TL;DR

I recently finished reading this book, and I really enjoyed it. If you don’t know who the late Satoru Iwata is he is a Japanese business man who worked his way up to president of HAL, eventually the president of Nintendo. He tragically passed away in July of 2015 at the age of 55, but his impact and influence on Nintendo and their customers will tell the test of time.

What This Book Is and What It Was Not

If you are looking for an in depth, low level discussion on hardware or software, this is not the book for you. If you are looking for advice, views, and guidance when walking the path of working in a technical field I would argue this book has universal appeal. That said the knowledge or stories presented the book would not only apply to the tech world. And I would imagine that this book would help anyone in or about to enter their professional career regardless of discipline.

My Key Takeaways

• While wrapping up my BaS in Cybersecurity I would spend my early afternoons outside in the PWN spring sun reading this book waiting for my ride. Annotating key things I wanted to remember, use later, or found interesting. These are a handful of the most impactful moments in the book for me:

“The number of things we should be doing is always greater than what we can actually do. If you try doing every thing on your list, you’ll only wear yourself out. Which is why an awareness of a group’s collective strengths will help you clarify priorities.” P.9

• Coming from a cybersecurity perspective, I felt like this was important from a people management perspective. From my time as a intern, and observer of industry trends, technical debt is a ever present and endless uphill battle. And ultimately changing C-suite objectives, new compliance objectives, evolving threat landscape, and other wrenches thrown at the proverbial productivity machine are always going to make it hard to balance prioritization of tasks. Additionally, this quote resonated with me in conjunction from a section of The Book of Five Rings which I was also reading at the time. The section the about the foreman having to know the best way to allocate his workers, and how each worker must be the best at their particular task, and the combination of these skilled workers create a unstoppable force. Showing that a workforce diverse in both skill and experience is critical to success when so much is being asked all of the time.

“At the end of the day, what the company wants most from its new hires is someone who is happy to admit they don’t know everything. But at the same time, they don’t want you to ask your coworkers the same questions over and over.” P.35

• As a person who asks a lot of questions this passage was stuck out for me. The first half of this passage is something I am working on, the latter is easy to avoid. I learn things pretty fast, and I often take a lot of notes. Moreover, when I do find myself lost I make an effort to find a solution (or multiple solutions) to a problem, then if needed circle back for approval or feedback from a manager/co-worker. That said, it is still hard sometimes to accept (let alone be happy with) not knowing everything. In a seemingly cut throat entry level job market right now trying to seem confident enough to get through a interview, but also be able to be open in what you don’t know after is challenging to say the least.

Company Culture

Both of these two points I want to try to utilize in the future:

• One section of the book Iwata describes how at least once year he meets with every employee one-on-one for as long as the employee wanted. If it was 5 minutes or 2 hours it was important that it happened regardless of length, it was worth the cost in time for both parties.
• Another section of the book Iwata talks about knowing when to leave a work position or not take one out of desperation, rather how you feel in your heart about it. If your gut tells you its the wrong path it probably is.

Who Would I Recommend This Book To?

• Undergrad students, especially those in management or STEM pipelines. Like I mentioned in my last post this book flushed out what my idea of a ideal work environment and frame of mind is. This is something that is not taught (at least at my institutions) really at all in school, but is critical to having a decent work life balance.