#476 – Jack Weatherford: Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire

Business leaders know that culture is the lifeblood of their organizations, and that the right culture can make the difference between success and mediocrity. But what exactly is culture? And how can you create the right culture for your organization while focusing on your company’s most important goals? These are the questions Ben Horowitz seeks to answer in What You Do Is Who You Are, based on his own experience as an entrepreneur and investor and the insights he gleaned from iconic historical figures.

In this guide, we’ll explore what Genghis Khan can teach you about inclusion, how revolutionary Toussaint Louverture can help you be a better role model, how the samurai can help you decide what really matters, and what ex-prison gang leader Shaka Senghor can teach you about consistently raising your standards. In addition, we’ll consider how Horowitz’s advice compares to that of other culture experts.

Business leaders know that culture is the lifeblood of their organizations, and that the right culture can make the difference between success and mediocrity. But what exactly is culture? And how can you create the right culture for your organization while focusing on your company’s most important goals? These are the questions Ben Horowitz seeks to answer in What You Do Is Who You Are, based on his own experience as an entrepreneur and investor and the insights he gleaned from iconic historical figures.

In this guide, we’ll explore what Genghis Khan can teach you about inclusion, how revolutionary Toussaint Louverture can help you be a better role model, how the samurai can help you decide what really matters, and what ex-prison gang leader Shaka Senghor can teach you about consistently raising your standards. In addition, we’ll consider how Horowitz’s advice compares to that of other culture experts.

Two years before his death, the famous Samurai Miyamoto Musashi (1584-1645) retired from dueling and retreated to a cave to write and reflect upon the true Way of the warrior. The resulting book, The Book of Five Rings, contains the key principles of Musashi’s approach, covering a range of topics such as the importance of constant practice, achieving mental and physical equilibrium, and how to defeat any enemy, large or small, in combat. Throughout the work, Musashi emphasizes that the key to a warrior’s success is strategy and discipline, not brute strength or innate talent.

In this guide, we’ll explain Musashi’s core principles and explore ways in which readers can apply Musashi’s teachings to their personal and professional lives. We will also compare Musashi’s approach to that of other commentators, both historical and modern, from Sun Tzu (The Art of War) to contemporary life coaches.

In The Silk Roads, historian Peter Frankopan identifies Central and Western Asia as the crossroads of human civilization, the birthplace of the world’s major religions, the battleground where the great empires of history rose and fell, and the garden from which today’s global economy first sprouted. He argues that understanding the East is crucial to our understanding of the world—particularly for Westerners who have lost this global perspective.

In ancient times, trade routes known as the Silk Roads first brought European merchants to the luxury markets of the East, enabling the flow of both material goods and ideas from East to West. According to Frankopan, the Silk Roads have always been history’s crucial connection point, spreading not just luxury goods like silk and spices, but also technology, religion, languages, cultures, ideologies, and even conflicts and diseases. In this guide, we explore Frankopan’s history of the Silk Roads, while also incorporating insights and feedback from other scholars to supplement his analysis.

Business leaders know that culture is the lifeblood of their organizations, and that the right culture can make the difference between success and mediocrity. But what exactly is culture? And how can you create the right culture for your organization while focusing on your company’s most important goals? These are the questions Ben Horowitz seeks to answer in What You Do Is Who You Are, based on his own experience as an entrepreneur and investor and the insights he gleaned from iconic historical figures.

In this guide, we’ll explore what Genghis Khan can teach you about inclusion, how revolutionary Toussaint Louverture can help you be a better role model, how the samurai can help you decide what really matters, and what ex-prison gang leader Shaka Senghor can teach you about consistently raising your standards. In addition, we’ll consider how Horowitz’s advice compares to that of other culture experts.

Guns, Germs, and Steel is Jared Diamond’s attempt to determine why societies historically took different paths. It was named one of TIME’s best non-fiction books of all time, awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and turned into a PBS documentary.

Diamond argues that differences between societies were caused by environmental factors that affected the historical development of those societies, not biological differences between the people of the societies. These factors led Eurasians (people from Asia, Europe, and North Africa) to historically have strategic advantages over non-Eurasians, including advanced knowledge, centralized governments, and immunity to infectious diseases.

With these advantages, Eurasian colonists came to dominate much of the world. Diamond believes Eurasians had these advantages primarily because their native geography supported bountiful food production, which allowed for the development of other advantages in technology, knowledge, and government. In our guide, we’ll see how Diamond draws the link between food production and these advantages, we’ll fact-check his ideas, and we’ll consider how Diamond’s view has been received by other experts.

Business leaders know that culture is the lifeblood of their organizations, and that the right culture can make the difference between success and mediocrity. But what exactly is culture? And how can you create the right culture for your organization while focusing on your company’s most important goals? These are the questions Ben Horowitz seeks to answer in What You Do Is Who You Are, based on his own experience as an entrepreneur and investor and the insights he gleaned from iconic historical figures.

In this guide, we’ll explore what Genghis Khan can teach you about inclusion, how revolutionary Toussaint Louverture can help you be a better role model, how the samurai can help you decide what really matters, and what ex-prison gang leader Shaka Senghor can teach you about consistently raising your standards. In addition, we’ll consider how Horowitz’s advice compares to that of other culture experts.

In The Silk Roads, historian Peter Frankopan identifies Central and Western Asia as the crossroads of human civilization, the birthplace of the world’s major religions, the battleground where the great empires of history rose and fell, and the garden from which today’s global economy first sprouted. He argues that understanding the East is crucial to our understanding of the world—particularly for Westerners who have lost this global perspective.

In ancient times, trade routes known as the Silk Roads first brought European merchants to the luxury markets of the East, enabling the flow of both material goods and ideas from East to West. According to Frankopan, the Silk Roads have always been history’s crucial connection point, spreading not just luxury goods like silk and spices, but also technology, religion, languages, cultures, ideologies, and even conflicts and diseases. In this guide, we explore Frankopan’s history of the Silk Roads, while also incorporating insights and feedback from other scholars to supplement his analysis.

Lean In, by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, explores the professional, personal and societal hurdles holding women back from leadership positions in the workforce. The hurdles include discrimination, family-unfriendly policies, and a lack of help at home. To get more women into leadership positions and make true changes, Sandberg urges women to “lean in” to their careers, taking risks and being ambitious in their professional goals, while demanding more help at home. To do this, women must fight a lack of self-confidence and internalized gender stereotypes to forge fulfilling and rewarding personal and professional lives.

Business leaders know that culture is the lifeblood of their organizations, and that the right culture can make the difference between success and mediocrity. But what exactly is culture? And how can you create the right culture for your organization while focusing on your company’s most important goals? These are the questions Ben Horowitz seeks to answer in What You Do Is Who You Are, based on his own experience as an entrepreneur and investor and the insights he gleaned from iconic historical figures.

In this guide, we’ll explore what Genghis Khan can teach you about inclusion, how revolutionary Toussaint Louverture can help you be a better role model, how the samurai can help you decide what really matters, and what ex-prison gang leader Shaka Senghor can teach you about consistently raising your standards. In addition, we’ll consider how Horowitz’s advice compares to that of other culture experts.

In The Silk Roads, historian Peter Frankopan identifies Central and Western Asia as the crossroads of human civilization, the birthplace of the world’s major religions, the battleground where the great empires of history rose and fell, and the garden from which today’s global economy first sprouted. He argues that understanding the East is crucial to our understanding of the world—particularly for Westerners who have lost this global perspective.

In ancient times, trade routes known as the Silk Roads first brought European merchants to the luxury markets of the East, enabling the flow of both material goods and ideas from East to West. According to Frankopan, the Silk Roads have always been history’s crucial connection point, spreading not just luxury goods like silk and spices, but also technology, religion, languages, cultures, ideologies, and even conflicts and diseases. In this guide, we explore Frankopan’s history of the Silk Roads, while also incorporating insights and feedback from other scholars to supplement his analysis.

In Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari uses concepts from biology, history, and economics to tell the story of us, Homo sapiens. We start 2.5 million years ago, when Sapiens make their historical entrance, and end in the future, when the creation of an artificially created superhuman race may mark the end of the Sapiens species. Along the way, we learn how our ability to create imagined realities led to our dominance over other species. We watch as the Agricultural Revolution, the Scientific Revolution, imperialism, capitalism, and the Industrial Revolution change our species in lasting, and not always positive, ways.

Ultimately, we’re left with one question: As we design our future, who do we want to become? Asking the right questions may be more important than finding the right answers. Read this summary to explore our history as a species—in doing so, you’ll see today’s world in an entirely new way.