Myśl jak Zuck

by Ekaterina Walter

The simple five-part formula the upstart Facebook CEO used to change the world—and how any business leader can apply it to his or her own company

Facebook changed the way hundreds of millions communicate, engage, and consume information and products—and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is behind it all. Think Like Zuck answers the questions everyone is asking: What did Mark Zuckerberg do right?

The book explores the critical elements that drive the success of Facebook and businesses like it, such as having passion to change the world, clear vision and higher purpose to execute, extraordinary team-building skills, and a flexible business strategy.

Genres: Business, Leadership, Self Help, Management, Nonfiction, Technology, Biography

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

Reviews

[Mikehendo · Rating 1 out of 5]

I usually stop reading a book that is this horrible, but I had to read it for a class.

If you want to read about what a wonderful person Mark Zuckerberg is, then this is the book for you. However, if you want an honest discussion of entrepreneurship that doesn't rely on strained analogies to make its point you are better off looking elsewhere.

This reads like a love letter to Mark Zuckerberg, creating an almost fictional "Zuck" that is God's gift to humanity.

Simply put, it was awful!

[Teena in Toronto · Rating 3 out of 5]

I joined Facebook in March 2007 and am fairly active on it. I like that I can keep track of the happenings in my friends' and relatives' lives even if they live many kms from me. It's amazing how much it's become such a big part of everyone's lives so I was interested in reading this book.

The author believes there five principles that were essential to Facebook's success:

* Passion
* Purpose
* People
* Product
* Partnerships

She devotes a chapter to each of the five principles. In addition to relating each chapter to "Zuck" and Facebook, she also includes examples from other companies like Apple and Zappos.

I liked this book. It was interesting to get a more in depth history of Facebook, what has been added over the years (would you believe the the Newsfeed didn't get a good response when it was first added?!), what worked and what didn't (there was a music sharing app that got dropped) ... it was a fun reminder of the evolution since I joined.

I'll leave you with the last quote from the book from Henry Ford ... "If you think you can or you think you can't, you're right".

Blog review post: http://www.teenaintoronto.com/2013/02...

[Keshan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Its awesome!!why I said that..because this book shows not only life about Mark Zuckerberg...it's include many other entrepreneurs lifestyle too...so i think this is a one kind of books to help me to understand life of Mark and others....Bravo!

[Rawn Shah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I posted a review on my Forbes blog: "Think Like Zuck's New Generation of Work Ethic" a few weeks ago but was amiss about posting here sooner.
- http://onforb.es/W5nOhr

Excerpt 1 from the full review:

"At its heart, this is a book about the ethic, the drive of what makes us work, lead, and succeed. This is a profile of a number of young companies beyond Facebook alone, including parallels in TOMS, Dyson, Zappos, XPLANE, with examples from other long-standing institutions like Kimberly-Clark, Disney, and 3M.

By examining the attitudes toward work by the leaders profiled in this book, we cut into the layers of culture that are set into the tech-driven industries of today. While technology may not be the sole purpose of all these companies, they are strongly affected or facilitated by the ability that technology provides to share, distribute, interact and collaborate.

This ethic of exploration strikes with the boldness to test out the limits regardless of how well you may know a particular domain. In part this may be due to the realization that we have a strong sense that the rules are being rewritten although not entirely sure how; one could wait and see, or simply take a direct hand in rewriting them.

To go in hand with the explorer’s spirit, as Ms. Walter describes it, is some degree of naiveté in the space. If you don’t know everything about a space, it reduces the view of risk.

This work ethic in particular often gets drummed out over time working in environments where risk taking is held carefully in check, or maintaining harmony with others in the system, organization or industry is part of the organizational culture.

Excerpt 2:

To be accurate, I would have liked to see more first-hand, primary research, interviews and accounts in the book. An actual direct interview of Zuck should have been a key aspect. There is a great deal of recounting from secondary and already published stories collected together here. There needed to be a more critical look at some of these stories within because many of the sources are inherently biased, while rapidly glossing over any flaws.

Following MIT Sloan School of Management, Prof. (Emeritus) Ed Schein – generally credited for inventing the idea of organizational or corporate culture – there are three levels of cultural elements: visible artifacts and behaviors; espoused values, and shared (often unspoken) basic assumptions. Corporate storytelling needs to go beyond the visible artifacts and espoused values, to get beyond propaganda to the deeper heart of what truly lies within. While it is very possible to read or see the first two declarative aspects, the assumptions are the foundational elements that lead to secrets of success.

All in all, these are far from the only ideas within this book and insufficient to explore all the ideas within. So, I would say it is a worth the time to read through the various stories.. A good deal of passion shows through the writing and is a key theme across the book, another work ethic of today. Passion drives. Passion creates. Passion fails. Passion excels.

[Peg Fitzpatrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ekaterina discusses Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg from a place of experience in social media with her work at Intel and her own personal social media network of over 40,000. She’s received such accolades as 25 Women in Tech to Follow by the Huffington Post, 25 Women Who Rock the Social Web in 2012 and many more.

Think Like Zuck is not just about Facebook but about the spirit of entrepreneurship that created Facebook and it's unique, wildly successful corporate culture. Breaking down the business secrets that built Facebook and comparing them with other real world business case studies from companies like Zappos and Apple, Ekaterina reveals the essential elements that create success in a way that is usable and able to be recreated. Business leaders and entrepreneurs can use Think Like Zuck for growth in their own leadership skills or for team building their organization. The valuable lessons in Think Like Zuck can help boost leadership skills as well as corporate culture, working with people and building your dream.

[Arthur Castro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Com exemplos e relatos interessantes pra explicar a divisão dos 5 pilares que "sustentam" o Facebook transformam a leitura rápida e de fácil entendimento.

[Augie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ekaterina Walter wants you to "Think Like Zuck." She has written a book of the same name, subtitled, "The Five Business Secrets of Facebook’s Improbably Brilliant CEO Mark Zuckerberg." I was provided a free copy of the book so that I could furnish you with a review.

"Think Like Zuck" is easy to recommend, popping with inside information about how Facebook became the force it is today, but the book benefits by considering more than just Facebook and its founder, Mark Zuckerberg (or Zuck, as he likes to be called). Included in the book are interesting insights and tales from companies as diverse as Zappos, XPLANE, TOMS Shoes, Southwest, Apple, Dyson, 3M and JESS3. This makes the book much more approachable by bringing the lessons of good leadership out of the world of dorm room startups and into the realm of retailers, airlines and manufacturers.

Walter's "Five Ps" that form the structure of "Think Like Zuck" are not that surprising. No one, I imagine, will see the list and think, "I never would have thought that was important!" Those Five Ps are Passion, Purpose, People, Product and Partnerships. The magic in the book is not that Walter has hit upon a secret recipe but that she so thoroughly explores why each of these are important to the success enjoyed by Facebook and other industry leaders.

This isn't to say that I completely agree with the five criteria Walter shares. For example, she goes into great detail about why passion is important, but I was left feeling this chapter would be better labeled with a different "P": Perseverance. In fact, Walter herself sounds a little unsure when she says, "What I noticed is this: the most successful entrepreneurs always have one trait in common: they never give up." One can have passion without perseverance--we all know people who have been wildly passionate about a hobby or issue one day while ignoring it the next--but it is difficult to have perseverance without passion.

One portion of the Passion chapter that I found interesting is about how Zuck and other successful leaders take inspiration from things that exist rather than wholly inventing something new. Says Walter, "We have this misconception that our entrepreneurial ideas or the products we want to create have to be one hundred percent original, never done before. The truth is that some of the most successful entrepreneurs (as well as marketers, I might add) steal with pride." Zuck, the book points out, got started a year after Friendster and MySpace were taking off, but he was able to bring significant innovations to the idea of social networking because of his passion for openness and transparency. (Maybe this is another missing "P": Piracy? Or, perhaps more kindly, Permutation?)

I would have liked to see "Think Like Zuck" spend more time on how great leaders have the ability to be patient and strive for long-term success rather than chasing after quarterly stock maximization. The book touches on this without diving deep. For instance, Zuck felt it was vital he retain majority ownership of Facebook even after its IPO, noting, "Companies are set up so that people judge each other on failure. I am not going to get fired if we have a bad year. Or a bad five years. I don’t have to worry about making things look good if they’re not. I can actually set up the company to create value.” This commitment to long-term success is also seen in another quote from Zuck, “The companies that succeed and have the best impact and are able to outcompete everyone else are the ones that have the longest time horizon.” The ability to put the long-term above immediate gratification of oneself or the market is an important attribute that deserves more than Walter gives the topic.

The Purpose chapter tells how Zuck passed on opportunities to become fabulously wealthy at an even younger age. He turned down a $1 billion offer because "for him, the journey wasn’t complete yet; he knew he could take Facebook much further by not selling it, by staying the course and sticking to his purpose. He knew there was much more opportunity ahead to make an impact, to change the world."

As I read this chapter, I found myself wondering, just a little, if Zuckerberg was incrementally losing his Purpose. Walter notes how the Facebook leader decreed that "advertising should be useful for the user no matter what--it was wrong to make money off of advertising if it wasn’t adding value." It is hard to square that statement with recent advertising "innovations" such as Page Post Ads that are served to people with no connection to the advertiser or charging people to send messages to others who are not friends. These ad features do not add value to the user experience, which reinforces the constant struggle between Purpose and Profit. (Yet another missing "P!")

The People chapter was another that struck me as mislabeled. It's a great chapter full of terrific ideas, but "Think Like Zuck" seems to be saying that what is vital is not people but leaders who create and commit to culture. Walter gives a nod to this when she quotes from the book "Good to Great," noting that "The old adage ‘People are your most important asset’ turns out to be wrong. People are not your most important asset. The right people are." In addition, she ends this section of the book by noting "I cannot wrap up this chapter without talking about leadership." Maybe she didn't want to ruin the alliteration, but I thought Walter made a much stronger case for how Culture was important rather than that People are.

The Product chapter felt the weakest to me. In part, that is because Walter ends up relying so heavily on the Passion/Perseverance attribute from earlier in the book. She notes, for example, that "Zuck understands that to be successful, one needs to run a marathon, not a sprint." She quotes Thomas Edison, who said, "I failed my way to success." And she shares that James Dyson wasn't successful in developing his bagless vacuum cleaner until his 5,127th attempt.

If was a bit disappointed in the Product chapter, I was thrilled with Walter's exploration of the value of Partnerships. This is not a chapter on the importance of crowdsourcing or development partners; instead, "Think Like Zuck" explores how great companies are often led by two types of leaders who bring different skillsets: The Visionary and The Builder. The case is made quite convincingly as Walter examines leader partners such as Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, Walt Disney and Roy Disney, Bill Hewlett and David Packard and others.

I may quibble with whether Walter selected the appropriate chapter labels or too quickly moved away from one or another important topic, but it should be clear from this review that "Think Like Zuck" got me thinking. The book is engaging, full of interesting stories and is an inspiring read. I hope you will consider purchasing a copy and considering how you can bring more Zuck-like thinking to your corner of the world.

Ironically (or not), the most inspirational words in this book do not come from Zuckerberg, Edison or Hseih; they come, instead, from Ekaterina's father: “Don’t try to change the world. Find your purpose, live out your potential to the fullest, serve others kindly, and the world will change around you.” His daughter learned well.

[Maks Kolodziej · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book feels very stiff to read as it is written in a weird, adulatory tone in favor of shining a positive light on Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. Almost all the time in the book, the book praises Mark Zuckerberg for all the good reasons and how he is always two steps forward in everything he does for the business. Yes, Mark does shine his brilliance, but the author of this book definitely steers their perspective on Mark on one side over the other. It feels as if Mark has made a correct, calculative move for everything he ever touched and interacted with. At various times in the book, perseverance is mentioned where someone can hold on while everything is dragging you down. Yet, the author needs to go deep into talking about Mark's perseverance specifically. I'm not saying that Mark is all bad, but I'm also not saying that Zuckerberg is entirely innocent. However, looking back at it, that's probably why the book is biased, as the author comes from a very similar background, as she states in her book about working at Intel and the knowledge that comes with operating in that environment.
Although I may have disliked the constant praising tone the author used when speaking about Mark and Facebook, at the same time, I enjoyed the explanations provided by the author as they went into more depth on the reasoning of why she believed Mark was that great. While reading, I was impressed by the sheer amount of research and examples provided, some of which I heavily enjoyed, like the quote by Dale Carnegie (author of a world-renowned self-help book, How To Win Friends and Influence People), "People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.". The analogies used, like the "ying and yang" when talking about personalities in partnerships, feel true and need to be brought up more when challenged. Often, miscommunication is the leading cause of problems when working with others, and the author does a good job explaining the vitality of understanding that and working with it to . At the same time, the ideas explored by the author feel like intuitive knowledge, something that we all subconsciously know because of how humans work. While stating the obvious, the book felt informative and pushed in the right direction, which, in turn, made this book a somewhat thought-provoking read.

[Alex Shaikh]

Great book!! I have to say Mark Zuckerberg has been portrayed so differently from the movie The Social Network. After reading this book one would want to be more like the protagonist, a big thanks, I believe also to the writing style of Ekaterina Walter. It gets a tad bit repetitive at times but never the less a job well done. I highly recommend reading this book for all those who are in business. It's one of those books that's needs more than a one time read to capture and recreate the ideas for one's own self.

[Jesse Flood · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is broken down into 5 parts/the 5 P's: Passion, Purpose, People, Product and Partnerships. While not right for everyone, there are a number of principals that you can apply to your particular brand, but I would say test them on a smaller scale and see which is right for you, like in the example of move fast. You should try to get to market quickly, but if your try to move too quickly without testing and proving a market for it, you could lose everything. An inspirational read, but one you need to apply only what's right for you.

[Supia · Rating 3 out of 5]

A 3.5 probably, I am still wondering if the author use 'Think like Zuck' as the title as a bait to appeal more to the younger generation. It talks about how other big and successful company achieved what they have achieve today by doing certain things. About 70% of the time it is about Zuck, other time it will make reference to similar case.
I will recommend this book if you are looking for motivation to start a business.

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

A repetitive collection of examples from other companies, with a sprinkle of Facebook every now and then. Thoughts are repeated so often that I question whether or not this was even proofread.

There were some takeaways from this, but it reads more like a long-winded article rather than a book. But I guess that explains the title.

[Charles Dull · Rating 1 out of 5]

No doubt this is one of the worst books ever written. It is supposed to be about Zuckermans business success strategies but the author cannot get to it because of her love fest over the person who she calls Mark but says even his best friends call him Zuck. I got through about 75% of this worship and still did not find anything worthy of a book. A few hours of my life I will not get back.

[Kenneth L. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a nice companion guide for any entrepreneur or possible entrepreneur looking for a framework to start their business. This is not a story of Facebook. It is an examination of the principles that guided the rise of the company and continue to guide it today. These same principles can be applied to business, education, or any other field.

[Yanal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Blinks:
1. Successful entrepreneurs let their passion drive them.
2. Successful companies are built around an inspiring vision.
3. Hire motivated employees who share the company's values.
4. Never compromise on the quality of your product.
5. A great leadership team is made up of people with complementary capabilities and experience.

[Vladimir Putin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Give me the zucc

[Ashish Ashish · Rating 5 out of 5]

importance of building a passionate team part <3

[Samson Ong · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great entertaining read if you're into entrepreneurship and/or business.

[Apsara Gurung · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good insider on how FB was born and how it continues to dominate the internet world

[Jon-david Mafia Hairdresser · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ekaterina Walter ( @Ekaterina )
has not only told a story of Mark Zuckerberg, she has shown how a philosophy can be incorporated into one's own mindset and business culture.
This book was inspiring and has plenty of examples about other company cultures; which conjures even more thought-provoking ways in which problem solving and open-business culture can lead to success.

You can find a little of the Zuck philosophy in my book: Twitter for Salons Spas: 10 Minutes a Day Wins New Clients and Customer SatisfactionI'm so glad I read Think Like Zuck before I published it!

[Alexandria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Think Like Zuck is a motivational read for those who are willing to cross through tough obstacles to accomplish their greatest dreams. In order to achieve greatness, you have to have a great mindset. Zuckerberg has that mindset or else Facebook wouldn't exist. Although he's not perfect, he presents a great example of perseverance and focus. In this book, Ekaterina Walter presents five reasons why Mark Zuckerbeg became such a wildly successful person and how we can do the same.

I really liked this book. It only took me a few hours to read!

[Desiree Scales · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ekaterina captures the spirit of Zuckerberg and his counterparts in this book. She explores what it takes to survive in a world where dreams and dreamers are often told, "You're going to fail. Get real." The most interesting chapter was on the value of the partnership between Zuckerberg and Sandberg. Cheryl was crucial to Facebook's future success even though two people couldn't be more different. Great read!

[William Lawrence · Rating 1 out of 5]

More like YUCK. Walter kisses up to Zuckerberg the whole way through and is oblivious to the methods and people he used to get to where he is. Become a better leader- how by knocking off other's ideas and refusing to protect user privacy? Think like Zuckerberg? No thanks. This book is just another piece of FB propaganda used to promote Zuck's agenda- dumb down people, make them think they're connected, while you steal all of their information for marketing purposes.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good read on the history of Facebook, but I came to realize that I already look for a lot of the things that Zuckerberg looks for in his employees. Not really much help, but I'm a millenial to boot, so I already belong to the category of people who look at institutions and say, "why do we do it THAT way?"

[Cliff Chew · Rating 3 out of 5]

A relatively light book, talking about 5 principles that Facebook is built on. Nothing really mind-blowing, but worthy a read if you are interested in Facebook. This book does cover the success stories of some of the other firms as well.

[Braedan H · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good book

[Lori Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read biograpy on leadership for knowledge workers, managers, directors, C-levels, and entrepreneurs.

[Ashok Kumar · Rating 3 out of 5]

good book contains 4 to 5 best principles for success

[deleted d · Rating 2 out of 5]

Think Like Zuck
- Follow your passion
- Have an inspiring vision

Didn’t find much useful here. Don’t read it :)

[Mohamed Hassan Mahmoud · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad. Boring in some parts.