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Last updated on March 3rd, 2025.
Adaptability could well be the skill that defines our success in this era we find ourselves in. In her new book “Adapt: Mastering change in four steps,” Andrea Clarke makes a compelling case for why and how we need to cultivate what she calls a high “adaptability quotient” or AQ.
Full disclosure: Andrea is a friend, and she repeatedly reminded me that I’m not the target audience of this book given my extensive background in foresight & tech. She also quotes me extensively in the book. Nevertheless, I found myself thoroughly engaged with the book – and more importantly, realized just how many people ARE the target audience for this important message.
Clarke’s central thesis is that adaptability isn’t just another nice-to-have leadership skill, or the flavor of the month – it’s becoming fundamental to navigating both our professional and personal lives in this period of rapid change. As she puts it, “we are currently in a window of opportunity to make small moves that could change our long game” – a sentiment I can wholeheartedly agree with, though I always bristle a bit at the term ‘game’.
Something that sets “Adapt” apart is its accessibility in covering many important topics. Andrea, for example, introduces fundamental foresight techniques and breaks them down into digestible, practical approaches that anyone can understand and apply. The book is peppered with aviation metaphors and stories (which admittedly was an easy way to win me over, given they were used well), but more importantly, it’s filled with practical checklists and exercises that prompt you to tackle often-neglected aspects of adaptability, from resilience reality checks to detecting impermanence in your environment.
One of the book’s strengths lies in how Andrea weaves her own remarkable experiences throughout the narrative, making the concepts feel grounded and real rather than a theoretical framework.
One point about hiring resonated with me: “We need to hire and develop individuals who have the emotional maturity to handle change, collaborate effectively, and contribute to a positive team culture.” While I wholeheartedly agree, I’d note there’s both a chronic shortage of such individuals and, more problematically, many organizations aren’t actually prioritizing these qualities in their hiring practices – nor go through the trouble of developing their talent on them.
“High-AQ habits” Clarke describes and provides tools for in the book aren’t just nice ideas – they’re becoming survival skills in our rapidly evolving world. The book offers a practical roadmap for developing them, making concepts accessible without oversimplifying them, and offering them in a quick read a busy executive can read on one domestic flight.
* Rating: 4.5 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: 6.5
* Who is it for: Anyone feeling overwhelmed by the pace of change in their professional or personal life, and individuals who know they need to upgrade their adaptability skills but aren’t sure where to start.
This book is part of the series of wanting to update my understanding of some science basics; in “The Forgotten Sense,” Jonas Olofsson delivers a comprehensive exploration of our most underappreciated sense: smell. The title itself speaks volumes about our cultural dismissal of olfaction, a theme that Olofsson develops with both scientific rigor and engaging narrative.
Incredibly, according to surveys, more people would willingly give up their sense of smell than part with their mobile phones. Those people don’t know what they’re talking about, however – as Jonas shows, the sense of smell is surprisingly important to many areas of our existence, and losing it is downright debilitating.
Myth-busting is part of what the book does: contrary to popular belief, humans possess remarkably capable olfactory systems. We’ve simply convinced ourselves otherwise, partly due to centuries of philosophical and cultural bias against this “primitive” sense, and we also tend to compare ourselves to dogs – who are outliers in the animal kingdom. Another myth-busting is casting doubt on the importance of human pheromones and the many associated marketing claims. Their role in human behavior may be far less significant than commonly believed. However, Olofsson does present fascinating research about human body odors, including the surprising finding that garlic consumption actually improves the perceived quality of body odor.
Like many other senses, smell, too, is intimately interwoven with the prediction machine called our brains as well as the other senses. Color, in particular, can powerfully shape our olfactory experiences, demonstrating the deeply interconnected nature of our sensory systems. Many people know that what we think of taste is actually mostly our sense of smell – but what you may not have realized is the extent to which this happens; plug or pinch your nose shut, taste blind, and you won’t be able to taste the difference between ketchup and mustard(!).
The emotional power of smell-associated memories also gets some attention. The book explains how the brain’s architecture – with direct connections between olfactory processing areas and emotional centers – makes smell-triggered memories particularly potent and emotionally charged. Yet paradoxically, we often struggle to name or describe smells, highlighting an intriguing limitation in human olfactory language.
There are also some profound practical implications from all the smell research; Olofsson discusses how smell training can enhance not just olfactory perception but memory function in general, offering potential therapeutic applications. The book also provides insights into COVID-19’s impact on smell, a symptom that has affected millions globally and highlighted just how essential this “forgotten sense” truly is.
* Rating: 4 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: 9.3
* Who is it for: Anyone wanting an updated understanding on our most undervalued sense and how it impacts our lives.
“The Blind Spot” by Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, and Evan Thompson considers an important question, which is what drew me to it in the first place: how do we reconcile scientific objectivity with subjective human experience? The premise is fascinating and timely, particularly as we grapple with questions of consciousness and artificial intelligence. Still, something in it was missing. Or I was missing something. We’ll get to that.
The authors argue that science has a significant blind spot when it comes to human experience and consciousness. They suggest that by mostly excluding subjective experience from scientific inquiry, we’re missing crucial aspects of reality. This is an important point, but one that gets somewhat lost in the book’s meandering exposition and occasionally overwrought philosophical discourse. The term Blind Spot also gets repeated so often that I was positively sick of it already by page 25.
One of the book’s main challenges is its tendency to over-complicate some things that I feel are relatively straightforward concepts. For instance (nb. this is not exactly an example of a straightforward concept, but anyway), much better explanations of quantum phenomena like entanglement and superposition can be found from other works. The authors also spend considerable time critiquing and analyzing historical perspectives, such as those of Alfred North Whitehead (who died in 1947), engaging with the more contemporary perspectives quite selectively.
This is not an old book; it was published in 2024, but the points about AI are already not aging well, and were made with unwarranted confidence (and, I might add, uncritically quoting Gary Marcus). It also builds straw man arguments by taking extreme viewpoints as representative of the entire field’s view. This weakness becomes especially apparent in their critique of AI consciousness, where they seem to miss crucial nuances in current debates while relying heavily on dated perspectives.
While the book raises valuable points about the integration of subjective experience into scientific inquiry and the nature of complex systems, these insights often get buried under layers of dense terminology and are philosophically quite contentious. Not that that’s a bad thing per se, but I got the feeling that what could have been a concise, powerful argument for incorporating human experience into scientific understanding becomes a somewhat bloated philosophical treatise.
I’d like to learn more about fields like neurophenomenology, but not from these authors. YMMV.
* Rating: 3.5 out of 5 – I don’t know, maybe I missed some prerequisite knowledge to get the most out of this? 🤷♂️
* Dog-ear index: 7.5
* Who is it for: Philosophers of science and readers interested in the intersection of consciousness studies and scientific methodology – provided they have a high tolerance for dense prose and are willing to wade through some overwrought passages to find some insights buried within.
A couple of weeks ago, I capped off my quieter period of the year with a solo overnight hike at Mt Buffalo National Park. I had taken Sacred Nature by Karen Armstrong with me, and as I read “To glimpse the sacrality of the natural world requires a degree of quiet and solitude that is hard to come by today. Indeed, we seem to find silence alien and often deliberately eliminate it from our lives. [..] As a result, the sounds of nature have retreated and become increasingly distant form our minds and hearts” alone on top of Mt McLeod, several kilometers away from the closest human being, surrounded only by the sound of winds & birds, it was easy to slip into the sacrality of nature. The setting could not have been better.
Karen Armstrong has written many thoughtful comparative works on religion, and this is not an exception. The core message behind Sacred Nature is that humanity has distanced itself from nature to the detriment of the species and the planet, and that we can learn from the views of many ancient religions on how we might regain the sacrality of, reverence for, and therefore respect for nature.
When it comes to religions and nature, Christianity emerges as the chief antagonist. Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, the sacred is typically celebrated as a distant reality rather than an immanent presence, with Psalms explicitly positioning everything in the universe as subservient to humanity. Since the fourteenth century, this has evolved into an entirely different notion of the sacred – by rationalizing nature and confining God to the heavens, we’ve drastically reduced the divine until it became either incredible or imperceptible. Unlike other scriptures, the Bible itself has encouraged this view, suggesting that nature is subordinate to Yahweh and subservient to human needs.
The book explores our relationship with nature among Kabbalists, Muslims, Christians, Confucians, Daoists, and Hindus, it becomes very clear that they had, in many ways, a healthier relationship with nature than our modern world does. It’s both touching and interesting to learn just what that relationship is; or, should I say was, given that clearly much of this has been lost.
Unsurprisingly, Armstrong calls for a shift in mindset, which is hard to argue against given the damage human civilization is inflicting on its own life support system. Whether ancient religions are “right” is less relevant than recognizing their more sustainable relationship with nature. I particularly appreciated how the book illuminates different religious perspectives on holiness, sacrifice, kenosis, and gratitude – from nature’s near-absence in Judaism and Christianity to its status as divine revelation equal to the Qur’an in Islam. These varied lenses offer valuable insights for our current environmental crisis.
* Rating: 4 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: 11
* Who is it for: those interested in environmental ethics and comparative views of how religions view/ed our relationship with nature
We’re back in the land of good books this week, thank goodness. Many a book has been written of the tech titans of Silicon Valley and associated phenomena, but “Burn Book” by Kara Swisher is perhaps the most entertaining, and quite possibly the most accurate in terms of digging into the kind of people who run the place, history of the Internet age you’ll read. As someone who has been covering tech longer than many founders have been alive, Swisher brings an unmatched perspective combined with her signature irreverent wit to create what amounts to a deliciously honest tear-down of tech’s most powerful figures.
I should add a disclaimer here: I’m a fan of Kara’s work on both Pivot and On podcasts (and previously Sway), and my views of the tech industry and the people who run the show have significant overlaps with her views. In other words, I might be biased here.
For those unfamiliar with the kind of person we’re dealing with, I will quote John McLaughlin’s characterization that is also quoted in the book’s epigraph: “Most people in this town stab you in the back, but [Kara] stabbed me in the front, and I appreciate that.”
Not many people can pull off being consistently hard but fair when dealing with powerful people. Kara has this fairly unique ability – a rare quality for anyone, but especially rare when dealing with some of the world’s most powerful people. She doesn’t pull punches, but neither does she ever resort to cheap shots. Her critiques are sharp, informed by decades of close observation and close interaction with these figures, and often devastatingly accurate.
Burn Book is concise for the ground it covers, moving at pace through the key moments and personalities that have shaped modern tech. Kara’s writing style is engaging and often funny in an appropriately sarcastic manner. There are a lot of revelations, even if many of them aren’t exactly surprising to many people – like the fact that “when the truth stands between a man and his next $100 million, the truth is always going to be escorted off the premises.” We all know that – I hope – but we need people to remind us of the harsh realities and priorities of these people.
While Burn Book is an absolutely engaging read, it’s not necessarily the kind of book you’ll find yourself constantly referring back to – it’s more of a “read straight through and enjoy the ride” experience (hence the not-very-high dog ear index). Swisher’s intimate knowledge of the industry, combined with her refusal to be dazzled by tech’s reality distortion field, makes for an invaluable perspective on how we got here and where we might be heading.
* Rating: 4.5 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: 6
* Who is it for: Anyone interested in tech history who prefers their truth served with a healthy side of wit; perfect for those tired of the usual fawning Silicon Valley narratives and ready for some clear-eyed criticism from someone who has been there for all of it.
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Talk about a contrast to last week’s read. To not bury the lede, Morgan Housel’s “Same as Ever” is not a good book. Which is a shame, because as a foresight professional living in a time of massive change, I was keenly interested in hearing his views on what ostensibly never changes.
What’s the good here? Well, it delivers numerous very basic lessons, and otherwise just doesn’t deliver. The points about benefits of inefficiency are, for example, very valid. Plenty of accurate things are said throughout the book, such as the observations about probability, importance of storytelling, and about the useful and even critical role inefficiency plays in many systems. Due to the brevity of the book, all of these are treated very superficially.
“Same as Ever” is structured as a collection of loosely (and clumsily) connected essays about various aspects of human nature and behavior that supposedly remain constant.
Spoiler: human nature is supposedly the unchanging thing. I would, however, push back on even that, and as evidence quote Steven Pinker; “As we care about more of humanity, we’re apt to mistake the harms around us for signs of how low the world has sunk rather than how high our standards have risen.”
One of the most frustrating aspects is the book’s tendency toward huge oversimplification, particularly when dealing with complex topics like inequality, poverty, and foresight. Housel often resorts to reductive explanations that completely ignore crucial nuance and context. Many of the views are not only simplistic, but also tone-deaf.
As a foresight professional his foresight treatise rubbed me the wrong way, which I fully concede might bias me against it. However, I don’t think he knows what foresight is – he uses the word, but it’s painfully clear he doesn’t understand the concepts, the tools, or even the basic approach of strategic foresight. His conflation of scenario planning with mere guesswork demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of how organizations can prepare for uncertain futures.
I should also note that the very beginning of the book delivers a story that is clearly deeply personal for Morgan, but unfortunately both the facts in the story and the delivery of that story left me troubled and, to be perfectly honest, with a certain dislike of the author.
There’s also factual errors; there’s misinformed views of poverty and happiness; there are downright bizarre statements; and there are contradictions – e.g., on page 17, he points out COVID-19 was a “surprise, on virtually no one’s radar until it arrived” and then on page 76 goes to say how “epidemiologists had been warning something like COVID-19 could happen for years” – in other words, it was on plenty of radars.
* Rating: 2 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: 8.3, which seems high, but is mostly for some memorable short quotes
* Who is it for: Um. Maybe just don’t read it? I know this will come as a relief to some readers 😉
As the first book I’ve read in 2025, “Working for the Brand” sets an intimidatingly high bar for the rest of the year. A local Melburnian lawyer, Josh Bornstein, has written a meticulously researched exposé that shines a bright, cutting, and revealing floodlight onto how corporations and other organizations sacrifice individuals at the altar of brand protection.
Bornstein brings both legal expertise and moral clarity to examining how corporations systematically suppress employee speech – and behaviour – while demanding absolute loyalty to hopelessly vague and contradictory values and contractual clauses designed to trap. The hypocrisy is staggering – organizations that loudly champion free speech in public quietly muzzle their employees through expansive, subjective contract clauses that can change at a moment’s notice.
One of the most confronting aspects are the case studies where individuals faced severe consequences for merely expressing an opinion that proved unpopular in the wrong circles. Throughout the book, there are many instances where organizations abandoned basic ethics and sacrificed their people to online mob justice rather than risk brand damage. And those overt cases are only the tip of the iceberg – the broader damage to societies comes from the inhibition effect of impossibly vague and often self-contradictory rules employees are subjected to, up to and including signing off some basic human rights by virtue of signing an employment contract.
Many years ago, I also inadvertently dipped my toes into this pool as I received an urgent “cut it out”-call from the Comms department for live-tweeting facts at an industry conference. I did, at the time, cut it out, and reading about all these experiences makes me think I was simultaneously lucky and cowardly for doing so.
As the ridiculously high dog-ear index will tell you, there would be far more points to talk about here than I have room for here. In technical terms, it’s all just quite fucked-up.
One disturbing facet is how this corporate misbehavior represents another thread in the unraveling of democratic discourse. When organizations can effectively control not just their employees’ work speech but their entire public (and sometimes even private) presence, we’ve crossed a dangerous line. The fact that these restrictions are often enforced through vague concepts like “bringing the organization into disrepute” makes them even more pernicious.
I’d like to say this book is a warning about the future of free speech, but it’s more of an alarm of a situation where that’s already been dramatically curtailed. No matter your primary role in our society, Bornstein’s points demand attention.
* Rating: 5 out of 5
* Dog-ear index: 15.6 + 14 secondary bottom-corner dog ears, which is frankly getting a little ridiculous. Could’ve just as well dog-eared the whole thing.
* Who is it for: everyone? There’s no getting around the fact that the issues talked about here touch all of us.