The Roller Coaster January !!

Besides some serious frustrations with the Italian Bureaucracy and some "breakthrough" progress with the wedding preparations, there is not much to report about January.


Unfortunately I have had 7 comments that had to be "approved" because of a new process I had set up and completely forgotten about after all the SPAM that got in. Infact of the 7 messages there indeed were 2 "make more money" SPAM. All came in nearly a month back. Sorry about it people. A couple of comments were important. RSM business school?- never heard of it sorry (to anonymous). But living in Italy I also hadn't heard of the popular school called Bocconi or something of that sort and people took some serious offense when I said that. I should be the one offended by my own ignorance :).

Laws of Leadership - John C. Maxwell

Although I promised myself, I will finish all my half read books before moving on with my "new book", I opened yet another book without completing my previous one. Atleast I reduced my two half read books to one by finishing "Freakonomics". Although Freakonomics does deserve review, I think I will start with what is fresh in my head, "Laws of Leadership" my first full book for the year 2007: The 21 irrefutable laws of leadership by John Maxwell.

The book has a lot of principles. Effectiveness and Success were attributed to leadership rather than IQ (Ring...ring...isn't that Goleman called EQ?). When a lot of what was said was insightful, I felt the book was more than a handful and lead one to believe that "leadership" is absolutely acquirable although difficult. I remember the first time I read the book emotional intelligence, I believed it would change my world. But then, I have come to realize that "knowing is not doing" and the biggest challenge is in "practicing what you learn". To gain leadership (or EQ), the absolute pre-requisite seems to be "being a learner". Maxwell argues in a subtle way that "Leadership" also involves 20 other things making it way too idealistic. It does not do any way to score yourself and plan on becoming a better leader except for stating the axioms. An idealistic viewpoint is given and occassionally he even mentions that it is extremely difficult to absorb certain principles in daily life. Anyways, it is a good perspective and was certainly not a waste of time.

I certainly made a couple of points for myself that I am trying to follow.

(1) Leadership is more about influencing than about position. So anyone can be a leader. Make people listen to you and you become a leader. (I have some serious work to do in this area seeing even how many loyal readers we have on this blog :))
(2) There are a few imperatives for leadership like trust. Character is uncompromisable


The shadiest leadership law in the book leadership through reproduction. The theory is that instead of leading "followers", if you lead "leaders" they will inturn lead more followers and hence there is a lot more "following". This is where I wanted to say "Come on now John" but then I didn't. The man is a great communicator. Whether it is his "leadership lid" or the story of a "20 year old leader" he knows the way to express himself.

I wish he covered "role models" as comprehensively as he should have. He does not even talk about his own role-models and difficulties in understanding "behavior" and incorporating. In short a great book but with little help to act.