Xenial Book Summary for Busy IT Leaders

The Xenial summary of:
Infonomics, by Douglas B. Laney
The Cloud Adoption Playbook, by Moe Abdula,
Ingo Averdunk, Roland Barcia, Kyle Brown, and Ndu Emuchay
The Stress Solution, by Arthur P. Ciaramicoli
Book Summary
for Busy IT Leaders

Authors
SethTemko
Rockin’ VP of Marketing, is an entrepreneur
who never seems to run out of ideas. This book
summary is one of those ideas.
Andy Grindstaﬀ
Manager, Product Management, has two modes:
full-tilt enthusiasm and asleep. Fortunately, those
of us at Xenial only ever see the former.
Michael Kowalski
Director Product Communications, geeks out
over technology and storytelling.
© 2019 Xenial, Inc. A Global Payments Company. All Rights Reserved.

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Thank you!
Xenial is deeply honored to serve you in this challenging industry. We care about
you. We care about your personal and your professional success. We know in that
commitment to success “staying sharp” with knowledge is a key driver. But for
most, time is in limited supply. To that end, Xenial offers as a gift three key books
to help with your personal success and your professional development.
We’ve also taken the time to write summaries of the books to help you in making
the most use of your valuable time.Thank you for being that great, wonderful you.
Sincerely,
The Xenial Team

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Infonomics: The Xenial Summary...........................................................................3
The Cloud Adoption Playbook: The Xenial Summary............................................ 16
The Stress Solution: The Xenial Summary............................................................28

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Infonomics:The Xenial Summary
How to Monetize, Manage, and Measure Information as
an Asset for Competitive Advantage
Written by Douglas B. Laney
Summarized by Seth Temko, Xenial
Summary
If you believe that competitive advantage in your business is a “data game”, that
data is undervalued in your overall organization and you seek to significantly
increase your company’s cultural embrace of data as a significant business tool
then… Infonomics is a must read.
Infonomics is not a deep dive into Big Data, machine learning or AI. Instead it’s
a strategic guide from a consultative perspective in recognizing the value of data
in your organization and a planning strategy tool to get buy in organizationally to
creating a data-centric and data-driven organization.
This book is a good blend of theory and implementation. Its concepts are laid out
very logically that adapts well to a presentation of concept and hierarchy thought
and action.
This book is high on logic and zero on entertainment. Written in a dry style, there
is nothing riveting or entertaining about this tomb. It is dense on content that will
make you think but not “wonder about the stars”.
Consider this book a tool to give you a framework of thought, conversation and
planning to raise the profile of data in your business outside of “just” the IT orga-
nization. Please note this book is a product of Gartner, Inc. which draws heavily
from that consulting organization’s philosophy and engagement methods.
Introduction
This short introduction pulls from a childhood story of the author’s life as an illus-
tration of the changing role and importance of information. It also introduces the
term “infonomics” as the marriage of “information” and “economics”.

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Chapter One:Why Monetize Information
Laney opens the chapter with a description of a multi-thousand-acre farm com-
pletely attended by fully autonomous farm equipment tied to networks, software
and databases allowing a single farmer to manage, operate and control all opera-
tions from a single table using a single computer. Unheard of decades ago, farms
have become enormously large using the same “small farm” workforce. How?
Data tied to technology.
Within this food production industry metaphor, he then discusses the equipment
manufacturers that are collecting and utilizing data feeds from their own field-de-
ployed equipment to drive the value cycle to the farmers.
Finally, he discusses data utilization by seed, fertilizer, pesticide and other
suppliers. This data “chain” has caused unparalleled levels of food production
efficiency. It also sets the key example for context around the theory of infonom-
ics which is “the theory, study, and discipline of asserting economic significance
to information”.
Infonomics theory posits that information should be valued as its own asset
class in the same way that money and capital goods are assets.
“Infonomics provides the framework businesses and governments need to value
information, manage it , and wield it as a real asset.”
This book, Infonomics, is focused on CEOs, CIOs, CFOs and enterprise archi-
tects. The book is structured in three parts as a guide to “monetize, manage and
measure your information”.
Monetize: Justification, Inspiration, Execution
Manage: Barriers, Framework, Organization/Roles
Measure: Quality, Value, Economics
The author lists top monetization myths:
• “Information must be sold to be monetized
• Monetization requires an exchange of cash
• Monetization only involves your own information
• Monetized information typically is in raw form
• One must be in the information business to monetize information
• Few others would want our information
• It’s best for us just to share our information with our suppliers
and partners.”

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Section I: Monetization
Chapter 2: Prime Ways to Monetize Information
Monetization of information can be direct and indirect “cash in the door”. There
are many business opportunities and improvements that are derived from strate-
gic use of information.
These include:
• “Increasing customer acquisition/retention
• Creating a supplemental revenue stream
• Introducing a new line of business
• Entering new markets
• Enabling competitive differentiation
• Bartering for goods and services
• Bartering for favorable terms and conditions, and improved relationships
• Defraying the costs of information management and analytics
• Reducing maintenance costs, cost overruns, and delays
• Improving citizen well-being.”
Chapter 3: Methods of Monetizing Information
The author uses a corporate relocation to illustrate the economic opportunity
for vendors who served him in the relocation. Additionally, he points out that
his “former” banker called him a year later to sell him a product but didn’t realize
that (1) he’d moved and (2) the bank had purchased his new mortgage so he was
already a customer. This serves as a backdrop to discuss the methods of moneti-
zation of information.
These include:
• “Establish an information product management function tasked with
generating measurable economic benefits from available information
assets
• Develop and maintain an inventory of possible information assets
from throughout the organization as well as from second- and third-
party sources
• Evaluate alternatives for both direct and indirect information monetization
• Identify, adopt, and adapt high-value information monetization ideas from
other organizations, especially those in other industries
• Test information monetization ideas for feasibility
• Prepare and package information for monetization

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• Establish and cultivate a market for the information asset.”
The author provides extensive examples and guidelines for the above points.
Chapter 4: Analytics -The Engine of Information Monetization
The author uses Mobilink, Pakistan’s leading provider of telecommunications,
as a case study of a market dominant business needing to defend its market
share from competitive pressures. In this case, Mobilink used SAP’s InfiniteIn-
sight product to analyze customer behaviors and needs in order to provide new
products and provide value to prevent its customer base from switching over to
competitors and generate new revenues.
The author discusses the need to move from “Descriptive to Diagnostic, Predic-
tive, and Prescriptive Analytics”. He then uses efforts from Coca-Cola to illustrate
this value shift.
The keys to the value shift include: Exploiting Big Data. Improved and actionable
decision making. Identifying monetizable insights. The author breaks down these
high-level topics into specific examples and breakdowns such as monetizing
increased data volumes and velocity, embracing complexity, automating gover-
nance, etc.
Section II Managing Information as an Asset
Chapter 5: Information Management Maturity and Principles
The author laments that businesses create best practices to track their balance
sheet but have inadequate data management and data history practices. This
lack of recognition is a challenge with CEOs and CFOs. “Why don’t organizations
manage their information with the same discipline as their other, formally-recog-
nized enterprise assets?”
The author lays out Gartner’s EIM (enterprise information management) maturity
model, which consists of Vision, Strategy, Metrics, Governance, People, Process
and Infrastructure.
There are 5 levels of EIM maturity:
• Level 1- They are generally aware of key issues and challenges, but
lack the budget, resources, and/or leadership to make any meaningful
advances in EIM. This is 10% of organizations.
• Level 2- They are generally reactive, application-centric, waiting for
problems and then reacting, which can manifest in significant business
losses. This is 30% of organizations.

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• Level 3- They are somewhat proactive and have begun building
information management frameworks. This is 40% of organizations.
• Level 4- They have clear leadership in this area and can manage and
leverage information across multiple programs. They have organized,
enterprise-level coordination and management. This is 15% of
organizations.
• Level 5- They have optimized many or most aspects of “acquiring,
administering, and applying information as an actual enterprise asset with
high-functioning organization structures, talent and technologies. This is
5% of organizations.
There are five barriers to information asset management: Awareness, Leader-
ship/Management, Business Governance, Enabling Systems/Practices and Justi-
fication. The author outlines systems and constraints around these topics.
Chapter 6: Information Supply Chains and Ecosystems
The author uses the concept of “information supply chain” as an illustration for
the collection, organization and delivery of information within and outside of an
organization.
“A supply chain is a system of activities and resources involved in moving a prod-
uct or service from the point where it is manufactured to where it is consumed.”
The author applies SCOR, the Supply Chain Operations Reference, to this infor-
mation model, as follows:
• “Plan- Process that balances aggregate demand and supply to develop
a course of action which best meets sourcing, production and delivery
requirements.
• Source- Processes that procure goods and services to meet planned or
actual demand.
• Make- Processes that transform products to a finished state to meet
planned or actual demand.
• Deliver- Processes that provide finished goods and services to meet
planned or actual demand, typically including order management,
transportation management, and distribution management.
• Return- Processes that provide finished goods and services to meet
planned or actual demand, typically including order management,
transportation management, and distribution management.
• Enable- Processes for establishing and operating the supply chain
procedures, resources, and facilities, including relationships with all
stakeholders and other involved parties.”

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The author translates the metrics from the SCOR model to the Information
Supply Chain which include: Reliability, Responsiveness, Agility, Costs and Asset
Management Efficiency.
The author then turns to an information ecosystem definition of Ecosystem
Entities, Ecosystem Features, Ecosystem Processes, Ecosystem Influences and
Ecosystem Management.
Chapter 7: Leveraging Information Asset Management Standards
and Approaches
In this chapter, the author begins by highlighting the lack of official data/infor-
mation quality standards. There are several unofficial organizations but not an
ISO certified body. These ISO standards are currently established for software
standards but they are not specific to information assets.
ITSM (Information Technology Service Management) has a set of processes,
procedures and other tools known as an Information Technology Infrastructure
Library (ITIL) that encompasses ITIL service strategy, service design, service
transition, service operation and continual service improvement.
The author proposes that these processes and procedures could be borrowed
from the ITIL playbooks to be Information Service Strategy, Information Services
Design, Information Service Transition, Information Service Operations and Infor-
mation Service Continual Service Improvement.
The author then explores content management approaches and discusses Re-
cords Information Management (RIM), Enterprise Content Management (ECM),
Library Science and Balance Sheet Asset Approaches.
Fiduciary Management is discussed in the light of Controllership, Treasury Duties
and Economic Strategy.
Human Capital Management is discussed with the People Capability Maturity
Model (P-CMM) which is a human capital resourcing model first developed in
1995. By substituting “information” for “workforce” he lays out an information
management model based on this workforce management model.
Chapter 8: Applied Asset Management for Improved Information Maturity
This chapter begins with a deep dive into the Gartner EIM model. The author
elaborates on the full seven dimensions of this model: Vision, Strategy, Metrics,
Governance, Organization Roles, Life Cycle and Infrastructure.
Each topic has some illustrative stories/examples and discusses the cons of not
addressing these areas.

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Section III: Measuring Information as an Asset
Chapter 9: Is Information an Asset?
The author uses a financial event in 2000 to illustrate the failure of transparency
in corporate accounting practices as a model failure preventing effective busi-
ness decisions from being made. It introduces the view that accounting infor-
mation is an asset of a company and sets the stage for the rest of the book, in
which the author explores “what constitutes an asset from the perspectives of
accounting professionals and the law”.
The author points out that even the information assets of “information compa-
nies” such as TransUnion, Onvia, HG Data, and The Nielsen Company (formerly
known as A. Nielsen) are nowhere to be found in the balance sheet. According
to accounting rules, information is not considered “valuable” for these compa-
nies.
Some persons claim information cannot be tracked, that it is non-depleting and
therefore can not be part of accounting. To the accounting profession today, this
means information should not and is not valued by a company.
The author spends several pages giving real world examples and concepts of
Information Economic Value. This is nowhere more obvious than Wall Street’s
valuations of “info-savvy” companies.
The author defines an asset and the reporting of assets on balance sheets. He
then poses the question “Is information a liability?”.
Chapter 10:Who Owns the Information?
This chapter explores information ownership from several angles:
• Legal precedent for information ownership claims
• Accounting principles
• Language used inside of organizations
• Ownership of our personal information
• Whether we can own something related to information
In a disagreement over ownership of a database in the UK, the court ruled that
information should not be considered property. A dissenting justice in the case,
however, pointed out that the ruling was based on “ignorant notions of informa-
tion and antiquated property laws…[since] today, we live in an electronic world in
which information holds legitimate commercial value.”

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Legal precedent for information ownership is complex. The author cites The Aus-
tralian Computer Society’s Data Taskforce working paper:
“The ability to use, replicate and share data means it cannot be considered in
the same way as a physical asset with an ‘owner’. Rather, it is important to think
of rights, roles responsibilities and limitations for those who access data in the
various process from collection, sharing and storage.”
Even laws regarding ownership of a physical asset such as a home vary widely.
Liens, mortgages, property taxes, and the like put parameters, restrictions, and
limitations on true ownership.
Control vs location: it matters. The author cites a case in which a U.S. court
ordered Microsoft to relinquish information stored in a data center in Ireland.
The upshot for CIOs or others responsible for corporate information storage and
transfer: limit your assumptions with regard to the locality of information. As a
result of the Ireland data case, Microsoft took the bold step of having local com-
panies own the hardware and data centers upon which Microsoft data sits.
The author cites a case in which one party misused the database created by an-
other party. The lesson from this is that “until sufficient and consistent laws are
formulated, assume that information is not legal property and you cannot confi-
dently own it. Therefore, your focus should be squarely on the rights of those to
whom you entrust and avail information within your control.”
The author next turns to the question of whether information can be considered
an asset, as it so often is referred to in everyday casual conversation. He gives
the accounting definition of an asset:
• “Something owned and controlled by an entity
• Something exchangeable for cash, and
• Something that generates probable future economic benefits which flow
to that entity.”
Control. The issues in play here include:
• Whether information is shared (you may retain rights to it, but it may be
no longer under your control)
• Separability, that is, is it bound to an application, e.g., ‘the salesforce.
com data’? In the past, the two may have been inseparable; however,
increasingly, information generated by one function or application is
leveraged elsewhere, and is, in effect, becoming unbound.
Exchangeable for Cash. The author checks this box by citing data brokers Equifax
and J.D. Power, among others.

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Probable Future Economic Benefits. The author argues that, just like a car sitting
on an auto sales lot or a can of soup on a grocery store shelf, dormant informa-
tion assets have probable future economic value.
Next the author considers ownership from several angles.
Usage. Although information cannot be protected, for the most part, like other
forms of intellectual property, “how information is created or used can be consid-
ered property in the eyes of the law.”
Individuals and companies today are using the business method patent to secure
ownership of processes. An example is the increase in patents on Algorithms,
which the author cites “have grown 30x over the last fifteen years.”
Ownership by Departments or Individuals
The author juxtaposes the ideas of ownership and trustee, having found several
leaders in the industry who prefer the latter and quotes Barb Latulippe, the Chief
Data Officer at Dell EMC, “Ownership? I don’t like the term. We’re trying not
to use it anymore. It just encourages politics and information silos. Our policy
states that data is a shared asset and the property of the company, not individual
business units or people.”
“Data trustee... may not have the authoritative connotation “data owner” does...
in the context of a fiduciary, discussed in chapter 8, it carries both legal and
ethical weight.”
Trustee conveys the idea of shared ownership and shared responsibility as ap-
plied to information, the author says.
“Information sovereignty conundrums” do exist, however, and these come into
play when geopolitical and regulatory factors are applied. The author cites the
example of McDonald’s Corporation in the U.S. trying to access data from some
of its operations in Europe. Depending on a given country’s regulations on data,
international borders can create hurdles–and formal processes–for information
sharing. Within the U.S. even federal and state agencies end up in unintended
information sharing battles, guided and constrained by the regulations they must
follow.
Chapter 11: Quantifying and Accounting for Information Assets
An interesting test of the value of information and whether it is considered an
asset was the tragic September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade
Center’s Twin Towers. In the aftermath, companies reeling from the loss of

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data (this was before cloud storage and redundancy had been widely adopted),
many sought recourse by appealing to their liability insurance carriers. Insurers,
however, denied the claims on the grounds that information was not considered
property.
Shortly after, the U.S. insurance industry updated its liability policy template
to exclude information assets from property coverage. Further, the accounting
profession updated a key financial standard to state that “certain intangibles
including customer lists and the like cannot be capitalized.”
Despite how insurers and accountants view information assets, the author ar-
gues that there are many reasons why companies should measure their informa-
tion quality of value. He also shares various models of how this can be done.
First, Why.
The author re-frames an oft-quoted saying “You can’t manage what you don’t
measure” as follows:
“It’s easier to manage what you measure.” Or, “It’s best to measure what you
intend to manage.”
When applied to information: If we get a handle on information the way we do
other company assets – if we can get our arms around it – “measure it, report on
it, understand its characteristics and how it’s used”, this, in itself, ends up affect-
ing how we “capture, produce, manage, and use it.”
Here are some possible information-related benefits of getting a handle on our
information and assigning it a value:
• Prioritizing information-related initiatives and justifying their benefits:
knowing which information assets are most critical can help you decide
which activities related to information are most important. Of course, it’s
good to have data behind these decisions.
• Creating a common language about information- its “quality, security,
availability” and so on leads to common understanding among the people
in the information value chain.
• Improving information security: Organizations look for–but seldom find–a
benchmark for how to budget for infosec. Quantifying the value of
information helps at least put a stake in the sand as a reference point.
Next, the author discusses the business-related benefits of measuring informa-
tion value:

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Improving information monetization. The author poses the question: “If acquiring
and administering an information asset has a measurable expense, shouldn’t you
be recouping it, at least?”
Understanding corporate value. Doesn’t proper alignment of strategy and bud-
gets require a valuation of all assets, including information?
Growing market valuations. If no one else sees information as an asset, investors
seem to. “Nearly half of equity analysts consider a company’s information along
with its analytics capabilities in valuing the business as a whole.”
Making an impression on investors. “There’s evidence from IP advisory firms
to suggest that companies that are internally valuing their information assets,
even though they are non-auditable per accounting regulations, are rewarded by
potential suitors.”
Next the author discusses measuring the value of information.
The author posits that “companies that take seriously the notion of information
as a corporate asset should engage in the same quality assessment discipline as
with their traditional physical and financial assets.” He next lists and describes
objective and subjective data quality metrics.
Then the author gets to the heart of the chapter, describing various informa-
tion asset valuation models. He quotes the celebrated statistician Dr. George
Box, who said “All models are wrong; some models are helpful.” He goes on to
remind readers that “Models are meant to approximate reality using available
inputs and accessible formulae; they are not a substitute for reality itself.”
As a prelude to his descriptions of various valuation models, the author states,
“All asset valuation-related methods such as internal rate of return (IRR) or eco-
nomic value add (EVA), along with all accounting methods for any kind of asset,
are based on a set of assumptions. It is important that assumptions are properly
described and consistently applied.”
For several valuation models, he gives an Overview, a Formula, Implementation
notes, and finally Benefits & Challenges.
The author then lists additional models and their author(s) / developer(s). Next,
he covers understanding and closing information value gaps.
He closes the chapter by giving examples of how certain information valuation
models may be used in combination.

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Chapter 12: Adapting Economic Principles for Information
As the author stated in various places in the book, Infonomics is a concept and a
set of disciplines that is in its infancy. Therefore, applying economic principles to
information assets will need some examination and formulation.
“In the current information-driven society and increasingly digitalized world, sen-
timents are shifting from the economics of tangible assets to the economics of
information—“infonomics”—and other intangible assets.”
“Classic macro- and microeconomic principles were developed to better un-
derstand and improve the consumption of traditional goods and services, not
information assets.”
Therefore, “The unique qualities of information assets and the way they are pro-
duced and consumed compel us to re-examine economic principles and models,
and adjust them as necessary for this new age asset.”
In the remainder of the chapter, the author describes and reformulates the princi-
ples of economic principles that apply to information, including:
• “How the principle of supply and demand operates differently with
information than with other assets
• How to understand and apply the forces of information pricing and
elasticity
• How understanding the marginal utility of information for both human and
technology-based consumers of information assets must be factored into
selecting and publishing them
• How the information production possibility frontier affects information-
related behavior and investments
• How to use Gartner’s information yield curve to conceptually integrate the
concepts of information monetization, management, and measurement
for improved information-related and business strategies.”
Chapter 13: InfonomicsTrends
To close the book, the author discusses trends in infonomics. He starts by listing
eleven trends that indicate that various players in the information ecosystem are
directly or indirectly urging information leaders to treat information as a legiti-
mate asset. Three of the eleven are:
• “Continued globalization requires that organizations improve information
sharing and ingestion
• Smart government services based almost entirely on a platform of
information
• The rise of the machines, algorithmic sprawl, and the promise of AI rely
on...information sources…”

15
The author then describes what he foresees happening in six areas related to
information itself:
• Big data
• Organizational inhibitors to information monetization
• Information rights conscientiousness
• Advanced analytics, algorithms, and artificial intelligence
• Information infrastructure
• Information security and privacy
Finally, the author shares his outlook on the future of Infonomics. He introduces
his predictions with a quote from a company that has made great strides in view-
ing and valuing information as an asset.
“Our finance people used to chuckle about the idea of information as an asset.
The reality is that for most employees, our business is data. 70% of our employ-
ees don’t touch an aircraft, but everyone touches data.” —Matt Cordner, Director
of Global ERP and Analytics, Textron (Parent company of Bell Helicopter, Beech-
craft, and Cesna)
The author then gives is predictions for each of the three areas he structured the
book upon:
• Monetization
• Management
• Measurement
Appendices
The book offers two handy appendices:
• Appendix A contains a bullet list of information management maturity
challenges grouped by categories such as vision, strategy, etc.
• Appendix B lists sample legal rulings related to information property rights,
with a short description of each case.

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The Cloud Adoption Playbook:
The Xenial Summary
Proven Strategies for Transforming Your Organization
with the Cloud
Written by Moe Abdula, Ingo Averdunk, Roland Barcia, Kyle Brown,
and Ndu Emuchay
Summarized by Andy Grindstaff, Xenial
Summary
The vast majority of people who are reading this have, in one way, shape or form,
been confronted with the question of when or how to move their business into
a model that leverages cloud technology. Most are probably already leveraging
cloud technology in some way, but might be wondering if this is something they
should be pursuing more seriously. They’ve probably encountered naysayers who
wonder if this is just another technology trend that won’t really make it past the
Early Adopters chasm (as defined in the Beal and Bohlen technology diffusion
process in 1957).
What this book (and those of us at Xenial) can state, with finality, is that the
cloud has made it past the technology adoption chasm. It can no longer be
considered an emerging technology or a fad; cloud is now an intrinsic part of the
enterprise fabric. In a 2017 Forbes article, Louis Columbus quoted from an Intel
survey that showed 80 percent of all IT budgets would be committed to cloud
applications and solutions. The thesis of this book is that if your business is not
thinking along the lines of that, you could be at a serious disadvantage.
Consider this excerpt:
A recent IBM study of more than 800 cloud decision-makers defined
organizations that utilize the cloud to gain competitive advantages as
“Pacesetters.” These organizations use cloud to re-imagine business
models, make better decisions based on analytic insights, and serve
customers in new ways to create winning business outcomes.
Pacesetters experienced almost 2 times the revenue growth and nearly
2.5 times higher gross profit than their peer group.
What this book helps to do is answer the inevitable next question someone
might have after reading that: “Ok, that sounds great. How do I actually adopt
this new technology?” This book is appropriately titled The Cloud Adoption

17
Playbook because it breaks down all the pieces of your business that need to be
addressed to successfully adopt this technology that is transforming businesses
all over the world. This Playbook is for those who are (or aspire to be) catalysts
for digital transformation in their organizations, leaders who see the need for
transformation as well as those who have direct responsibility in executing it.
The authors are a group of experts who are part of IBM’s Cloud Garage and
have consulted with many large enterprises from a variety of industries to help
them move part or all of their technology platforms to the cloud. The reader can
be confident that when advice is offered through this book, it’s done with an
expertise that’s already been there and done that. They believe “the most crucial
decision that a company can make to successfully pursue a digital transformation
strategy is to wholeheartedly yet thoughtfully adopt the cloud as the IT platform
of choice.”
Many companies have dabbled in the cloud; however, no business has ever dab-
bled its way to success. What follows are summaries and important points of the
10 chapters in this book to help equip your enterprise to do more than just dabble
in cloud adoption. It is a Playbook that provides the necessary moves to make
for undertaking a holistic technology transformation that will forever change the
future of your company.
Chapter 1 – Business Drivers
First, let’s offer up the definition for what cloud computing is:
“Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-
demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing
resources (e.g. networks, servers, storage, applications, and services)
that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management
effort or service provider interaction.” (National Institute of Standards and
Technology, 2011)
Ultimately, cloud technology is just a means to an end and that end needs to be
defined for an organization to be successful with the cloud. The intent you have
for cloud adoption is the first step, and identifying those business drivers is key.
Within enterprises, leaders are aligning their cloud adoption and digital transfor-
mation programs through strategic intents such as:
• Creating a customer-focused enterprise by optimizing data and
leveraging analytics
• Increasing flexibility and streamlining operations
• Driving innovation while managing cost
• Optimizing enterprise risk management
When defining these strategic intents, you must also consider your enterprise’s
tolerance for sustained or disruptive innovation and how that fits into its priori-

18
ties. The process begins by clarifying your objectives. You must decide what you
really want from digital transformation and cloud adoption. You must determine
the strategic intent behind those objectives, determine how well aligned your
enterprise is to those objectives, and continually re-evaluate what you must do to
align with these objectives.
Digital transformation is not easy; it requires inspiration, a clear and consistent
focus, and persistence over time. As Simon Sinek famously wrote: “Start with
the why.”
Chapter 2 - Framework Overview
Every good plan needs an outline and this chapter gives just that.
First, it is important to recognize and understand the challenges that an enter-
prise will encounter during the transformation process. These are some areas the
authors identified:
• Organizations moving to the cloud must make migration and
modernization decisions to determine the best fit for existing applications
and data.
• Organizations require the right talent to fuel innovation and usually require
organizational-culture upgrades to support new ways of working to
achieve the intended velocity of change.
• Organizations can encounter risks as tool selections made for traditional
enterprise application development may not be the right ones for
development in the cloud.
• Organizations require a development methodology that is suited for
both cloud-enabled and cloud-native development, as well as enabling
management and delivery in a multicloud model at scale.
• Organizations face operational challenges in integrating, managing, and
securing off- and on-premises applications and data as a consistent whole.
To overcome these challenges, organizations must:
• Practice new forms of agile engagement and organizational alignment
• Rethink and renegotiate relationships with providers
• Establish new foundations (in terms of methods, tools, and skills) to
propel transformation
For this, the authors created their framework- which is discussed across Chap-
ters 4-10. In this chapter however, they outline the ten key actions within this
framework that they believe must be taken to ensure the types of alignment
needed for successful outcomes:

19
1. Involve the right people
2. Achieve business and technology alignment
3. Take a holistic approach across business dimensions
4. Assume an outside-in, client-centered approach
5. Open the aperture of your business considerations to new possibilities
6. Show progress and identify quick wins
(This one is key to sustaining momentum!)
7. Collaborate actively
8. Balance sustained and disruptive innovation
9. Establish success criteria
10. Account for a multicloud hybrid model
Chapter 3 - Strategy
A vision without a strategy remains an illusion.- Lee Bolman
Ninety percent of business and technology executives are including cloud
computing in their current or three-year plans. While the value of cloud is well un-
derstood, and investments are funneled to make progress toward a cloud-based
transformation, the experience of the authors highlights that only a small per-
centage of enterprises had a documented cloud adoption strategy when asked.
Strategy is what enables alignment between vision and execution. That strate-
gy should translate vision into practical roadmaps that are broad, prescriptive,
actionable and most critically, flexible.
Here are six prescriptive steps that the authors identify as being required to
develop a cloud strategy:
1. Define business objectives and constraints.
2. Complete analysis of your workload portfolio.
3. Envision your future state and analyze your current state.
4. Assess your organization’s readiness.
5. Build an execution framework with defined strategic milestones.
6. Define proven approaches best suited to your organization.
Remember this: the technologies used are only part of implementing a success-
ful cloud strategy. An organization’s structure and its willingness to adopt new
technologies and to manage new operating models are equally important and
should not be overlooked.

20
Chapter 4 - Culture and Organization
An organizational culture is the combination of the shared values, beliefs, and
social norms in an organization, resulting in behaviors, practices, and customs
that the members of the organization follow. It is formed and molded by inter-
nal and external forces acting on the organization; it reflects the history of the
organization, sometimes derived from a shared mythology and the philosophy of
the organization.
Understanding your company’s culture is the first step toward making the right
organizational decisions. Here are some cultural elements of your company that
you need to consider and weigh:
• Willingness to embrace change- Cloud services change A LOT of the way
traditional IT is run, especially when it comes to pace and methodology.
• Decision-making style- Cloud technology allows for a lot of flexibility to
adapt to various styles. You just need to know which style your enterprise
falls under.
• Attitude toward risk- You must find the balance between risk-averse and
gun-slinging.
• View of failure- When working in a cloud-enabled world, you must provide
a culture in which small failures are viewed as learning experiences.
It’s the only way that a team can move on to larger, more ambitious
experiments with potentially larger payoffs.
When adopting the cloud, you are going to need to make changes in your talent
and embrace flexibility. Remember, any time you propose a change in an orga-
nization, you will encounter resistance to that change. Here are two changes in
your organization that will happen in a successful adoption of the cloud:
• You’re going to need more generalists and fewer specialists.
• Your organization will become less compartmentalized and
more integrated.
The rest of the chapter is devoted to suggestions of organization that the authors
have seen be effective in enterprises adopting the cloud.
First, the goal would be that the organization can evolve to an agile-based squad
model (which was originally formulated by Spotify). These squads would:
• Be divided into either an application development squad or a specialized
support squad
• Be made up of 10 people or fewer working in development pairs with a
squad lead and a product owner
• Be small, autonomous, and co-located

21
• Be able to be grouped up with other squads to form a guild with similar
interests or specializations who could then be grouped into tribes for
larger development efforts
Second, to effectively transition from traditional models to agile-based squad
models, the authors recommend establishing a center of competency (COC). A
COC is:
• An independent body that is not owned by any particular development
group, architecture board or operations team. It is supported and
staffed by all organizations that have a stake in the success of the new
technology.
• A managed entity with real priorities and deliverables, not a think tank to
come up with new ideas.
• In charge of overseeing project conception, skills acquisition, and
knowledge dissemination with the goals of promoting best practices,
providing as-needed expertise and helping teams become self-sufficient
so that the enterprise is able to look ahead at new disruptive technologies.
Putting a COC in place is the best recommendation the authors can give for
building an organization that will be successful at embracing change. Sometimes
prior to implementing a full COC, starting with one or more pilot projects can
help get momentum but the goal is that an enterprise can expand that in order to
be successful.
Chapter 5 - Architecture andTechnology
In this chapter, the book begins to dive into more of the technical recommen-
dations associated with moving an enterprise to the cloud. The main focus here
is on the crucial role of architecture in modern cloud projects and the architects
who are crucial for setting direction and guidance for cloud migration.
Enterprise architects are responsible for:
• Empowering developers and site reliability engineers to make more
decisions during project execution so that architects can focus more on
strategy for repeatable success
• Properly assessing workloads of teams so that there is not an imbalance
• Building artifacts (diagrams and texts describing the abstract concepts) for
the broader platform so that developers can execute upon them
• Defining non-functional requirements such as page-response time or
maintainability and manageability of the platform
Just as a conductor of an orchestra can play every instrument they conduct, the
architect should understand and have experience in all the systems they are
designing. They are expected to be leaders in the development and operations

22
spaces because of their experience. Ultimately, the architect role will be re-
sponsible for providing a reference architecture and guidance to the team that is
implementing a DevOps approach (an approach that the authors deem critical to
being a successful cloud-based enterprise).
The components of a reference architecture are:
• Define a clear set of architectural styles- such as microservices and
web development
• Define a clear set of nonfunctional architectural aspects
• Convey meaning by using only simple, minimal pictures
• Provide example implementation artifacts in the language of
implementation- such as GitHub pages of sample code for developers
In order to be successful in a microservices application environment, the concept
of DevOps should be instilled. Several development- and operation-specific
aspects of this are:
• Continuous provision
• Continuous build
• Dependency management
• Continuous testing
• Continuous deployment
• Monitoring and logging
• Cloud management services
This chapter also gives an example of a reference architecture using a modern
microservices approach to applications as well as tips on instilling the concept of
DevOps into the enterprise.
Chapter 6 - Security and Compliance
This chapter is specifically designed for the Chief Information Security Officer
(CISO) at your enterprise. Security and compliance looks very different in the
cloud but is no less important.
First, here are some assumptions from the traditional IT model that you might
have that will change when moving to the cloud:
1. You can control access, security, and confidentiality all the way down to
the physical hardware. This will never be the case and you will have to
work more closely with the providers and vendors you select to make sure
they meet your criteria.
2. Everything is contained within your network. This will also never fully be

23
the case. You will need to ensure that you set up proper monitoring and
validation to ensure compliance is maintained.
3. Your team is responsible for everything. This will cease to be the case. The
roles on your team must change and adopt the role of generalists rather
than specialists. Then you can leverage the specialization of the providers
and vendors you are partnering with.
4. All your data must be stored locally. By nature of the cloud, this will never
fully be the case either. You will likely need to adopt multicloud hybrid
models and lean on your enterprise architects and vendors to properly
adhere to regulations.
5. Your developers need to be security experts. They do not need to become
full-time security experts, but instead can leverage approved, hardened
security services available from the cloud platform.
Here are some of the main questions this chapter addresses in detail:
• How do I protect against data breaches and loss? This solution brings
in a combination of encryption key management, digital certificate
management and monitoring for data integrity.
• How do I protect against networking vulnerabilities? This is addressed
through a combination of cloud-hosted firewalls, intrusion prevention
systems (IPS), Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) mitigation services
like Akamai or CloudFlare, and microsegmentation practices.
Leveraging secure DevOps procedures, a cloud platform can offer many solu-
tions for dealing with threats to your business and cover any level of security and
compliance needed. This chapter goes into depth on examples of mitigation for
the risks above, how to properly manage identity and access management, what
a secure cloud-native solution looks like, and what secure DevOps practices a
team can adhere to.
Chapter 7 - Emerging Innovation Spaces
Innovation is definitely something that is near and dear to our hearts here at
Xenial and is commonly a reason we see enterprises pursuing a cloud platform/
strategy. The authors of this book rightly identify that innovation can often be a
business driver in itself.
Here are several examples of how the authors identify the cloud driving innovation:
• Data and Analytics- A proper cloud architecture offers better ways to
explore and deploy new analytics approaches that enable speed and
agility. Part of the challenge of data analytics in an enterprise is that the
data points needed are stored all over the place, but with the cloud, that
kind of distribution falls right into the benefits of cloud architecture design.
• Blockchain- As most are aware, this concept emerged from the digital

24
currency movement but the idea has matured into open-source and
commercial products with the cloud in mind. Leveraging this shared
ledger technology, any time a limited amount of trust exists among
multiple parties, the blockchain creates an environment that can eliminate
fraud and create transparency.
• Containers- Within the microservice architecture, the concept of
containerization provides consistent application development models from
development through production. This has caused a massive speed boost
to the way new code is moved into the real world.
• Internet of Things (IoT)- IoT is the connection of devices to the internet. It
is projected that the amount of connected devices will reach 20.4 billion
by 2020, providing massive amounts of data points that can be sliced and
diced to drive innovation in so many ways it can’t be fit into this summary.
• Cognitive- Sometimes referred to as artificial intelligence (AI), cognitive
technologies are essentially conversational or discovery applications
that can answer questions and provide guidance that help people
make decisions. Some cognitive services that can be added to these
applications include visual recognition, speech-to-text, text-to-speech,
personality insights, tone analysis, and language translation.
Chapter 8 - Methodology
A software methodology is something that sounds much more impressive than
it is. A methodology is nothing more than a description of the guiding principles
and set of steps that a team follows in developing a system. Every team, no
matter the size, has one whether they like it or not. This chapter breaks down the
IBM Cloud Garage Method into seven parts.
Culture:
• Build diverse teams
• Define organizational roles
• Work in autonomous co-located squads
• Adopt Agile principles
Think:
• Use a continuous cycle of observing, reflecting and making
• Define a minimum viable product (MVP)
• Hold “playbacks” to gather feedback and keep the team in sync
• Plan iterations by using a rank-ordering backlog
Code:
• Hold daily standup meetings

25
• Use test-driven development- a process of writing a failing test case and
implementing just enough code to pass the test
• Practice pair programming- the idea of letting developers work together,
in pairs, at one set of keyboards and monitors to double the amount of
attention on each piece of code
• Continuously integrate all working code
• Automate testing
Deliver:
• Deliver continuously by using a pipeline
• Automate deployments
Run:
• High Availability (HA) infrastructure- deploy multiple data centers with the
ability to fail over
• Dark launch and feature toggle to get initial evaluation and feedback
before going live to all customers
• Implement auto-scaling
Manage:
• Automate monitoring
• Enable fast recovery mechanisms
• Test for the unexpected- know how your application responds when
someone pulls the plug
• Automate operations to reduce cost
Learn:
• Run A/B tests
• Drive development with hypothesis- you must be experimenting
continuously
Chapter 9 - Service Management and Operations
Independent of where applications run- in traditional IT data centers or in the
cloud- they must be managed to ensure availability, security, and adequate qual-
ity for users. Service management and operations is a mature and well-defined
discipline that designs, delivers and manages the functions necessary to use IT
within an organization.
The big question is “How can a process-heavy, mature operations team evolve
to support modern Agile and cloud-oriented approaches?” This chapter takes

26
an extensive look at that transformation, which is far-reaching and should not
be underestimated because it is quite disruptive to traditional IT operations. The
important piece to remember is that both the traditional and cloud approaches
are accomplishing the same goal: delivering reliable services to the users at a
justifiable cost.
This transformation affects established roles, processes, technologies, and cul-
ture and the authors provide examples of each of these aspects based on their
experience. They also describe in great detail the impact of cloud transformation
on important operational processes like:
• Incident Management
• Root-Cause Analysis
• Deployment
• Release Management
For everything from those processes to future roles that must be created, to
various new kinds of tools that can be leveraged like Slack and Kubernetes, the
authors provide in-depth details and suggestions to set your operations depart-
ment up for success in the future cloud-oriented state.
Chapter 10 - Governance
Cloud adoption and digital transformation are the future of IT. However, the
reality is that this future is multichannel, multicloud, and multivendor. This com-
plexity creates the obvious need for a governance model that is well thought out
by your organization.
A governance model should establish core principles, rights, and standards that
enable you to govern cloud-related decisions and do the following:
• Enable you to identify, manage, and mitigate risks
• Help you ensure regulatory compliance
• Help you drive toward standardized solutions
• Promote consistent cloud adoption throughout your organization
• Drive synergy through sharing and reusing processes that work.
For such a model to be effective, the following elements must be in place:
• Strong technical leaders who understand strategy and architecture
• A transparent operational model
• Appropriate talent management and human resources to attract and retain
the right expertise and capabilities

27
• If your organization is multinational, you must have buy-in from global
partnerships and alliances to create collaborative ecosystems.
The chapter then offers two different models of organizational constructs that the
authors have seen to be effective in implementing governance in a cloud model:
the Center of Competence model and the Chapters and Guilds model.

The Stress Solution:
The Xenial Summary
Using Empathy and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to
Reduce Anxiety and Develop Resilience
Written by Arthur P. Ciaramicoli
Summarized by Michael Kowalski, Xenial
Introduction
The Stress Solution was written by Arthur P. Ciaramicoli, EdD, PhD. Dr.
Ciaramicoli is a licensed clinical psychologist and the chief medical officer of
soundmindz.org, a popular mental health platform. He has served on the faculty
of Harvard Medical School and also chief psychologist of Metrowest Medical
Center. His other books include The Power of Empathy.
In The Stress Solution, Dr. Ciaramicoli presents a method he calls empathetic
cognitive behavioral therapy to overcome stress.
The author starts by describing the problem: Stress and how common and
impactful it is on our emotional and physical well-being. He then describes the
practices of Empathy and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and how they interrelate
in his practice. He uses examples from his own counseling practice to help the
reader understand the concepts and see the outcomes and benefits of empa-
thetic cognitive behavioral therapy in practice. To help the reader apply the prac-
tices and methods described, Ciaramicoli provides exercises at the end of each
chapter and Assessment Tools in the Appendix.
28

Understanding Terms
Empathy: the psychological identification with or vicarious experiencing of the
feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another (according to dictionary.com). Empathy
is objective, based not on assumptions but on truth. “Empathy is centered on
the uniqueness of the other person’s experience...a thoughtful response rather
than a general reaction,” according to Ciaramicoli.
Sympathy: harmony of or agreement in feeling, as between persons or on the
part of one person with respect to another (according to dictionary.com). Sympa-
thy is subjective, in that it is based on assumptions as to whether our experienc-
es are similar.
Cognitive BehavioralTherapy: A psycho-social intervention that aims to
improve mental health. CBT focuses on challenging and changing unhelpful cog-
nitive distortions (e.g. thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes) and behaviors, improving
emotional regulation, and the development of personal coping strategies that
target solving current problems (according to wikipedia.org)
29

Chapter 1:WhyYou Should Care About Stress
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 66% of visits to
primary care doctors are stress-related, and 50% of American workers say they
stay awake at night troubled by the physical or emotional effects of stress.
There are physiological and cognitive symptoms / repercussions from stress, yet
only 17% of Americans ever talk with their health care providers about stress,
cites the author. Pg. 2, pg. 6
Here’s how stress affects the brain and body: the amygdala (emotional center of
the brain) sends a signal to the hypothalamus which alerts the adrenal gland to
release the stress hormone cortisol. Blood pressure, heart rate, and blood sugar
rise, while your immune system, digestion, sex drive, and other functions are put
on the back burner. Memory, learning, and the ability to empathize are compro-
mised.
These are our natural responses to stress. If we experience chronic stress, then,
one must wonder whether the chronic stress contributes to so many of us feel-
ing chronically sick and tired.
Stress may be at the root of cognitive issues as well. Too much stress for too
long of a period can actually cause inflammation in the brain and may be
linked to Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, and multiple sclerosis. So stress
is a chronic, widespread problem that 79% of Americans try to deal with on
their own.
The author cites a study by Steve Maier of the University of Colorado, which
shows that the degree of control we feel over stress determines how much
stress impacts us physiologically. Pg. 7
At the end of the chapter, the author provides a recommended exercise: a Stress
Questionnaire.
Chapter 2: Expanding our Humanity:The Discipline of Empathy
In this chapter, the author explains and unpacks empathy and what happens to
humans on a physiological and psychological level when empathy is–and isn’t–
being practiced. The author states that empathy is an innate capacity but also
considers it a ‘discipline’. That’s because, he says, it “cannot be easily mastered,”
but rather requires “careful nurturing and constant attention.” Pg. 9
The lives we live hamper our empathy and our ability to develop and practice it.
Hectic, harried, tired, and poorly nourished (due to haphazard eating habits), we
become angry, detached, and less caring / empathetic.
30

“We need the help of others to slow down and calm ourselves, confiding in those
close to us so that we can begin the process of dissipating stress…empathy,
and the positive neurochemicals it produces, cannot exist in the absence of trust
and a sense of security…” Pg. 13
If we live lives of constant stress and depletion, our empathetic range becomes
narrower. Our situation can be compounded by secondhand stress. We’ve all
experienced it: we get swept along in the low mood of a partner or colleague.
And when their stress pulls us down, it raises our blood pressure (along with the
other physiological and cognitive effects that come from stress).
All the things our physicians have long told us would benefit us such as adequate
sleep, proper nutrition, strong relationships, etc., can also contribute to determin-
ing the range of our empathy in a given moment, according to the author. Key to
how we respond to others and our ability to be empathetic: keen awareness of
our state of mind.
It’s important to be in touch with our own state of mind; but we practice the
discipline of empathy when we look beyond the surface of someone’s response
to us. This helps us recognize the underlying issues in play. Their response to
us may be anger, for example, but it’s often fueled by hurt, disappointment, and
insecurity.
Inwardly, when we are hurt, and we harbor that unresolved hurt, we tend to
have anger and a sense of helplessness, which changes how we think and be-
have. The author cites a study by psychologist Paul Levine and his colleagues at
the Foundation of Human Enrichment showing that “a fixation on major or minor
hurts makes people shun intimacy and aggravates stress.”
The author then gives an interesting take on sadness and depression. He calls
sadness “the body’s cue to stop, think, and work through what is troubling us.
Depression is often...an attempt to avoid sadness.” Pg. 15
The downward/inward spiral of shunning intimacy and aggravating stress is best
broken, according to the author, with compassionate, empathetic help from oth-
er people. Allowing ourselves to be open and vulnerable, share hurts, and accept
empathetic feedback helps us break from old thought patterns and the ‘story’
we created when we were first experienced hurt. Pg. 15
At the end of the chapter, the author provides a recommended exercise: Empa-
thy Quotient Questionnaire located in the Appendix.
31

Chapter 3: Empathetic Listening: Loving Away Stress
To introduce empathetic listening, Ciaramicoli compares and contrasts two peo-
ple in his life:
• His mother, who was empathetic and self-giving for the whole time that
the author knew her, and continued listening and giving, even into her
final hours
• His grandfather, who was known widely as a highly stressed, shrewd
business person who took little interest in other people.
At his grandfather’s wake and subsequent funeral, no one shed a tear. Contrast
this with the author’s mother’s funeral, which was attended by people from all
walks of life who shed copious tears and shared openly about the impact she
had had on their lives.
The author then uses the stories of Dmitri, a family friend, and several of the
author’s counseling clients, to explain the tenets of empathetic listening and
to provide examples of how empathetic listening, when put into practice, can
change individuals and relationships.
Do you listen, truly listen, listen more than you talk, and with compassion and
empathy, to understand?
Most of us listen, but we’re planning our response while we do. Or we listen
with sympathy, that is, listening and relating what we hear to our own experi-
ences. We’re often distracted, whether by external stimuli or our own internal
dialogue. And all of this, while we’re purportedly listening to the person talking.
Pg. 24
By contrast, our tendency as humans, especially when our emotions are stim-
ulated as in a disagreement with a loved one, is to be prone to the cognitive
distortion of generalization and to perceive a situation from our own perspective,
which “prevents empathetic listening and causes defensive reactions in the
person who is talking.” Pg. 24
In empathetic listening, we give up our own view to participate fully in another
person’s experience. According to the author, empathetic listening with depth
and clarity goes deep into the other person’s heart to reveal what has been
hidden by fear, anger, grief, or despair. The result is that we “listen our souls into
life.” Pg. 25
According to Ciaramicoli, “Listening empathetically creates a feeling of trust,
which releases the compassionate hormone oxytocin, reducing fear and bias and
creating a feeling of security.” It is when we are calm and secure, he says, that
we can correct distorted thinking. Pg. 26
32

Empathetic listening from others helps us gain awareness of our own story and
where our stresses, caused by biases and distortions about ourselves, originate.
This, the author states, is where the link between empathy and cognitive behav-
ioral therapy lies. Pg. 27
Part of unraveling the causes of stress involves gaining an awareness of your
own story. Many of us carry around distorted views of ourselves that have their
root in our past. Specifically, these views are often negative and they are inaccu-
rate interpretations of reality. Cognitive Behavioral Therapists call this a cognitive
distortion. The author gives the example of Paul, who carried a low self-image
rooted in having been raised in a poor town and having attended a mediocre
college. Pgs. 26-27
These distortions often create patterns or road maps. Think of them like ‘con-
stantly thinking in a rut’. Luckily, the truth can be discerned. And this can come
from empathetic listening and the sharing of honest, thoughtful feedback.
The author then shares a cognitive distortion that many people deal with: Mind
Reading, which is essentially having a preconceived notion about what someone
is thinking or about to say. Pg. 28
He then describes a pattern of behavior that he calls Getting your Loving from
Fighting, essentially, that fighting offers a way of being connected without being
vulnerable. Pg. 29
Two cognitive distortions often at work in this type of relational dysfunction are
negative predictions and projection. The author defines these as “overestimating
the likelihood that an action will have a negative outcome” (negative predictions)
and “imagining that our own unwanted attributes, thoughts, or emotions are
embodied in someone else’ (projection). Pg. 32
At the root of much fighting: Blaming. The author next unpacks and unravels
blaming, for as long as blaming exists, positive change cannot occur. “Blame
puts the problem or need to change on the other person’s shoulders, keeping
the conflict at an impasse.” Pgs. 32-33
Stopping the blaming is hard. However, when a person puts the brakes on blame
and slows down their reaction time of the emotional brain, stress plummets, and
answers become more realistic and rooted in reality/truth. Pgs. 34-35
To come to a place of empathy and listening, and root out blame, people must be
motivated to understand one another.
Another hurdle to empathy is a desire to give advice. We try to fix things rather
than let a person feel the emotion of the situation. This tendency comes about as
33

we listen, and personalize what we hear, making assumptions about the similari-
ty of our situation or experience to the other person’s. Pg. 36
These tendencies of blame and advice-giving come from our tendency to be
self-absorbed. Becoming empathetic requires being able to read the reactions of
others around us. Pg. 37
Entitlement is yet one more empathy-blocker. The behavior here is “I talk, you
listen.” The opposite: empathetic conversations, which involve give and take.
Pg. 38
We often also deal with a fragile self-worth. Achievement and status-seeking
can change us and rob us of empathy as well as our connections with others.
We may have status, success, skill, and competency, yet struggle to be present,
intimate, and empathetic. We therefore don’t feel good about ourselves despite
the outward positive image we project. As a result, it’s hard to live with an oth-
ers-centered mindset and we can’t do much good for those around us. Pg. 39
There are two main factors in empathy training: empathetic listening and ex-
pressing empathy. The author then gives examples of each. Empathetic listening
involves things like:
• “Repeating what the other person says
• Rephrasing / summarizing, with an emphasis on feelings/emotions
• Using statements that invite the speaker to expound, for example, ‘It
appears as if…’ and ‘I imagine that feels…’ ‘Tell me more about that…’”
Pg. 41
Finally, expressing empathy takes self-awareness, reflection, and practice. It is
“putting your thoughts and feelings into another person’s heart and soul,” accord-
ing to Ciaramicoli. He shares guidelines for expressing empathy, including:
• “Pay attention to body language
• Slow down
• Ask open-ended questions”
Pg. 42
The chapter ends with exercises to help the reader recognize cognitive distortions.
Chapter 4:The Soul’s Pharmacy: How to Produce Calming Neurochemicals
Ciaramicoli starts the chapter sharing about the Siberian Husky puppy he had
when he was a child. The dog was continually frightened and withdrawn and
would hide underneath his bed. His mother was able to help calm the dog and
34

get it to trust and connect with people. The author uses this example to show
the connection between our beliefs, attitudes, and emotions and our physical
well-being. Pg. 48
He and the dog both became calmer in the presence of his mother, who by
nature, had this effect on everyone. The process looks something like this:
• Interactions with others can change your neurochemistry.
• A change in your neurochemistry can trigger a change in your body, as we
now know from a growing body of scientific research.
Pg. 49
We reach others to provide what they need. Ciaramicoli’s mother called this
‘making a relationship’ which is what she did with the Husky. We can practice
this by using the principles the author provides at the end of the previous chap-
ter, Chapter 3. These principles / keys to connecting include:
• “Give time
• Give time, unselfishly
• See beyond the surface
• We need to work hard to slow down and make ourselves totally available.
• We need to be purposeful to find / make connections”
Pg. 50
As previously stated, research shows the great dynamic interplay between mind
and body, mental and physiology.
The good news of this? We’re not ‘set it and forget it’ victims of our genetics.
Rather, according to the author and other Cognitive Behavioral Therapists, close
emotional relationships throughout our lives can actually help provide opportunity
to change the circuitry of our brains that controls behavioral impulses, emotions,
and feelings. This is called neuroplasticity. Pg. 51
We end up changing cognitive distortions and see ourselves and others clearly.
According to the author, there are implications for health, longevity, and state of
mind.
A study by George Vaillant at Harvard University shows relationship factors are
among the key predictors of successful aging. These factors predict health, low-
stress aging. Seven factors were cited. The top three were:
• A good marriage before 50
35

• Resilience to coping with adversity
• Expressing altruistic behavior
Interestingly, none of the seven factors is beyond an individual’s control; for
example: genetic risk for disease. Pg. 52
Based on this study, the author sums up the keys to a healthy life as follows:
manage stress well and form lasting relationships.
Research is increasingly showing that neuroplasticity can even be harnessed to
treat neurological conditions once treated exclusively with drugs. For example,
OCD patients with behavioral therapy can learn to create a calm, balanced state
of mind through casual or loving / intimate human connections. Pg. 53
These relations release serotonin and oxytocin which modulate heart rhythm and
help manage anxiety, anger, impulsiveness, and glucose. This leads to release of
cortisol which lowers stress.
Chapter 5: Illusions We Create: Seeing More Clearly with Cognitive
BehavioralTherapy
Essentially, to show empathy is to be objective. When we fail to see ourselves
and others clearly, we get pulled back to the things in our past that blind our
perceptions today.
The author gives the example of John, a patient, who tried to solve an internal
problem (a fragile sense of self and a desire to feel worthy) with an external
solution: pursuing success in his career, always watching his progress toward
his sales goals, which gave him surges of dopamine. His mood went up or down
solely based on his sales goal accomplishment standing.
The love and steadfastness of John’s family helped him become more open and
genuine. Through empathetic listening and CBT, he was able to examine the core
beliefs about the basis of his worth.
Through some failures, he ended up learning through his suffering. The chapter
ends with exercises, journal questions, and an activity based around the cogni-
tive distortion of performance addiction.
Chapter 6: CBT in Action: Combating the Distortions of Personalization
and Blame
Empathetic CBT is fact-oriented. This helps people untangle the unfortunate
experiences in their lives such as workplace bullying.
Sometimes we take responsibility for something that is out of our control. Help-
36

lessness in these circumstances tends to lead to shame or self-loathing. This,
in turn, leads to the belief that people can’t be trusted and we avoid unguarded
sharing of ourselves.
The workplace can often force us to act in ways counter to (and that put us in
conflict with) our natural being. For example, success at any cost, even if unethi-
cal and lacking integrity and honesty. We try to please others to stabilize a fragile
sense of self and we lose authenticity, which is the exact opposite of what we
need to live lives of low stress.
The chapter ends with journal questions related to the distortions of personaliza-
tion and blame: identifying, listing events in which these distortions may have
occurred, the resultant beliefs we hold, and the assumed consequences.
Chapter 7: CBT in Action: Combating Negative SelfTalk and Ending the
Cycle of Stress
When we grow up experiencing little to no empathy, we develop a punitive
inner voice. In self-defeat, we hear ‘you are not (good) enough.’ The opposite is a
soothing inner voice that says: ‘you are inherently worthy’. Pg. 80
The author encourages readers to recognize familiar self-defeating phrases
and change our internal dialogue. Negative internal dialogue releases stress
hormones which can lead to the cognitive distortion of ignoring situational and
contextual factors.
Strategies for silencing self-criticism include distancing (similar to taking an em-
pathetic stance so we can think objectively about irrational thoughts). This was a
foundational tenet of CBT posed by Aaron Beck, founder of CBT.
What about constructive self-talk? Multiple researchers have hit upon a method
called instructional self-talk which consists of a series of statements that provide
a planned sequence of behaviors.
The author gives an example of a beach vacation cabin owner who had had their
beach vacation invaded by family who were demanding and overstayed their
welcome. When this overbearing family hinted that they planned to return the
following summer, the beach cabin owner–who feared disappointing people–had
to come up with a plan to communicate with the family. Pgs. 82-83
The instructional self-talk method provided both the steps and the mindset he
needed to tackle the sticky situation. This method is different and more effective
than simple encouraging messages such as “you have the confidence you need
to succeed” and the like.
37

That’s because it provides both a mindset and actual steps to overcome and
address an issue. Combined with talking through a specific fear, the method can
help break the cycle of stress.
Steps to changing self-talk include:
• “Uncover the origin of your negative story
• Use empathy to learn how repeat phrases came about
• Journal phrases you speak to yourself
• Replace with truths you’ve heard from others
• Differentiate between situational causes (the issue was caused by
a situation) and personal causes (I caused the issue) in problematic
situations. If we are burdened by negative self-talk, we can often confuse
these two.”
Pgs. 84-85
The chapter ends with journal questions and CBT steps to overcome negative
self talk and ending the cycle of stress.
Chapter 8: Combating Performance Addiction
A pursuit of perfection often causes a person to focus so much on individual
pursuits that they disregard (have a lack of empathy for) the ones around them
who matter most. They sacrifice intimacy for achievement. Pg. 90
Our view of success happens early in our development, when we comprehend
which of our behaviors gain attention and affection. We associate this with our
self-worth. Because these views, and the cognitive distortions associated with
them, are formulated so early on, it can be difficult to alter them. Pg. 91
The challenging thing with performance addiction is that the person tries to per-
fect their way to happiness, doing more and “working harder, faster, and more
proficiently,” says Ciaramicoli. Pg. 91
Unfortunately, this pattern ends up causing anxiety and stress. The author shares
the story of David, a former professional athlete, who attended the author’s
Empathetic CBT sessions.
David was raised by a father who was extremely demanding and critical of him,
expressed through angry outbursts. This led to David developing an intolerance
for feeling out of control. Having been so vulnerable at a young age, later in
life he avoided situations that made him feel out of control. David came to learn
that his own anger led to adrenaline rushes that gave him a superficial sense
of control.
38

The chapter closes with an explanation of the impact of performance addiction
on personal intimate relationships. Performance addicts have difficulty loving
because they base their perception of their lovability on their own performance.
Pg. 98
By participating in group sessions, David witnessed the vulnerability of people
he respected for their personal and professional success. Eventually, he reestab-
lished a loving relationship with his wife and shed the burden of perfection. Pgs.
94-96, 99
The chapter ends with journal questions related to the stress of performance and
CBT steps to overcome the cognitive distortions related to performance addic-
tion. Finally, the author offers a Performance Addiction Questionnaire located in
the Appendix.
In the final five chapters, the author shares skills needed to reduce stress and
develop resilience for personal and professional success.
Chapter 9: Clear Eyes: Perceiving theTruth through Empathy, not Prejudice
In his years of counseling, the author has heard and experienced a lot of prejudi-
cial bias, whether inwardly focused, or focused on others. He has been fascinat-
ed and dismayed by the stress this prejudicial thinking and behaving causes.
Pg. 104
He proposes that empathy is the tool that enables us to subject these views to
rational examination. Pg. 105. As you will recall, the description of Empathy at
the beginning of this Summary under “Understanding Terms” says “Empathy is
objective, based not on assumptions but on truth.”
Prejudice, the author states, is rooted in a lack of awareness combined with a
fragile sense of self. Pg. 105
He also cites research by Arne Roets and Alain Van Hiel of Ghent University in
Belgium that indicates that prejudice and its associated distorted thinking are
more common in people with a low tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty.
These people, he says, are prone to quick decisions and generalizations. Pg. 108
Research at the University of Queensland showed that students with higher
empathy had more daily exposure to those from different backgrounds. That is,
familiarity had a significant impact on empathy, regardless of race or ethnic back-
ground. Empathy increases and stress decreases with exposure to other groups
of people. Pg. 106
When we are “not stressed by interactions with people from different back-
grounds, we can find common ground and common humanity.” Pg. 108
39

“We all reach adulthood with prejudices of some sort. Our responsibility...is to
reexamine the stories we wrote that were based on incorrect information about
ourselves and others.” Pg. 110
Ciaramicoli shares the effects of closed-minded relating, based on the exam-
ple of Rebecca. She got into a relationship after basing assumptions about her
future partner’s character on his other qualities including handsome appearance
and financial success.
The author states, “When our longings for love are deep and our stress level is
high, the likelihood of biased perceiving is significant.” Pg. 112.
Rebecca participated in group sessions and through mutual vulnerability “real-
ized that good people valued her humanness.” She also learned that you have to
give in order to be given to.
As shared earlier in the book, in order to overcome cognitive distortions that
impact our personal and relational well-being, we cannot go it alone. We need
feedback from a consensus of trusted people who will be honest and straightfor-
ward with us. Pg. 112
The author closes by stating that you don’t have to be in group therapy to rewrite
your story. Butyou do need to be open to honest feedback from trusted individuals.
The chapter closes with journal questions and suggestions for taking action to
overcome prejudice.
Chapter 10: Emotional Learning: Hurts that Never Heal
In this chapter, Ciaramicoli explains how hurts early in our life become part of the
story we create and re-tell to ourselves. Hurt is one of the biggest obstacles to
overcome, in part because (1) the brain is biased to remember hurts and (2) they
are captured in the emotional center of the brain. As a result, our perceptions
about them are influenced by our feelings. And because “we see them through
the lens of our emotions, we mistakenly believe that we are seeing the objective
truth.” Pg. 117
The author shares the process of healing that his patient Laura, who was hurt by
the untimely death of her father, went through. Her experience follows a pattern
common to many people healing from past hurts:
• “When we feel strongly, we record certain situations in the light of the
emotions of the moment. This leads us to exaggerations. Pg. 119
• We make meaningful connections by sensing what would calm and
40

comfort the other person. It is important to practice this way of perceiving
daily to make it become a habit. Pg. 120
• Empathetic relating creates calming brain chemicals that make it easier
to recognize and change cognitive distortions to realistic assessments of
yourself and others. Pg. 122
• When our empathy is expanded and expressed, we are often able to
effectively teach aspects of life we ourselves have struggled with and
resolved (as Laura did). Pg. 123
• Loss, when unattended to, becomes a cynical force within us. Pg. 124
• Unresolved hurts set the stage for cognitive distortions that we believe
are real. Pg. 124
• When we have the courage to open up and find people we trust to
genuinely help us by giving us honest feedback, we unleash the
impediments to our biased theories. Pg. 124
• When you rediscover the truth, you will likely be more focused on what
is right about you and stop the constant search to find out what is wrong
with you.” Pg. 124
The chapter ends with journal questions and an overcoming cognitive distortions
exercise related to Emotional Learning and healing from past hurts.
Chapter 11: Empathy, Self-care, and Well-being
We’ve long heard that high-stress, driven lifestyles leads to a plethora of physical
ailments. But in this chapter, the author introduces the idea that our emotional
well being, including perceptions of ourselves and the world around us, also
plays a role in our physical health.
The author lists the ‘feel-good’ chemicals that our brains release when we en-
gage in certain activities, such as:
• Eating ice cream releases dopamine
• A hug releases oxytocin
• Physical exercise releases endorphins and serotonin
Pg. 129
When we live lives that are stressed and depleted, we tend to forego self-care
like regular exercise and maintaining meaningful relationships, opting, instead, to
‘get by’ or ‘just get through the day.’ Pgs. 128-129
In addition to foregoing self-care, as our high stress levels cause our empathetic
range to narrow, as mentioned in Chapter 2, we are less likely to do some things
that release the happiness chemicals (such as interacting with family and friends
in a loving manner, doing a good deed, or offering a kind word to a stranger).
41

Instead, we turn to external agents to give us this ‘kick’ like nicotine, sugar, choc-
olate, or cocaine. Pg 129
So how can connections with people help us in self-care? A study by develop-
mental psychologist Emmy Werner of the University of California, Davis gives
some insights. Resilient children, researchers found, had a strong bond with a
caretaker (not a parent) and involvement in a community group or church.
“Positive relationships and involvement in meaningful group experiences create
resilience and lessen stress. Such experiences stimulate the release of oxytocin,
the compassion hormone. This hormone produces feelings of security and calm
and inhibits stress and anxiety; thus it protects us against the release of cortisol,”
which has a chain reaction of detrimental physical effects. Pg 130
Dr. Paul Zak, a neuroscientist, has demonstrated that “when oxytocin levels
are high, people’s generosity to strangers increases up to 80 percent. We can
produce this effect with practice by expanding our abilities to communicate with
empathy.” Pg. 130
It’s up to us to decide: reach for the cake or the vodka, or kiss our partner and
hug our kids. The positive effects are the same, and one is healthier. Pg. 131
The author shares the story of his patient, Tricia, who is on the way to developing
habitual self-care. The catalyst: changing how she thought and perceived, over-
coming cognitive distortions by practicing empathetic connections with trusted
people.
The author then shares research on the value of regular exercise and lists a host
of foods that are believed to help reduce stress. The chapter ends with journal
questions and a cognitive distortions exercise.
Chapter 12: Give andYou Shall Receive: How Giving and Goodness
Restore Calm
Studies from the Institute of Gerontology at the University of Michigan have con-
firmed that giving is more powerful than receiving in terms of reducing mortality.
It seems somewhat counter-intuitive that selflessly pouring out your life and
emotional energy to benefit someone else would end up helping you in the long
run. However:
• “Isolation is a predictor of early-onset illness.
• People who give are healthier and happier and live longer.
• One of the simplest ways to give is through empathy, and in the process
we make meaningful connections that produce the health-giving
neurochemicals we need to manage our stress and improve our lives.”
Pgs. 141-142
42

This is confirmed by Allan Luks, director of Big Brothers and Big Sisters of New
York City, who found that people who help others on a regular basis are ten
times more likely to be healthy than people who do not. Pg. 142
The author believes, however, that many of us have suppressed our goodness as
a result of stress. He goes on to address some of the things that can inhibit the
expression of goodness, such as:
• A lack of forgiveness
• Fear, prejudice, and misunderstanding/being misunderstood
• Grief
Pgs. 146-148
The author shares the story of his patient Randy, who lived with an abusive
stepfather. Unlike his siblings, Randy continued in relationship with this man into
adulthood. And despite having become somewhat hardened, tough, and impa-
tient, Randy actually ended up helping his stepfather through a severe illness.
Despite how he had been treated, Randy learned an invaluable lesson, stating:
“In a strange way, he [the stepfather] has given me something. I’ve learned I’m
not such a hard-ass after all.” Pg. 151
This is an example of what Ciaramicoli calls a Goodness Breakthrough. This
comes about “by the way we live, not by holding on to fixed ideas that shore up
our fragile sense of self. Be honest with yourself. Acknowledge the situations
and the people who threaten you. Strive to resolve these issues rather than pun-
ishing innocent people for being their authentic selves.” Pg. 148
Goodness breakthroughs, the author believes, “can result in a life in which good-
ness is expressed daily.” Pg. 152
The chapter ends with journal questions and a cognitive distortions exercise relat-
ed to practicing giving and goodness to restore calm.
Chapter 13: I Am Who I Am: How Authenticity Soothes the Soul
A tension that most of us live with in varying degrees is a disconnect between
our ‘real’ self in which we live authentically and true to our core values and be-
liefs and our ‘false’ self, which is a life of pretense. Pg. 157
Often, the desire to please others, fit in, or adhere to other peoples’ expectations
pushes us toward this inauthentic life. As a result, inside, we feel fraudulent. It
reinforces the cognitive distortion that people will love and respect you only if
you perform well and please them. Pg. 160
43

What is ironic is that the opposite is true. People are actually attracted to authen-
ticity. “It relaxes us because we realize we don’t have to be on guard–we can be
human, have flaws, and make mistakes and still be accepted and liked.” Pg. 160
People who constantly prop themselves up by trying to prove their worth and
worthiness create stress within and around themselves. Pg. 161
He challenges readers to live true to self. “Authenticity is energizing. Pretending
to be somebody we’re not is exhausting.” Pg. 163
As the author shares throughout the book, the ability to know and be known
through the process of empathetic cognitive behavioral therapy is key to low-
stress living. Pg. 166
“Genuine, authentic relating enlivens the spirit. This gives us the energy and re-
silience to go into the world, absorb emotional blows, and come home with our
self-respect and integrity intact. Empathetic CBT is the vehicle to maintain this
perspective.” Pg 166
The chapter ends with journal questions and an exercise to help the reader work
toward living an authentic life.
44

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