On Our "Virtual Route 66" (Special Edition): On the Fires in Los Angeles

 

Los Angeles Wildfires: 7 Ways to Help Those Affected, From Anywhere in the World   As the catastrophic fires in LA continue, emergency aid is desperately needed. READ MORE

Out & About This Week With Some Mid Week #RandomThougths Courtesy Vern Harnish

 

Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.                           Harry S. Truman    A book is a gift you can open again and again.                          Garrison Keillor

Thrive in ’25 – Five Key Books

Thrive in 2025 by reviewing the fundamentals in these five books with your team.  Choose someone on the leadership team to read one of them – all (with one exception) published in the past year – and share a couple of ideas to jump-start and/or accelerate engagement, growth, profit and cash.   Organized around the key decisions in our Scaling Up framework – People, Strategy, Execution, Cash and Personal – here’s the top book for each to help you scale.  Enjoy.

PEOPLE – Never Lead Alone: 10 Shifts from Leadership to Teamship by Keith Ferrazzi Grab a copy and go right to Chapter 4.  Notes Ferrazzi:

Fifty-eight percent of employees say that they trust strangers more than they trust their own associates at work.

The key to overcoming this is scheduling some fun bonding events in 2025 – similar to the dogfight pickup football game in Top Gun: Maverick. Active quarterly themes with celebrations, a key component of Scaling Up, are key to building teamwork.   Then read the rest of Ferrazzi’s excellent book to nail the little things that create a much more engaged and effective team.  Think about implementing one idea per month or quarter.

STRATEGY – Scale Up Faster: The Secrets of the World’s Quickest-Growing Bootstrapped Companies by Pete Martin Pete Martin, a kindred spirit in the growth movement, embarked on a 2 ½-year odyssey to unlock the secrets of the top 1 percent of performers among the Inc 5000 list of the fastest-growing private companies in America.  The result is Scale Up Faster. It’s a treasure trove of battle-tested and specific strategies for entrepreneurs who want to break free from the pack.

Here are three of many specific insights, the first being my favorite: They had one way of selling that had a high close ratio – one extremely focused approach.   Meditations by Marcus Aurelius is the most-read book by Bootstrapped Fast Growth (BFG) companies. These firms focused on the “job to be done” for customers.

EXECUTION – How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors That Determine the Fate of Every Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration and Everything in Between by Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner   How do you bring in one-of-a-kind creative projects, ranging from remodeling your kitchen to constructing a multi-billion-dollar cultural institution, on time and under budget?  The authors detail seven key steps in an entertaining and insightful way.

The two contrasting big projects used to open the book – the Sydney Opera House and the Guggenheim in Bilbao – highlight the differences between an iconic project that came in over budget by 700 percent and ruined the career of its young 36-year-old architect and the other, which delivered on time and under budget by 3% and launched the career of famed architect Frank Gehry.     The keys to success include lots of upfront iterations before starting the project, creating the right culture for the team (including ample use of posters!), liberally utilizing reference projects, and taking a Lego approach to assembling.     It’s a fun read, providing the back stories behind iconic projects around the globe we’re all familiar with.  Once you’ve enjoyed them, apply the authors’ ideas to your next big project driving your scale.

CASH – Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson Yes, please read it again – and again.  Going through it for a fourth time, I’m still picking up ideas I missed the first three times from the entrepreneur who right now has more business and political influence than anyone on the planet.   And yes, I chose it as one of the five top biz books of 2023.  It’s just that there clearly wasn’t a better CEO biography (for which I reserve this category) in 2024.

His “algorithm” is the soul of all his businesses – a mantra that is repeated at the beginning of each of his daily huddles and weekly meetings.  Look it up and practice it within your own firm.  The key?  Eliminating all the dumb stuff BEFORE automating – otherwise you’re just speeding up a mess.   My favorite moment in the book is when he’s kicked out of PayPal yet goes and breaks bread with each of the partners to maintain their relationships.  Later, when he badly needed $20 million, these same partners stepped up and saved him.  That’s EQ, for those who claim Musk has none.  Absorbing the lessons in this book could transform your business in 2025 – and beyond.

PERSONAL – Likeable Badass: How Women Get the Success They Deserve by Alison Fragale Warmth and competence – the two dimensions on which we immediately judge most people – are the basis for noted research psychologist, professor, and consultant Alison Fragale’s book Likeable Badass, recommended highly by Adam Grant.

As Fragale points out,  status (perceived competence) is how you get influence and power vs. the opposite. How you attain this status – in combination with your personal warmth – makes you a Likeable Badass. It’s a quick and fun read with some surprising insights, like the importance of obtaining status to convey competence (i.e., a Harvard appointment).  Although Fragale wrote the book with women in mind, much of the advice is relevant for men, personally, and for those who mentor women or have daughters in the workplace.   Set a goal for 2025 to seek an emblem of status, like writing a book, and to be much more likable – she teaches you how.

Keep Scaling,   Verne Harnish, CEO Scaling Up

Out & About in Our World On Our "Virtual Route 66"

 

In the United States This Week, Mike Johnson Was re-elected as Speaker as the United States Congress gears up to formally certify the Electoral College Win of Donald Trump in Anticipation of January 20.   This is as we went to press with this first formal edition of our weekly "Virtual Route 66." Ukraine launched another incursion into Russian Territory as it has suffered setbacks throughout the last number of weeks.     This is also true as Syria continues under the new leadership and begins to emerge from 13 years of Civil War. 

Our team chose a  selection of good news from around the Middle East this week courtesy of the team at the National as we look forward to our ongoing engagements:

A young woman holds the Syrian flag on New Year's Day in Damascus. AFP

Let hope lead the way this new year

Starting a new year is equal parts refreshing and intimidating. I am approaching 2025 with cautious optimism as   Lebanon is in a fragile ceasefire agreement with Israel. I 

The smiling Gazan boy who refuses to give up hope

Yazan Al Sawda has received critical care aboard the UAE's floating hospital in Egypt since March. Pawan Singh / The National

A courageous Palestinian schoolboy who was forced to have his leg amputated without anaesthetic after being injured in an Israeli air strike, is still smiling, despite it all.

Last January, Yazan Al Sawda, 12, had ventured outside to collect wood to build a fire when he was struck in an Israeli attack.

“I found myself on the ground, bleeding,” Yazan told The National. “I was awake but then fainted. I woke up with no leg,” he recalled.

Yazan was taken aboard the UAE's floating hospital in Egypt for treatment, where he initially had become withdrawn and was reluctant to socialise with others. Doctors say he has since made significant progress and is regularly smiling and dancing as he sets his sights on walking again.

Read his story here.

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QUOTED

"Let's just be happy, God willing the future will be OK"

- Fatima, one of thousands of Syrians who were celebrating a fresh start for the country and New Year's Eve in the historic Umayyad Square in Damascus, nearly a month after rebels ended more than 50 years of Assad family rule over Syria

Read more here.

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Also: 'Dancing for a good cause'

Reyna Mehta, an Indian pupil in Dubai, dances with cancer survivors at the Al Jalila Foundation. Photo: Chandan Sojitra

A Dubai schoolgirl embraced her passion for dance to raise Dh63,000 to support breast cancer patients after being inspired to step up for the cause by her great grandmother's battle with the disease. Reyna Mehta, 16, organised and took part in a performance featuring a cast of cancer survivors. Her dance teacher helped to choreograph the show.

The money was donated to Al Jalila Foundation, a non-profit healthcare organisation carrying out key work in the fight against cancer via YallaGive, the first licensed online donation and crowdfunding platform in the Middle East.

Read more here.

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SNAPSHOT

Crows perch on a tree branch on a winter's morning in Chennai, India. AP

This week's selection includes a winter's morning in Chennai, northern lights in Alaska, and New Year's fireworks in Abu Dhabi

See the Beshara photos of the week here

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IMPACT ON INSTAGRAM

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HIGHLIGHTS

How 'green walls' in offices can boost the environment and productivity

Norway on brink of victory in 100 per cent electric car sale push

Sheikh Mohammed hails wife's support as he marks 19 years as Dubai's Ruler