"AMP IT UP" or Fail.

I listened to the Chairman and CEO of Snowflake, Frank Slootman, in the 'This week in Startups' podcast and was immediately intrigued by him. 

Maybe it is the immigrant in me, maybe I share some of the ideals he shared in the podcast, but his straight talk connected to me. And many of the ideas he shared was right out of what has been in my mind for a long time

I immediately put his book AMP IT UP on hold with my local library. I support my local library, but that is a totally different podcast. And got it within a few days. 

The book's title is: 

AMP IT UP. 

Leading for Hypergrowth by Raising Expectations, Increasing Urgency, and Elevating Intensity.

Frank Slootman was the previous CEO of disk storage company, Data Domain, that was acquired by EMC and now part of Dell Technologies.

He was then the CEO of the service management SaaS company, ServiceNow, taking it to a $100B market value.

Slootman is now the Chairman and CEO of the Data Cloud company, Snowflake, hovering at $75B market value during the writing of the book. 

The author breaks down the book into the following sections:

1. Amping Up
2. Raise Your Standards
3. Align Your People and Culture
4. Sharpen Your Focus
5. Pick Up the Pace
6. Transform Your Strategy
7. The Amped-Up Leader 

The themes of the book, while sounds familiar, are not usually discussed in other books. My take on the book is split into the following ideas:

1. Product: the author talks a lot about architecture and getting it right.
2. Leadership: the author just wants the leaders to take the ultimate ownership and be assertive.
3. Sales: There are a few chapters dedicated to various ideas behind running a good sales organization.

The entire book boils down to what I picked up in his interview:

"If someone says they will get back next week, ask them Why not tomorrow? If they say I will get back tomorrow, ask them Why not today?"

Basically, the author advises leaders to focus, increase the sense of urgency, reduce waste and delays, and most importantly deliver value to customers. 

"It's hard to beat any leader who combines great resolve, persistence, mission focus, and clarity about what is and is not important. 

It's hard to beat any leader who truly amps it up" - Frank Slootman.

One Takeaway From Viktor Frankl’s "Man's Search For Meaning"

My all time favorite book is Viktor Frankl's Man's Search For Meaning.

This book was recommended to me by a friend many years ago and he also gave me a copy to read. Since then I have recommended this book to almost anyone who would ask me for a book recommendation.

I also noticed that this is one of the highly rated and most recommended books in many blog posts and forums on platforms like Medium and Substack.

This book is the author's true life experience from the most difficult chapter in his life. This book does not fall in the category of business or leadership or fiction. Though it is biographical, it is a portion of the author's life. 

The author wrote this book while in the concentration camps during World War II. While we all have ups and downs in life, and I have faced some serious hardships myself, nothing compares to the author's experience in this book.

He wrote this for his own journaling and hid it while in the camps, most of it was destroyed and he had to re-write from memory. He did not intend for this to become a book, let me a best selling book in many languages.

The author talks about his companions who had positive thoughts and survived the hard conditions. He also talks about folks who gave up hope and ended up dead. Some portions of the book are really hard to read, but it portrays the reality of those camps in a first person perspective. 

He always envisioned getting out of the camps and giving lectures and curing people as he is a doctor. 

Author writes quotes like, "If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete".

The one takeaway for me is: 

One cannot control what happens in the outside world and what happens to them. But one can definitely control how they feel and how they react to the outside world no matter what happens. 

This is a simple but powerful life lesson that resonated with me and millions who read the book. If you are curious, and haven't had a chance to read this book, highly recommend it.