Your Company is Your Castle by Sandeep Chennakeshu – 2x Book Review

This written review is long overdue, especially for a book I’ve read several times over. It is comprised of 2 reviews.

The first review is from when I first read Your Company is Your Castle almost 2-years ago. I was early into my executive MBA program at Quantic School of Business and Technology and remember wishing the book had come out before I began the education, for it was the perfect frame / mental model to organize all I was learning (and was to learn).

I had read it on Kindle (over a weekend), later acquired a physical hardcopy, and then finally the audible version to catch snippets while driving or otherwise. I mention this because while most business books are timely when they are written… few have the ability to be (and are) timeless. Your Company is Your Castle is one of the timeless ones. Though not a sequel to Andy Grove’s Only the Paranoid Survive this book felt as if it answered all questions posed there. (more on that in my original review below)

The second more recent (new) “review” focuses on how the final section, with career advice from Sandeep’s Seven Beliefs, and my favorite anecdote from the book, helped me navigate the past few months… to find and accept a role that wasn’t even on my radar, but appears the base of an epic trajectory.

My original review:

I just finished https://a.co/d/0dObf1h by Sandeep Chennakeshu over the weekend. Having recently completed the Accounting Module at Quantic School of Business and Technology for my eMBA, I wish I had started “Your Company Is Your Castle” beforehand, for it creates as aspirational context of how the information learned will be used in the real world. And not just for Accounting, but everything in the eMBA.

As a fan of “Only the Paranoid Survive” by Andy Grove, I’ve been on a passive quest to find another read comparable in scope and insight. THIS IS THAT BOOK! While Only The Paranoid Survive introduced me to the concept of Inflection Points and changed the way I view the world, Your Company is Your Castle feels like the missing half of that experience, for it equips you with the knowledge you would need to navigate any business crisis or inflection point. And, in the event that you are not in a managerial position I believe it provides you with the necessary context and insight to understand what may be happening around you.

The other thing I loved about this book is that it was all substance and no hype. By comparison to other business books, this book is a firsthand recounting, not only an insider’s perspective, but of the person steering the ship. It’s a rare experience to have great lessons from one company, let alone a series of them — and to have those lessons carried across companies.

Each chapter has summaries that will serve you well during re-reads or to help your recall as you attempt to internalize what you read. Another hugely helpful aspect of this book are bulleted lists that would be easily transferrable into checklists. (If you’ve read The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande, you will have extra appreciation for these).

The tone of the book is something you might consider meditative. Yes, it’s a business book with concrete advice, but the Mentor & Mentee Relationship is evoked more than once as Chennakeshu references moments that were impactful for him. Excellent anecdotes abound, my favorite being the one with Sidney Weinberg of Goldman Sachs during the Great Depression. And last but not least: castles. I found myself googling images of places like the Amber Fort, Caernarfon Castle, Mehrangarh Fort, and Himeji Castle — stunning visuals to match the content and experience of the book.

For those in my eMBA cohort Quantic 2024, I hope this review inspires you to read the book!!!

The New Review (this one is more personal)

Without getting into the boring / turbulent details of my life, I got to a point in my job hunt where I found myself continuously re-adjusting my “income floor” lower and lower, while in search of something salaried, immediate, and stable.

Eventually, the “What I Was Willing To Do / Open To Do” stopped being a constraint and eventually became liberating. The way I got to that point was with the proverbial “soul searching” but also some insight from Your Company is Your Castle. In the concluding chapter, Sandeep talks about seven beliefs, personal to him, which essentially served as guiding lights in his life.

They are:

• Dream with Conviction
• Leave your comfort zone
• Learn from success and failure
• Deal with adversity
• Get battle tested
• Be Curious
• Stay True (partially quoted below)

Believe in yourself because no one will believe in you more. You will need this belief to act decisively when you lead. Listening and learning are essential, but when you are accountable, you must have the courage and conviction to act on your assessment and not on the opinions of others. You–not the myriad of people who gave you their opinions–will be held accountable for the outcome. Remember a lot of advice is free–but these advisors do not bear the responsibility of a bad outcome, only you do.

— from Page 277 of the hard cover version of Your Company is Your Castle

That last point about Staying True resonated greatly and was “centering”, because: most of the advice / encouragement I received during the job search was conventional wisdom. And like most conventional wisdom, it’s mostly, well conventional. It’s safe. Technically it’s all good advice.

And yet, having the “case study” of Sandeep’s life-at-work (and learnings) in a book (along with other inspiring texts… another is The Resilient Founder by Mahendra Ramsinghani) I felt that I had a recipe for doing better than “OKAY”.

The quoted section about Staying True, especially the part about: no one being responsible for an outcome except for you was something that echoed much louder than the promise of “something safe for now”.

To put it differently: while in pursuit of a Golden Fleece, I felt conventional wisdom is not what you would take with you. Some perspectives, inspired by this book, are.

Thus, based on two tech-stack related layoffs, and thinking of 5-10 years into the future (as opposed to the next 1-3), I knew I wanted to:

1. become recession proof (or, to invoke Nassim Taleb: to become Antifragile)
2. find a way to live out Sandeep’s Seven Beliefs (in a way that would lead to a more meaningful life and legacy)

And, perhaps most of all — 3. find the type of opportunity where I might be able to experience something akin to my favorite anecdote from Sandeep’s book: a role where I might be able to create my own Sidney Weinberg moment.

With new frame in mind, recognition about what was an acceptable income, and the type of opportunity I sought… I’m happy to say, I’m now on track for a new role starting September 9th that appears the first step of an epic quest. One I likely never would’ve had if not for some huge changes in perspective.

A Final Thought: Your Company is Your Castle is one of those rare books that cannot be reduced into a summary, for even the anecdotes carry weight and impact of their own. Stated differently, a summary of a great book does not capture “the choices made” that provide insight into an author’s mind.

While the concrete lessons of this book are the meat of it, so much of what makes it an inspiration that I return to is how it’s seasoned. Much how the title of the book evokes castles, so too is the experience of reading it.

Just as seeing a photograph of a castle does not do justice to the experience of being there, dwarfed by its scale, awed by all that went into building it, inspired by the details… this book is that kind of read. And one I expect to return to yet again, as I embark on my own new adventure!