"Plan B" by David Kord Murray

Plan B: How to Hatch a Second Plan That's Always Better Than Your First by David Kord Murray may have taken a long time between purchase and reading for me, but was a solid business book.

I previously read and reviewed his Borrowing Brilliance and Plan B was an interesting follow up that lays out Murray's 11 "Principles of Adaptive Management." The principles themselves can be found in a book synopsis by Harvey Schachter for the Toronto newspaper Global and Mail and the ones that struck me as most interesting are the following...

Principle of Problems - The idea behind this was that an owner or employee should figure out what problem their business trying to solve. This very much reminded me of the book How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton Christensen, James Allworth and Karen Dillon with the idea expressed there (which I noted in a review of the book) being to consider what job a product or service fills. On the same topic of writing by Christensen, Murray refers to him the end of Plan B to  in a chapter on evolving plans and strategic evolution vs tactical alternations.

Principle of Solutions - This as described by Murray was about the the importance of tactics, especially as they align with strategy. Concept from the book is that too often tactics are overlooked in importance, and it's an examination of tactics that can reveal what will work in an endeavor... with the example given of finding the tactics that would be used to successfully return to Earth the Apollo 13 crew after an equipment failure.

Principle of Force - This was one of those situations where an idea from someone made me think of a similar concept I've seen elsewhere previously. Specifically, what I took from Murray in this chapter was the notion of being expert at the most niche thing possible. I may have seen other writers expound on this as well, but the person I recall who covered it was Tim Ferriss is his book The 4-Hour Workweek (which I reviewed here).

Principle of paper plans - Concept simplified was that the important thing isn't the plan itself, but the thinking through of the business idea that's required to actually write the plan.

Principle of Multiple Futures - This somewhat ties into the idea of paper plans and them not being the end-all, be-all, but the idea I took from Murray in this section was the best way to make predictions is to make a lot of them and best way to plan for outcomes is to consider a lot of them. Basically, things won't often turn out exactly like we expect so multiple outcomes should be considered along with potential reactions to them.

Hockey writing by Jeff MacGregor, Tim Rohan & Sarah Hampson

I've lately come across a few pieces of writing that stood out as excellent which all dealt with the sport of hockey, just different things related to the game.

The first piece to note here was about the sport itself in "The Hockey News" by Jeff MacGregor for ESPN.  Written about his experience as first a young and now adult hockey fan, it's a short and thoughtful column that makes me think of the Chris Jones column "Best Day Ever" about time with the Stanley Cup.

The second hockey piece I particularly enjoyed was by Tim Rohan for the New York Times and dealt with potential greatness. "A Prodigy on the Way to Stardom"  is about 16 year-old Conner McDavid, currently playing in the Ontario Hockey League and expected to be the first pick in the 2015 NHL draft. I love coming across and posting about writing on sports phenoms and with McDavid having already drawn favorable attention from the likes of Bobby Orr (his agent), Sidney Crosby and Wayne Gretzky, he's definitely in the phenom category.

The third piece to mention here was a poignant look at someone in the game by Sarah Hampson for the Toronto Globe & Mail. "NHL veteran Dominic Moore opens up about his wife, their life and her death" is about the former San Jose Shark whose wife Katie was diagnosed during the last Stanley Cup Playoffs with a rare cancer and passed away in January. Very well done writing from Hampson that brought in the history of both Moore's brother Steve whose career ended by Todd Burtuzzi and and Katie's father who died unexpectedly a year before her passing.