response to neo-liberalism and globalization is perhaps a vindication of his theory.

Persians: the age of the great kings, by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones. The author was a guest at the Empire Podcast. This was a refresher on the first global superpower, the Persian Achaemenid Empire that extended from Greece and Egypt to Central Asia and Western India in the sixth century BCE. It is also a fascinating tale of rise and fall, ambition, power, as well as examples of good governance.

Emperor of Rome: ruling the ancient world, by Mary Beard. This was an account of Roman emperors, their private and public lives and how the Empire was governed and fought over. 

A Very Courageous Decision: The Inside Story of Yes Minister, by Graham McCann. This is a story of the making of my favorite TV show: Yes, Minister and Yes Prime Minister. The shows are very quotable and re-watchable. This book goes behind the scenes on the authors (Antony Jay and Jonthan Lynn), the actors and how they worked with career bureaucrats and historians to create their material. 

MANAGEMENT & MACHIAVELLI : A Prescription for Success in Your Business, by Antony Jay. I got the link to the book from the previous book on the inside story of Yes, Minister. I have been an avid student of Machiavelli's writings as well as student and practitioner of modern management. I even remember saying, "to understand the human impulses driving a modern corporation, studying medieval history is a better alternative than just the last 70 years of modern management". But I did not realize that someone smarter and more accomplished than me had made the connection before me and even wrote about it. The book was a delight to read. Antony Jay was the older and more conservative leaning co-authors of Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister.

The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization, by Jon R. Katzenbach, Douglas K. Smith. This book analyzes high-performing teams and through case studies, determines how they are formed and how they succeed. It starts by saying that six "team basics" define the discipline required for team performance: (1) Small number (less than 12), (2) complementary skills of members (3) common purpose, (4) common performance goals, (5) common working approach, and (6) mutual accountability. They also non-intuitively conclude that the role of the team leader is not the primary determinant of team performance. The case studies and the conclusions are very insightful.

I have to end with two special mentions. One is a podcast and other is an explanatory essay. 

The Empire Podcast, by Anita Anand and William Dalrymple has been my commute companion for all of 2023. They bring in a lot of historians as guests and they engage in a fascinating and funny discussion on serious subjects.

The second is Stephen Wolfram's essay titled "What is ChatGPT doing and why does it work?". This helped me build my mental model on the science and math behind generative AI and the things we can use the technology for.

My previous book lists:

2022     2021    2020    2019     2018     2017     2016    2015    2014    2008    2007

Continuing education of a Tech Leader

Education does not conclude once one leaves the halls of academia. True learning begins when classroom theories confront real-world challenges. Here, I outline the framework I've employed to foster continuous growth and learning. I identified gaps in my own formal education, particularly in finance and the liberal arts, which I sought to fill post-graduation. Moreover, in the fast-changing realm of technology, it is important to remain on top of my latest development. Also, my tenure at companies like Hughes, Openwave, Microsoft, and Amazon provided me with an invaluable, immersive learning experience.

When I advise and mentor technical leaders who manage people and products, here are the broad areas I ask them to look at, to help them keep learning on the job, and what has worked for me so far.

Stay updated on your domain. There are three aspects to stay in touch with. The first is the basic sciences: this includes reading the academic papers around an emerging science. That is how I first learned about  quantum computing, DNA computers, or CRISPR, for example. These are long-lead time research, many of which may not find a mass-market product in our lifetime, but many of them will. Thinking about interesting research and asking "how would this be available to the masses in the form of a product?" is always an interesting exercise. I never start a day by asking "what academic papers will I read today?". Instead, I frequently stumble upon something through my regular reading (Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Economist, Nature, Scientific American) that then leads me to go deeper into the basic research.  I scan the ACM and IEEE journals for interesting papers. I also read the research of Nobel Prize winners in Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, and Economics every year.

The second is the technical innovation that is coming out of universities and business as a result of focussed funding that is more "product-ready" but don't yet have mass-market adoption. For example, I follow very closely what the MIT Media Lab is up to. I have been following the latest in brain computer interface for almost a decade, including trying out experimental products. 

The third is the immediate trends coming out of the industry that quickly get mass adoption. For example, I learned Java weeks after Sun announced it: I was in college then. I downloaded the iOS and the Android SDKs when they were released, and learned by building apps myself. I follow the developments in the open source community closely: especially in languages (Python), web infrastructure (Chromium and Webkit), operating systems, and AI. Coursera has courses in partnership with the top universities that can help one state updated on the latest.

Finance. I was advised by a mentor very early in my career to learn the basics of finance and accounting. One could always take a course from the local community college or Coursera, or from a textbook. I was recommended Finance and Accounting for Non-financial managers by Edward Fields, and it was a good start. After that, at work, I made sure that I always spent time with my finance partner to understand the basics of how the business or the division I am in makes money (or plans to make money). As part of my investing due-diligence, I make it a point to read the financial reports of the company (going back at least 3 years) I am investing in. Understanding what every line item in the financial statement means has also given me insights. I also make it a point to read every line in the footnotes. I spend time reading the annual reports of the tech companies that I track (the usual suspects) and get to learn from that.

Investing basics. The two people who influenced my thinking around investing were Benjamin Graham (The Intelligent Investor) and Burton Malkiel (A Random Walk down Wall Street). Benjamin Graham's Security Analysis is a comprehensive guide on how to analyze securities and the companies behind them. In 2005-2006, I remember trying to apply his model to my own stock picking and used to be surprised at how few stocks met the criteria he had. That changed a bit in 2009, after the crash. Graham's "margin of safety" and "in the short term, the market is a voting machine and in the long run it is a weighing machine" has been a big influence on how I look at capital markets. Which brings us to learning from Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger. It is a delight to read Berkshire Hathaway's annual shareholder letters every year. John Bogle's (Vanguard's founder, Common Sense on mutual funds) thinking has been a later influence as well.

Management principles. A big part of management is doing, practicing, and learning from mistakes through introspection. Peter Drucker has been my inspiration and guide on thinking about management as a practice. I would recommend anyone in management to read everything that Peter Drucker has written, just not once, but over and over again. Ram Charan's book on Execution is a great add on top of that. The two authors (and their principles) that influenced me a lot very early (from my college days) were Dale Carnegie (How to win friends and influence people) and Stephen Covey (The 7 habits of highly effective people). On strategy, my earlier influences were Jim Collins (From Good to Great) and Clayton Christensen (The Innovator's Dilemma). On operations, my early influences were Akio Morita (Made in Japan), Lee Iocacca, and Jack Welch; although these days, I am having second thoughts about Jack Welch's management style and his long-term impact in GE. On tech, I have closely followed Microsoft and Apple and where they have been placing bets. I have followed Bill Gates' and Steve Job's thinking on how to build products and how to build and protect moats. And, of course, learning first-hand from Jeff Bezos has been an incredible opportunity and a privilege. I would recommend reading the Amazon annual shareholder letters too. Over the years, I have read books by, or autobiographies and biographies of founders from JRD Tata to Peter Thiel to help me understand how to build and operate a successful business. Harvard Business Review is also a great resource to stay on top of the latest thinking on management principles and how to apply them in real life.

Economics and how capitalism works. We operate in a capitalist economy. Therefore, learning the basics of how capitalism works in practice helps one understand our foundation. The best (but long) book to understand the system is Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. David Ricardo's On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation is a great read too. John Maynard Keynes' works, especially, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money helped me understand the Great Depression and how the different components of the economy interact. I would recommend John K. Galbraith's American Capitalism: the concept of countervailing power and his other works. And to balance that, I would recommend Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom.  Joseph Schumpeter's Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy introduced the concept of "creative destruction" around the time (1942) when the future of that world order was in question. To understand the case against capitalism, one can always read Das Kapital, or Thomas Piketty's 21st century version. A friend introduced me to Jane Jacobs' works and I found her Cities and the Wealth of Nations very insightful.

Among modern economists, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner helped change the way I look at things and look beyond the obvious answers to problems.  One thing to keep in mind is that Economics is not an exact science like Physics, so multiple theories often claim contradictory things. In a given year, the Nobel Prize in Economics can be shared by two people, one of whom would show that markets can be irrational (Robert Shiller: Irrational Exuberance) and the other would show that markets always price in all available information (Eugene Fama: efficient-market hypothesis). Yale University has one of Robert Shiller's economics classes on Financial markets (Econ-252) available on YouTube: and that is a delight to watch and learn from. My current thinking is being influenced by Mark Blyth (Austerity: the history of a dangerous idea, Angrynomics) and Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, Anti-Fragile, Skin in the Game). Mark Blyth is a great speaker and I recommend watching his lectures to understand the economics and politics of the last ten years: especially "Why people vote for those who work against their interests". 

Psychology. Understanding human psychology and motivation is essential for leadership. Dale Carnegie's book (mentioned earlier) has been one of my earliest introduction to how to influence by understanding motivation and incentives. I would strongly recommend reading Daniel Kahneman's and Amos Tversky's research on framing of decisions, judgement under uncertainty, and cognitive bias to anyone who is managing people and products. Of course, Kahneman's book: Thinking Fast and Slow is also on my "must read multiple times" list. Michael Lewis' Undoing project goes behind the details of their collaboration. Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point and Blink: The Power of thinking without thinking are great books on understanding the world around us and what goes on inside our brains. 

History. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it", the saying goes. As well as "History doesn't repeat, but rhymes". I have two simultaneous approaches of learning history. One is depth-first and the other is breadth-first. For depth, I recommend learning the history of where one is living and working in, as well as where one is from (if that is different). That gives the depth to understand oneself, as well as the environment one is operating in. For the breadth, I recommend understanding how different parts of the world have been interconnected since the ancient times, and how multiple cultures, empires, and nations interacted with other; what mistakes they made; how they rose and fell; and also the biographies of individuals who made outsized contributions. I like to read military history to understand strategy and effective leadership: how great commanders and generals plan their steps to attain their objective, and how they inspire and lead people towards that objective. 

Philosophy. I have approached philosophy to learn about models or frameworks to explain how the world operates, or how it should operate. I read Plato's Republic a few years after graduating and the debates about justice, ethics, rationality, and reality helped me with the framework of how to think in abstractions about human issues. Artistotle's (who was Alexander the Great's teacher) works helped me understand how to apply abstract concepts in practice. I later read Avicenna and Al-Ghazali and realized how Arab philosophers ended up being a bridge between the ancient Greco-Roman world and the modern world and were essentially of the same tradition. Maimonides' works was my introduction to the Jewish tradition and how he connected the tradition with European philosophy. Reading Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Voltaire, and Rousseau gave me an understanding of the philosophical underpinnings of today's liberal democratic society. Reading René Descartes, Francis Bacon, Karl Popper, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant helped me understand the foundations of the philosophy behind modern science.

Statecraft and geopolitics. There are two reasons why I recommend learning the nuances of statecraft and geopolitics. The first is because it gives a leader the philosophical and the operational framework to operate at scale. The second is because geopolitics impacts businesses and markets. So, trying to understand the motivations of the people and the leaders of where one is doing business in helps in staying prepared for, and even predict events. From the ancient eastern world, I recommend Kautilya's Arthashastra and Sun Tzu's Art of War. Incidentally, the US Army War college has a course that covers Arthashastra. From the medieval world, I recommend Machiavelli's Prince and Discourses. For modern geopolitics, I recommend Henry Kissinger's On China and World Order. Peter Zeihan and George Friedman's recent books have been interesting reads too.

Classics. By classics, I don't mean studying just the ancient Roman and Greek literature, but I also mean studying the literature and the culture of some of the modern nations that have shaped the contemporary world. I would recommend Homer's great epics: Iliad and Odyssey, to anyone operating in the western world. Ancient India's two great epics: Ramayana ("The story of Rama") and the Mahabharata ("The Great India") is a great way to understand ancient India. Anglo-Saxons have Beowulf and the Old Norse Sagas, and Persians have the epic of Gilgamesh and Shahnameh. William Shakespeare's plays have been a lesson in human behavior and English history for me, as well a source of great quotes. His historical plays: Richard II, Henry IV (Parts 1 and 2), Henry V, Henry VI (Parts 1, 2, 3), and Richard III are a great way to understand English history and the complexities of leadership. 

Religion, spirituality, and introspection. I always recommend learning and understanding the basics of one's own religious tradition, even if one is an atheist. Over millennia, religion carried the nuggets and pearls of the collective wisdom of a society, for better or for worse. In almost every ancient society, the priests were also the teachers and had an influence on how society was structured and run. They were frequently the only literate people. Most of Europe's earliest universities were founded by and run by the clergy. For me, the Upanishads (including The Bhagavad Gita) have been a great guide for understanding reality and understanding myself. I have found Sufism (through the poetry of poets like Rumi) re-iterating similar principles. I would recommend anyone operating in the western world to read the Bible. Among modern spiritual teachers, I have found Eckhart Tolle's books very good. Music been a source of rejuvenation and energy for me.

This was a short summary of what and how I have been learning over the last 25 years. If you have read this far, do share with me your own framework of how you keep learning. 

Books I read in 2022

 It was a busy first half of 2023, so it took me a while to write up my 2022 book list.

Discourses, by Niccolo Machiavelli. When we one says Machiavelli, we think of The Prince. But Discourses is the longer and a more dynamic book that articulates the principles of the state and republican government. It starts with a commentary of Titus Livy's history of republican Rome, and the sets up how cities, states, governments get established and preserved. The short chapters (especially in book 1) around principles of administration and policy ("he who proposes to change an old-established form of government in a free city should retain at least the shadow of its ancient customs", "those who setup a tyranny are no less blameworthy than are the founders of a republic or a kingdom praiseworthy", "a weak prince who succeeds an outstanding prince can hold his own, but a weak prince who succeeds another weak prince cannot hold any kingdom") makes the book great for quick and partial re-reading. Some of the things he re-iterates about outstanding princes apply to modern CEOs too.

The book is also very quotable. In book 2, he says "... for money cannot find good soldiers, but good soldiers will be sure to find money ..." and I thought that one could say the same thing for software engineers. In book 1, he says "... in every republic there are two different dispositions, that of the populace and that of the upper class and that all legislation favourable to liberty is brought about by the clash between them..."

The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom, by James Burnham: This came recommended from a podcast I sometimes listen to. James Burnham was a philosopher and political theorist who started as a Trotskyist but eventually became a leader of the American conservative movement, becoming a regular contributor and editor of William F. Buckley's National Review magazine. The book is a commentary on the works of Machiavelli and on Dante's de Monarchia, and of four modern philosophers that Burnhams calls "The Machiavellians". They are Gaetano Mosca, Georges Sorel, Robert Michels, and Vilfredo Pareto (the Pareto of the 80-20 rule). Mosca, Michels, and Pareto are cofounders of the Italian school of elitism. Burnham then summarizes their principles in a section titled Politics and the Truth. In that section, in the chapter on Democracy, he explores both the self-government meaning of democracy and that of liberty: the freedom to criticize and the existence of a public opposition to check the power of the governing elite.

The Back Channel: A Memoir of American Diplomacy and the Case for Its Renewal, by William J. Burns: This is one of the best books I read to understand the foreign policy choices of both the George HW Bush (41) and George W Bush (43) administrations. He was the US ambassador to Russia from 2005 to 2008. This book, along with Michael McFaul's memoirs (US Ambassador to Russia 2012-2014) gave me a good first hand understanding of the Russia of today. William J Burns is now the CIA director, but he had a long career in the State Department. The key takeaway from the book is how the backchannel, or the informal relationships between leaders and diplomats are a big part of how foreign policy is conducted. 

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, by Jack Weatherford: This is a re-read. But the third (or was it the fourth?) reading made me realize a few more things that I had missed in the earlier reading. Especially around religious tolerance, forging a nation out of warring tribes, communicating across large distance, and setting standards around diplomatic immunity. For example, to ensure error-free (and hard to intercept) communication of military orders, the Mongol army orders were composed in rhymes to ensure that messages was easily memorized and repeated to every soldier as exactly as they were originally spoken. The other realization I had is that the Mongols did not glorify death in battle, so most of their battle plans centered around ensuring the survival of the Mongol core.

The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan, by Ayesha Jalal: This is the book version of Ayesha Jalal's PhD dissertation. This is admirably researched and very well analyzed, starting with the demographics of different provinces of undivided India, the separate political journeys of Congress and Muslim League, and that of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan. I have always been interested in blow by blow accounts of how India got divided on the basis of religion, but it has left me confused on the definition of nationhood and secularism in the South Asian context; as well as how a democracy should operate in a multi-ethnic, multi-religious society. It is just unfortunate that the founders of India and Pakistan couldn't agree on a single model. 

The Storm Before the Calm: America's Discord, the Coming Crisis of the 2020s, and the Triumph Beyond, by George Friedman. George Friedman is a geopolitical strategist and found of Stratfor and Geopolitical futures. In this book he gives how political, social, and economic crisis in the US comes in cycles, and how the US responds. He predicts that the 2020s will be the confluence of multiple crisis and how the US will overcome it. Friedman is very bullish on America.

Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys' Club of Silicon Valley, by Emily Chang. I attended a "meet the author" organized by our county public library, where Emily Chang talked about the book. It is a fascinating and well researched book about the bro culture in Silicon Valley and how the culture has made it hard for female entrepreneurs to raise money and start companies. 

The Long Game: China's Grand Strategy to Displace American Order (Bridging the Gap), by Rush Doshi. This was recommended by an ex-coworker. It is a good read, but I think it over estimates Chinese capability. China's deserved economic and military rise is nothing but spectacular, but China still depends on the American Order. 

The Absent Superpower: The Shale Revolution and a World Without America, by Peter Zeihan. Peter Zeihan is a geopolitical strategist who worked at Friedman's Stratfor and then founded his own firm in 2012. Zeihan has been vocally predicting the end of globalization and the eventual disinterest of the US in running global trade and security. In this book, he explains how the shale revolution is going to make North America energy independent and trigger the foreign policy changes that will make the US increasingly disinterested in running the global order that it built to fight the cold war.

Cities and the Wealth of Nations: Principles of Economic Life, by Jane Jacobs. This book was recommended to me by a classmate, when we were discussing the economics of the European Union. According to him, Jane Jacob's book gave him the insights on how the monetary union is hurting the less developed economies within the union and preventing their ability to develop. Jane Jacobs is best known for her book "The Death and Life of Great American Cities," and has been a vocal activist for a vibrant urban life and the preservation of neighborhoods. In this book she focused on how cities developed by import replacement and then using that to develop local infrastructure, suppliers, and skilled labor. Her overall point is that cities drive economic growth for regions and nations and the book described the mechanisms of that growth. In that context, Jane Jacobs explains that cities or initially under-developed countries that have their own currencies have the ability to make their exports cheaper and competitive in order to start the first phase of growth. 

Neither Civil nor Servant, Break rules to build new economies, the Philip Yeo Story, by Peh Shing Huei. This book, a biography of Philip Yeo, written in an interview style seemed like a good practical manual to read on how to build a city-state from scratch and watch the principles of Jane Jacobs' book in action. Philip Yep served in Singapore Administrative Services and held various roles overseeing and executing Singapore's economic development, science and technology research, trade, and defense. 

The Singapore Story, memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew. This is the shortened version of the first volume of the memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew, the founder and the first prime minister of the modern city state of Singapore. It is a fascinating and inspirational read. He describes his experiences during the Japanese occupation, as a leader inside the federation of Malaysia, and the eventual separation and independence of Singapore. His conviction in opposing the forces of communism and of communal intimidation is very inspirational too. 

The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization, by Peter Zeihan. This is Zeihan's latest book, released in May 2022. He continues his earlier narrative of the end of globalization and the beginning of a multi-polar world. Using demographic charts and maps, he goes through the major countries that he thinks will have a good time (hint: Turkey and France) in the decades to come and the ones that will struggle (hint: Germany, China, and Russia). Like Friedman, he is very bullish on the US.

Without Marx or Jesus, by Jean François Revel. I got interested in Jean François Revel's philosophy after reading his conversations with his son in "The Monk and the Philosopher". Without Marx or Jesus signaled Revel's transition from a socialist to a classical liberal and a proponent of free market. In this book, written during the height of the cold war (1971), he predicted the victory of the American system. 

History Has Begun: The Birth of a New America, by Bruno Maçães. I must admit that it was one of the harder to read books that I read this year. Not because of the language or the concepts, but because the thesis that the US is charting a new course for itself in its cultural journey, and may (will) abandon its European enlightenment roots. It was thought provoking, and left me very provoked. I agree with Maçães  that America is not in decline, but I had a hard time accepting that it is going to re-invent itself in a way that it will break from the past. 

This year, reading Zeihan, Friedman, and Maçães' books left me wondering about the coming challenges of this decade, including the technological challenges that will transform how we work, and how to get ready for that. 

My previous book lists:

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