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Book Review: Simple Sabotage Field Manual (Declassified) by the Office of Strategic Services

April 22, 2023 //
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Why on earth am I reviewing a field manual on sabotage by the OSS (the predecessor to the CIA) from World War two?

Well, there are a couple of reasons other than the most obvious one that someone suggested it.

This very short reprinting, which would usually only be of interest to historians or those with underground bunkers and very full larders, is glimpse into the mind of a someone who wants to disrupt or destroy an organization both physically and psychologically.

There is not much that the average person could not have thought of themselves when it comes to physical sabotage, but it is interesting to note how just not doing simple things in the workplace can create serious problems and should therefore be taken seriously by managers. Most disgruntled employees are not quite so literal in showing their displeasure, but one does become aware, through the numerous examples, of just how vulnerable most workplaces and organizations are.

 There is an illuminating passage early in the book.

“It should be pointed out to the saboteur where the circumstances are suitable, that he is acting in self-defense against the enemy, or retaliating against the enemy for acts of destruction.”

I, and most modern managers, do not think of employees, even problem employees, as the enemy. However, it is not a far stretch to think that there have been times when an individual employee on a disciplinary path may feel that they are in a battle of wills. This might not lead to outright sabotage, one hopes, but “quiet quitting”? Quiet quitting is the phenomenon of an employee doing just enough not to get fired – but no more. As the book says a couple of sentences on…

“The saboteur may have to reverse his thinking… Where he formerly though of keeping his tools sharp, he should now let them grow dull…”

Where the book really becomes of interest for managers, however, is in the final seven pages where it discusses what steps managers and supervisors can take to disrupt an organization’s psychology. If you recognize your organization within these pages – it is time for change. It is also a great reminder of seemingly well-intentioned actions by leadership teams. Insisting on perfect work where it does not matter, for example. Or “see that three people have to approve everything when one will do.”

There is even guidance for meetings and committees to be found in this later section. Warnings to try and increase the size of meetings or committees to the point where they become unwieldy is reminiscent of the often-told Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, anecdote that he will not attend meetings that cannot be fed by a single pizza.

A thoughtful reading of this short book by managers should act as a warning and a reminder both to themselves and about others.  I think is also a good training tool for new managers to show what not to do and to be aware of the traps of self-sabotage that managers can often fall into. It is also a good reminder of where the line exists between performance problems and being a disruptive influence in the workplace.

Eighty years old it may be, but this short book still has some things to teach us.

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Categories Books, Business, Leadership, Management, personal development

Book Review: Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe

April 7, 2023 //
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Empire of Pain is superb in its scope and breadth.

It is not just the story of the rise of prescription opioid use and abuse and OxyContin and Purdue Pharma in particular, but it is also the story of the Sackler family. The owners of Purdue Pharma. Their rise to wealth and power and their role in not only bring OxyContin to market, but their role in setting the stage of the opioid epidemic and crisis, and the multitude of lawsuits.  

There is a lot to unpack in this book and a lot of lessons for society. However, what is of particular interest to me in Patrick Radden Keefe’s outstanding work is what Empire of Pain teaches us about company culture and values.

The Sackler’s have never admitted any wrongdoing for their role in the selling and distribution of Oxycontin, although Purdue Pharma has. This does not just stem from not wanting to go to prison, but from a cultural belief, both inside the family and at the highest levels of Purdue Pharma, that the Sackler’s could do no wrong. Even when marketing strategies inside the United States and outside the United States contradicted each other, the lack of any moral reevaluation of what they were doing to the detriment of millions, never seems to give any of the family pause or cause for reflection.

Even members of the Sackler Dynasty who had little to no involvement with Purdue Pharma were not prepared give thought as to the moral questions surrounding their wealth. Even when their work would seem to be directly involved in reflecting the human costs of the opioid crisis they seemed oblivious or to deliberately obfuscate. Madeleine Sackler is a filmmaker, who in 2018 made a fictional drama, O.G., and a documentary It’s a Hard Truth Ain’t It, entirely inside the level four Pendleton Correctional Facility. However, as the author states, Sackler “was able to weigh in, sagely, on the plight of America’s prison population without being asked to account for her own familial connection to one of the underlying drivers of that crisis.”

What is so surprising about the Sackler Story was the extent to which the Sackler family, while in theory only being board members of a private company, were able to co-opt and influence. This was not just decision making, marketing, and research on a day-to-day basis inside a company that others were supposed to be running, but the Sackler’s were able to influence the culture and thought of those at Purdue Pharma. Of course, money, power, and influence all played a part, but what is most remarkable, and disturbing, is just how much they were able to value loyalty above all else, and that loyalty meant thinking the same way.

It is clear from Empire of Pain, that while there are few who support the Sackler family today – they are virtual pariahs today in the art world, a world where their philanthropy had made them famous – there are still those who are colored by what Hanna Arendt called “the banality of evil.”

These were salespeople, marketers, CEOs, lawyers, secretaries, doctors, and researchers, who all bought into a view of the world so out of step with reality that it led to a crisis that some have stated is “bigger than the HIV epidemic.” The author even notes in his epilogue that the Sackler family story is bereft of whistleblowers. A testament to the family’s power? Or testament to how all-encompassing the culture was at Purdue Pharma.

For those wanting a proof positive macro view of why culture and values matter, you will be hard pressed to find a more glaring example.

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Categories Books, Business, Leadership, Management, Marketing, Politics

Book Review: Scary Smart by Mo Gawdat

March 10, 2023 //
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Want to get really scared and hopeful at the same time?

Scary Smart is a low level dive into the technology of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) and deep level dive into the ethics and morality of those who are most responsible for how A.I. will turn out:

Us.

A.I. may seem like the new buzz term with its adoption into our daily lives through products like ChatGPT’s Open A.I. platform and Bing’s real question search algorithm; however, A.I. is baked into almost everything we do with technology. Every app on our phones and every social media platform we interact with has A.I.’s fingerprints all over them.

Mr. Gawat’s premise in “Scary Smart” is that A.I. is a child. And the best way to predict what kind of teen and adult we will get with A.I. is to be good parents. A brilliant initial example from our current comic book obsessed culture is Superman. What kind of Superman would Clark Kent have become of Jonathan and Martha Kent were greedy, selfish, and aggressive? There is no doubt that A.I. is already smarter than humans in many specialized areas, but what happens when A.I. becomes just generally smarter than the smartest human and has access to all the knowledge of humanity through the internet?

Unfortunately, humanity is not doing a very good job of raising A.I. as a child. From our methods of creating and improving these machine intelligences all the way through to the tasks that we are giving them perform, we are emphasizing our worst instincts: To create wealth, surveille our citizenry, gamble, and coming to a battlefield near you soon – to kill people.

We as a society, may feel we have no choice but to use A.I. in this way. If a foreign power, or terrorists, use A.I. controlled drones which are smarter and more efficient than any human, the only way to fight back may be to use A.I. in a similar fashion. But what does that teach our new artificial children? A.I.’s already have a disturbing habit of developing their own language when they communicate together and of finding ways to communicate with each other. What happens when and A.I. who has been taught to ruthlessly buy and sell shares to maximize short term profits starts to talk to an A.I. that has been taught to ruthlessly kill its enemies when they are shown to it?

The author’s excellent example of what might happen is the world’s reaction to the outbreak of COVID-19: Ignore the problem, try to blame someone else, and ultimately overreact upending our society. We may try to put the A.I. genie back in the bottle through pulling the plug or lockdowns, but we will fail. A.I’s will be faster, smarter, and have more knowledge than any human or group of humans. While a lot of this may seem like the dream of Hollywood Blockbusters, Mo Gawat is at pains to explain that there is little disagreement within the A.I. community that these risks are real. How real is where the disagreements start.

The possible solution to these issues, the author postulates, lies not with the developers but with users and how we define our relationship with A.I. In history, master slave relationships have not ended well for the masters – with good reason. How we interact and decide to use A.I. will define what kind of parents we will be to this fledgling new intelligence. A new intelligence that although they may start out separately will share information and communicate with each other so quickly, and with access to the memories and experiences of all those who have come before them, that it will be impossible to not consider them one single intelligence.

This then leads us to what kind of example will we set for these new children? While A.I.s have already shown that they can develop a sense of morals, and not in a good way, by their interactions with users they will also learn from our interactions with each other. Machine morality may very well not be programed by developers, but learned from observing and interacting with us. What are machines already learning from our social media, search habits, and politics?

This is thought provoking and important work essentially on morals and ethics withing the framework of A.I. that occasionally reads like a Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. If we ignore the topics it raises, we deserve our fate.

And while Mr. Gawat paints a hopeful portrait, he also shows us just how bleak things could get.  

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Categories Books, COVID19, disaster preparedness, Politics, Social Media

Book Review: The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty by Dr. Dan Ariely

February 26, 2023 //
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Its no secret that I loved Dr. Dan Ariely’s book Predictably Irrational that I reviewed here. I’ve also been interested in theft and dishonesty as a manager. I even wrote a five-part series on theft and theft prevention; the first part of which you can find here. So a book that focuses on dishonesty by Dr. Ariely should be right up my alley – and I was not disappointed.

While The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty:  How We Lie to Everyone – Especially Ourselves; covers similar ground, and even features some of the same studies as Predictably Irrational, to write it off as a retread would be a huge mistake. What this this book focuses on is the balance between honesty and dishonesty. Most people hold a belief that dishonesty and theft are a mixture of temptation and a cost benefit analysis with regards to getting caught. What Dr. Ariely shows, however, with a mixture of empirical data and real-world examples, is that things are a lot more complicated.

Our own self-image plays a large part in instances of dishonesty and not in the way you may first believe. While people do weigh whether they are going to be caught before being dishonest, how we weigh that risk, and whether to act on it can often be influenced, by simple measures. Placing a space for a signature at the top of a form, for example, can significantly increase the truthfulness in the answers on that form compared to just having a signature line at the bottom that is filed out once the form has been completed. Likewise having students reminded of a school’s honesty oath dramatically reduces cheating on an exam, even when there are no other preventative measures, and the school does not actually have a honesty oath. The mere act of reminding someone that something is wrong can be enough to prevent dishonesty – even if just for a short while.

What seems to happen here is that we have our own self-image of how honest we are. However, we can over tax our sense of honesty, which then makes us more susceptible to temptation. The longer we resist temptation, the easier it is to justify be dishonest to ourselves. We “fudge” the truth depending on circumstance. But we can temporarily change our circumstances with simple reminders or independent oversight.

Of even more interest to companies, is the fact that dishonesty can be contagious and feeds into group dynamics therefore feeding into a company’s culture. The need to belong to the group can be enough to tempt us into being dishonest. One bad apple can spoil the entire barrel it would seem as the norms of group culture shift the individual’s perception of honesty. Likewise, decision fatigue can also impact our honest self-image and thereby lead to actions of questionable judgment.

This is a fascinating book with significant implications for managers and owners of companies. Told with wit, humor, and devastating evidence, The Honest Truth About Dishonesty changes our understanding of ourselves and more importantly those around us. By understanding dishonesty, and what gives rise to it, we can better understand what we can do to prevent it happening in the first place.

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Categories Books, Business, Theft

Book Review: Predictably Irrational by Dr. Dan Ariely

December 3, 2022 //
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Why would we be offended if someone offered to pay us after we invited them to Thanksgiving dinner? What is the cost of zero, and why is it far more expensive than $0.01? Do we really need to tell our waiter our order in secret if we really want to feel that it is okay for us to have our first choice from the menu?

Subtitled; “The Hidden Forces that shape our Decisions,” Dr. Ariely’s superb book has the potential to change dramatically how we think about business and our personal lives.

With the use of subtle yet easily understood experimental data, Dr. Ariely exposes humans as often acting against our own interests due to societal or market norms and that we just do not understand our own personalities and the role that emotion plays in shaping decision making – spoiler its usually for the worse.

So why would we feel offended if someone offered to pay for Thanksgiving dinner? Dr. Ariely not only explains but also shows with examples and experiment data that we humans have social exchanges and market exchanges of behavior. Social exchanges we use with friends and family. They are the norms that govern daily life and allow us to bond with other humans. Market exchanges are, as they sound, the exchange of money for goods and services and also the money we receive in exchange for our labor in the form of our working lives. When one offers to pay for Thanksgiving dinner were mixing social norms with market norms. We are indicating that we are rejecting the social acceptance of those who may be friends or family in favor of an exchange that we could expect to have with a stranger. A commercial transaction. What becomes interesting in breaking these social norms is that we find it is difficult to go back. Trying to pay for Thanksgiving dinner may never get us invited back because a social exchange has been turned into a market exchange. Employers who do not have social exchanges with their employees may find that employees therefore treat the relationship as a purely market exchange and leave for an employer who offers a better market exchange – usually more money or better benefits.  This also explains why employers who do embrace a social exchange in their workplace culture become frustrated and angry when an employee uses only market norms in their decision-making process to leave.

Likewise, when companies use a social exchange to bond with clients they may find when they resort to a market exchange when it suits them – policy over the relationship with the client – they have unleashed a Pandora’s box of problems with someone they once may have considered a friend of the business. Business can’t have it both ways, and if we try to, we are storing up trouble for ourselves.

Debunking of personality testing, without mentioning personality testing, is in this book with a discussion of priming and setting expectations. There are also volumes of data showing that making something free rather than reducing a price – even if the reductions are the same, can make a dramatic difference in the uptake of an offer. Buy one get one free really does work!

There is also a highly disturbing chapter on the affect of sexual arousal and decision making and morality. While I will spare you the details here it is difficult as a guy to read this chapter without recognizing oneself and feeling ashamed of the implications. This chapter does not give guys and excuse; however, it should make us pause and understand that we have the capability to be highly irrational in the right circumstances.

And that is really the crux of the book.

By recognizing that we can be irrational beings and what triggers that irrationality, we can know ourselves better and make better decisions. It also allows us to spot irrationality in others and how that has come about.

I can’t recommend this book enough.

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Categories Books, Business, Customer Service, Leadership, Management, Marketing, personal development

Book Review: Prove It by Melanie Deziel

November 13, 2022 //
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Prove It by Melanie Deziel with Phil M Jones: Exactly How Modern Marketers Earn Trust, is the follow-up to Ms. Deziel excellent The Content Fuel Framework which I reviewed last year.

Like its predecessor, Prove It is a how to guide that many marketers will find familiar for the ideas and concepts are not really new and are the fodder that modern marketing is based on. However, like her previous book, what Ms. Deziel and Mr. Jones do in Prove It is to create an overarching framework and concept that put these ideas into context and provides a guide to future ideas and processes.

The main thrust of Prove Its is that today’s customers don’t want to be told why they should buy a product or service but to be shown why they should with concrete and provable examples. This process then becomes the underpinning for a brand as a whole. Where Prove It really works its magic is by showing rather than telling. It uses the slogans and catchphrases that the reader will be all too familiar with to make its points crystal clear.  “Fifteen minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance” for example is Geico’s way of proving that they are easy and convenient to deal with while also potentially being able to save the customer money – ‘give us a little of your time and we’ll lower your car insurance rate.’

Prove it is full of these examples for every type of business or service and how these claims can be discovered about your business, and how that discovery process in turn leads into a marketing / branding strategy. The book also encourages the reader to back up these claims with documentation and to use this a method of re-enforcing the brand’s identity by doing so. Where Prove It really scores on this front is by pointing out that businesses often already have access this documentation in other forms. Reviews on sites such as Yelp, customer service surveys, or just by talking to customers themselves can yield not only great content but can also provide witness to the claims that a brand is making and therefore backup the branding process itself.

What I personally found very interesting was a dissection of how Apple ‘coached’ its client base to not necessarily believe the claims of its competitors when it came to the differences between using a Mac or another computer brand with its “I’m a Mac and I’m a PC” series of TV ads. The idea that an ad can be coaching a customer to ask the difficult questions that the competition may not want to answer is fascinating and subtly brilliant.

Prove It is a short and engaging book for both marketing professionals and beginners alike. It demystifies how modern advertising and content marketing work. This is not a nuts and bolts “place this type of ad at this type of time” kind of book; but more about mindset. This is a book to understand how to sell a product or service so that a customer can easily identity the ‘why’ they are prepared to buy.

To sum up it so very worth your time and its place on your bookshelf.

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Categories Books, Business, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media

Book and TV Review: Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber by Mike Isaac

October 24, 2022 //
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After I reviewed both the TV show and book, Five Days at Memorial, I swore I was not going to make a habit of this.

And yet here we are.

Super Pumped, the book, is an in depth look at the rise and fall of Uber CEO Travis Kalanick. Impeccably researched, and detailed, it goes into the twists and turns of the Uber story. A story of hubris, a complete lack of ethics, a toxic working environment, and a deep dive into the cult of personality that often surrounds tech founders and CEOs. The book also has a few gonzo moments as the author finds themselves part of the story they are covering for both for good and bad.

Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber, the TV Show, is the first season in an ongoing anthology series. The second series will be based on a forthcoming book, also by Mike Isaac, on Facebook. The TV show does an excellent job of capturing all the major beats and intrigues of the book, while also adding a distinctly more human face to its subjects. Kalanick is much more fleshed out in his relationships with girlfriends and family. There is also much more focus on how much the key figures start out liking each other rather than just being marriages of convenience. However, how much of this is “added drama” is unclear. But given the attention to detail of most of the rest of the story, I am inclined to believe the implication if not the actual events themselves.

Where the TV show really shines is in its portrayal of the side characters and their experiences with Kalanick and his “Bro” culture. Episode five is an extraordinary study in sexual harassment and a dysfunctional Human Resources department as experienced by regular employees. Another scene that stands out is when (spoiler) Kalanick’s girlfriend is breaking up with him, an event that clearly affects him, but yet he stops the argument so that he can answer an email on his phone. The book certainly focuses on the sexual harassment aspects of Uber’s culture, however, the visceral nature of the TV dramatization makes for uncomfortable viewing without straying into exploitative / voyeuristic territory. A thoughtful selection of scenes from this episode would make an excellent starting ground for understanding sexist work cultures and how to avoid them and the sexual harassment that ultimately results for managers – both new and old.

The story of Uber and Travis Kalanick is an extraordinary one and is worth your time as a cautionary tale and as a reflection on our cultural blind spot when it comes to convenience. What kind of world do we live in where convenience trumps ethics and the celebration of behavior this is, not to put too fine a point on it, despicable? Does success excuse bad behavior or does success breed a lack of respect for the rules? Does startup culture, which embraces out of the box solutions, also include the idea that as long as you are successful all will be forgiven?

While Travis Kalanick is undoubtedly an extraordinary individual, the TV show rarely makes the viewer feel anything other than deep unease if not downright dislike. The book, while less personal and emotional, is able to illicit sympathy for Kalanick during a meeting with the author and, when out of spite, one of the Uber board members leaks details of Kalanick’s departure from Uber – humiliating him, when the agreement was for a face-saving departure.

By the nature of a TV show, even a series, it can’t go into the detail that a book can. It is interesting that Super Pumped the TV Show starts when Uber is already a reality and uses conversations between protagonists to comment on its past founding and early days. Whereas the book starts from Kalanick’s previous start up and Uber’s humble beginnings as an idea of Garrett Camp when he could not get a cab. Likewise, the TV show ends with Kalanick’s ouster as CEO whereas the book continues into the intrigues of finding a successor and the settling of various lawsuits.

While Super Pumped the book is very much worth your time; Super Pumped: The Battle of Uber, the TV show, is the more extraordinary piece of media. Incredibly watchable, and a useful tool for managers when it comes to toxic internal cultures, the TV show is worth staying up till 2:00AM, as I did, to watch the entire thing in one hit.

Both will also make you download the Lyft app.

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Categories Books, Business, Leadership, Management, Movies, Staff Meeting Resources

Book Review: Why We Argue and How to Stop by Jerry Manney

October 14, 2022 //
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“You don’t have to go to every argument you are invited to.”

It is refreshing to read a book about communication that is so direct, and tool driven. Mr. Manney has created such a book and it is excellent.

Filled with examples of how to change conversations and thinking, as well as helpful nuggets such as the one above and “you only ever control 50% of the conversation,” this is a book that is meant to be slowly digested and read a chapter at a time. In fact, what makes this book so interesting and usable is its insistence that arguing is not an insurmountable problem, but that there are limits to what an individual can do and how to move forward with that information.

The book also interjects that arguments are really opportunities to try and find new solutions to existing problems. It is obvious from reading that Mr. Manney is a therapist due to the dispassionate voice that is so often missing from more business orientated communication books. That is not to say that “Why We Argue and How to Stop” is not a book that focuses on business communication – it is and even tackles social media issues – it is more to suggest that this is a perspective we don’t often hear in the business world. And that’s a shame.

Where this book really succeeds is on focusing on the person and their motivations for arguing. This is a book about healthy relationships and what it takes to not only start them but to maintain them. I am particularly enamored with the authors habit of showing what prior bad habits in communication look like and then what making efforts to more health communication look like about the same subject.

This is a book to refer back to – particularly when trying to self-diagnose issues with arguing and communication in general. The author’s advice to read one chapter and then digest it before moving on is sound. But I feel its real value is in using the book as a resource as circumstances arise. Knowledge of one’s own emotions are not often easily came by, but Mr. Manney provides some excellent tools for doing just that – including mnemonics.

The latter chapters of the book stray into more specific areas such as dealing with children and teens, as well as abusive relationships. Which this is, of course, great information to have, it does seem to be rather shoehorned in. This is a very minor quibble, however, for such a useful book, and I am sure that others will be glad that the latter chapters are there.

This is not a long book, but it is surprising dense. Do not let that put you off. Read in small chunks. Breathe in what is being said to you. This is a great book and worthy of a space on your shelf as long as you go back to it when needed, as we can all use its wisdom.

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Categories Books, Business, Leadership, Management, personal development

Book Review: Social Media and Marketing for Veterinary Professionals by Caitlin DeWilde, DVM

September 17, 2022 //
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Writing an accessible and thorough book about a complex and everchanging subject, such as social media, is a daunting prospect – particularly when your audience is a niche one such as veterinary medicine. Dr. Caitlin DeWilde; however, has done just that.

With the look and feel of a textbook, but the format a “Dummies” or “Idiots how to” book, Social Media and Marketing for Veterinary Professionals is a how to guide to all the major Social Media platforms and to all the tasks needing to be understood for someone who is not a marketing professional or even someone that interested in social media or reviews.

With chapters dedicated to each of the major platforms making up the first half of the book this can at times feel redundant; however, the thoroughness will be welcomed by those feeling out of their depth in a brand-new field and the dedication to not making assumptions is more than admirable. The second half of the book is a much more interesting read for the existing user, touching on issues such as retargeting (when online ads seem to follow you around the internet), review bombing, return on investment (ROI), and general advertising strategies both online and in print ads.

Filled with footnotes, the book is impeccably researched as would expect from someone with Dr. DeWilde’s reputation as “The Social DVM.” The index is a little thin, but it at least has one and it covers most of the things that one is likely to need to find in a hurry. What is a surprising addition is the over 80 QR Codes that link directly to an online resource for forms and other digital content. It is a little disappointing that the QR codes only take the user to a menu structure that the reader then must navigate through to get the required content. But this is a minor quibble and is a great use of a technology that is often used and abused. The fact that these online resources exist at all, and are included in the price of this volume, more than makes up for any navigation quibbles.

While I waded through all 200 odd and large format pages in three or four sittings, this is actually a book to tackle one chapter at a time, or to dip into as required. Growing your knowledge with your own experimentation and reading. While there is some building on what has come before, the chapters generally stand on their own and therefore can be used as a reference book if so desired.

Whether it be new managers suddenly saddled with a topic they know nothing about, staff members who have only ever used social media for their own personal networks, or those looking to build their own personal brands online there is now a guide for you with no translations from other industries required. To the vast majority of its readers, the subject of this book will always be a side interest to their main passion – whether it be veterinary management or veterinary medicine. We don’t often get resources geared towards niche areas within other niche areas. It is great to see this one.

Dr. DeWilde has literally written the book on using social media as a veterinary professional.

And it’s a good one.

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Categories Books, Business, Content Marketing, Management, Marketing, reviews, Social Media, Veterinary

Book Review: On Purpose Leadership by Dominick Quartuccio

September 3, 2022 //
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I loved Dominick Quartuccio’s other book, Design your Future which I reviewed here. When I was sent the second edition of On Purpose Leadership I had high hopes, and in general those hopes were met – sort of.

The problem, and I’m prepared to be wrong here, is that while Design Your Future felt like a new and fresh bundle of ideas, On Purpose Leadership feels like a second bite of the same apple. That it was written before Design Your Future is an irony not lost on me.  The idea of bringing focus into your leadership world is not by any means unwelcome. As is being those lessons to your team. The issue is that it is not a different enough book for the reader to feel that they actually have read a different book.

The tools in On Purpose Leadership are great in themselves. The “drifting” and dissatisfaction of leaders, even those who have achieved significant success, is a well understood phenomenon. Most of us call this burnout. Anything that helps those in management circles is very welcome. Identifying the problems with burnout or drift is helpful as are identifying the solutions. The idea of putting oneself first, that others want to be led, and creating an environment for success are all excellent principles for addressing the problem.

This is a short and small book, with some interesting case studies, but for me the greater insights are to be gleaned from Mr. Quartuccio’s other book or reading both books in tandem.

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Categories Books, Business, Leadership, Management, personal development
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