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Invaluable: Achieving Clarity on Value
In today's complex world, it can be difficult to make decisions that align with our values. Invaluable fills an important gap in achieving clarity on our values and integrating them into our decisions consciously. You, dear reader, already have unique values waiting to be unpacked and articulated across diverse work contexts. Invaluable offers a holistic framework to aid its discovery, testing and succinct communication. This homage to values is brought out through stories, philosophy, poetry, citizen science and embedded podcasts. By the end of this book, you will have a deeper understanding of your singular values blueprint, making intentional decision-making an enriching process. You will also be inspired to live a life that is true to your values.
320 pages, Paperback
Published July 1, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 3, 2023
Invaluable: Achieving Clarity on Value, by Somik Raha, is a very good and most welcome extension of the general theory of value developed by Robert S. Hartman. Hartman distinguished between intrinsic values, final ends in themselves, which are conscious individuals like ourselves and others, extrinsic values, means to ends, are useful sensory objects and processes, including our own bodily activities, and systemic values, which are ideas, beliefs, doctrines, systems, knowledge, truth, etc. Intrinsic values have the highest worth of the three and should always be given priority over the others. Raha devotes one chapter of his book to explaining Hartman’s views and refers to him throughout the book.
Raha, a professional Decision Analyst, says that he realized that “there was a story in me that was beyond Decision Analysis, beyond Hartman’s contributions, and beyond anything I had seen written in business or philosophical books.” He tells this story in several ways. He applies value theory to both businesses and individuals. He asks, “What is the purpose of a business?” “To make money” is the wrong answer, he thinks. “To be of service” is the right answer. If that is done properly, all else will likely follow. To be convinced, read his book! Raha provides many significant applications and illustrations throughout the book to substantiate all of his important points. He strongly emphasizes knowing, valuing, and fulfilling yourself in your business or professional situation as well as in all of your personal life. The values you live by are normative for your life, not just descriptive, Raha says. It is not enough just to know what your present preferences are. You must decide who you want to be or become in the future. Through his own counseling experiences and informative examples, the author shows how we can better know, appreciate, and fulfill our own intrinsic worth and purpose in life through clarifying and then living by our heart, habit, and head values. Heart values are feelings and emotions, habit values are practices, what individuals usually do, head values are the intellectual distinctions they make and use. I found the book fascinating to read and highly recommend it!
Raha, a professional Decision Analyst, says that he realized that “there was a story in me that was beyond Decision Analysis, beyond Hartman’s contributions, and beyond anything I had seen written in business or philosophical books.” He tells this story in several ways. He applies value theory to both businesses and individuals. He asks, “What is the purpose of a business?” “To make money” is the wrong answer, he thinks. “To be of service” is the right answer. If that is done properly, all else will likely follow. To be convinced, read his book! Raha provides many significant applications and illustrations throughout the book to substantiate all of his important points. He strongly emphasizes knowing, valuing, and fulfilling yourself in your business or professional situation as well as in all of your personal life. The values you live by are normative for your life, not just descriptive, Raha says. It is not enough just to know what your present preferences are. You must decide who you want to be or become in the future. Through his own counseling experiences and informative examples, the author shows how we can better know, appreciate, and fulfill our own intrinsic worth and purpose in life through clarifying and then living by our heart, habit, and head values. Heart values are feelings and emotions, habit values are practices, what individuals usually do, head values are the intellectual distinctions they make and use. I found the book fascinating to read and highly recommend it!
December 11, 2023
I just read “Invaluable – Achieving Clarity on Values” by Somik Raha. Somik and I went to Undergrad together in India for our Engineering Degrees and I have known him for the last 25+ years. Our lives (and our paths as friends) have meandered over the years and it is amazing to me that I am writing a review of his book today - I could not be prouder! This book is Somik pouring his life, his struggles, and his spiritual journey into every single page and it has resulted in a beautiful work that I found enjoyable, insightful and transformational.
Why should you read this book? Here is a quote from the book that answers this question: “Some of us are unable to reconcile our inner spirits song with the work that we do, and the only way to honor that spirit seems to be to take sabbaticals or save enough and then stop working. This is a toxic and untenable relationship. . .What if it is not the world that is broken, but our relationship with it? . . . Instead of asking you to quit your work, this book is offering you the magic of a new vision that legitimizes your aliveness in your present context.”
The elegance of this book is that it does not tell you what to do but it provides a robust process for discovering what your fundamental values are and enables you to make your own decisions once you have achieved clarity on values. It is part philosophy and part workbook. You get what you put into this book. I quote: “Clarity on your values is the reward, and not the outcomes that follow”.
Another key message in this book is an essential reframing – a reframing of what the true purpose of business is, a reframing of your relationship with business & work, and a reframing of your values and how they should be reflected in everyday living. I quote: “Look outside and nothing makes you feel worthy enough. Meanwhile, the one who is worthy within is patiently awaiting your eyes of acceptance”.
I will end with this nugget – Somik did this Value Mapping with me about 20 years ago (well before it was this refined) and it provided a depth of clarity to me that I have repeatedly tested in the last 2 decades. It never failed me even once. I highly recommend this book.
Why should you read this book? Here is a quote from the book that answers this question: “Some of us are unable to reconcile our inner spirits song with the work that we do, and the only way to honor that spirit seems to be to take sabbaticals or save enough and then stop working. This is a toxic and untenable relationship. . .What if it is not the world that is broken, but our relationship with it? . . . Instead of asking you to quit your work, this book is offering you the magic of a new vision that legitimizes your aliveness in your present context.”
The elegance of this book is that it does not tell you what to do but it provides a robust process for discovering what your fundamental values are and enables you to make your own decisions once you have achieved clarity on values. It is part philosophy and part workbook. You get what you put into this book. I quote: “Clarity on your values is the reward, and not the outcomes that follow”.
Another key message in this book is an essential reframing – a reframing of what the true purpose of business is, a reframing of your relationship with business & work, and a reframing of your values and how they should be reflected in everyday living. I quote: “Look outside and nothing makes you feel worthy enough. Meanwhile, the one who is worthy within is patiently awaiting your eyes of acceptance”.
I will end with this nugget – Somik did this Value Mapping with me about 20 years ago (well before it was this refined) and it provided a depth of clarity to me that I have repeatedly tested in the last 2 decades. It never failed me even once. I highly recommend this book.
July 28, 2023
This is a remarkable book that warrants reading by everyone. And especially by every business or community leader. It truly is invaluable.
Somik brings together the fields of business strategy and philosophy. But not in terms of integrating. He opposes them to look at the space in between. And from that tension he constructs a way to bring clarity on deep core values. Once you accept that notion, a whole new way to look at value emerges, a whole new way to look at the purpose of your business. You cannot simply put a metric on core values, fundamentally you cannot count them. But here is a way to take them robustly into account.
The book is not an easy read. It makes you think hard, work hard, reflect hard about values. But it guides you along through a wonderful collection of case examples from business, decision analysis, and Indian philosophy. Time and again Somik Raha pushes you towards and beyond the boundary of your rational mental frameworks, and then takes you back and grounds you again in solid business application.
Somik Raha has written an invaluable book for any decision maker, in business or otherwise, who cares deeply about “getting more of what you want” by doing what makes sense, and feels right. It has the power to make transparent, clarify and perhaps even transform the purpose of your business. Highly recommended.
Somik brings together the fields of business strategy and philosophy. But not in terms of integrating. He opposes them to look at the space in between. And from that tension he constructs a way to bring clarity on deep core values. Once you accept that notion, a whole new way to look at value emerges, a whole new way to look at the purpose of your business. You cannot simply put a metric on core values, fundamentally you cannot count them. But here is a way to take them robustly into account.
The book is not an easy read. It makes you think hard, work hard, reflect hard about values. But it guides you along through a wonderful collection of case examples from business, decision analysis, and Indian philosophy. Time and again Somik Raha pushes you towards and beyond the boundary of your rational mental frameworks, and then takes you back and grounds you again in solid business application.
Somik Raha has written an invaluable book for any decision maker, in business or otherwise, who cares deeply about “getting more of what you want” by doing what makes sense, and feels right. It has the power to make transparent, clarify and perhaps even transform the purpose of your business. Highly recommended.
July 23, 2023
The author, Somik, a Stanford Ph.D. in decision science, takes a critical look at how people usually think they should make decisions, which is to pick the choice or to take a course of action or choose a profession that maximizes potential monetary benefits. What the author has found, over years of strategy consulting, and applying decision science to corporate decision making, is that at all scales (at the level of an individual or at the level of a company), we are happier when our decisions align with our core values and what gives our lives meaning. It seems that somehow aligning one's decisions with one's deepest values as a company or individual drives happiness. Somik illustrates this with anecdotes, for instance with a case study of a real company whose discovery of its deepest values led to a discovery of new markets and increased revenues and most importantly, to increased employee job satisfaction and conviction in the purpose of their work. Most of the book describes a framework for the discovery of one's 'values' (a 3-dimensional construct) in a professional sense and proposes a methodology for teasing out from oneself what one truly wants to live for.
December 22, 2023
I found this to be a very valuable read, and full of insights I hope remain within my thinking for time to come. I will appreciate coming back to this book in some time and applying its perspectives better to my decisions.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews