If you live in a big city, subways are a piece of the urban infrastructure you probably take for granted—until a strike or a mechanical problem reminds you that without these subterranean trains, getting anywhere can be next-to-impossible. In “The Race Underground: Boston, New York, and the Incredible Rivalry that Build America’s First Subway,” author Doug Most chronicles the political, technical, and societal challenges that engineers, and the little-known sandhogs who dug these massive tunnels in Boston and New York, had to overcome to bring the first trains online more than a century ago. Most, a deputy managing editor at The Boston Globe, told HBR.org what lessons managers can learn from this history. Excerpts: