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.