CTech's Book Review: Learning to take the driver’s seat in life

Lior Mozel is the Chief Engineering Officer at Cybereason. He has joined CTech to share a review of “The Meaning Revolution” by Fred Kofman.

Title: “The Meaning Revolution”

Author: Fred Kofman

Format: Book, Tablet, Audiobook

Where: Commute

Summary:

 

The book is about taking control. It's focused on behaviors and emotions during the working time, but has a much wider scope looking at your approach to life.

The Meaning Revolution reminds us of the importance of moral authority, trust, compassion, and integrity for effective leadership. It is about how we can live better lives and build better companies.

Important Themes:

Connect to your own values. You are the one driving in the front seat of your life and above tasks, projects, and KPIs you should strive to follow and spread those values. When one chooses to join a company, it should be a company that shares the same values allowing this to happen.

Take full responsibility. Not everything is dependent on you, but you always have the ability to choose how you respond. It is about choosing where to focus and always looking at the things that are within your control, rather than focusing on what is outside of that. Choose to be a player rather than a victim: victims pay attention only to those factors they can’t influence, while players focus their attention on those factors they can influence.

Autonomy is a great example of that. We are all autonomous people, while we might also be dependent on others to accomplish our goals. We have the autonomy to approach others, collaborate and make it happen. At the very least, trying is well within our reach.

What I’ve Learned:

I share many of the values and ideas expressed in the book. The way those are explained in the book helped me sharpen my communication. This allows me to better express those to others and thus build an organization that fits my values.

The built-in examples are a great asset allowing me to identify the critical situations, where choosing one response over the other is setting the standards.

Who Should Read This Book:

Although the book is focused on leadership in the workplace, it actually fits everybody. I believe we should all take the driver’s seat of our lives, looking at everything as a challenge (and responding to the challenge) rather than taking everything as a blessing or as a curse (so, we have no control over those).