Introduction: This book caught my attention in the British Council Library immediately for the impressive color of the front cover. And once I completed the book, I found out that it is not just the cover that is colorful. Tom Peter's comes up with a short & succinct book on the qualities that is essential for the 'modern' day leader.Analysis: Whenever someone proposes something that asks people to throw away all their old paradigms & to create new paradigms, the presentation of that idea becomes a challenge in itself. Tom proposes ideas for the 'Chaotic' new world that are sometimes brilliant & sometimes outrageously arrogant. Some of his ideas that immediately caught my attention:
- Hire people who have been doing weird & yet wonderful stuff. Tom even goes to the extent of asking people to not hire 4.0 GPA's for he feels that they would not have had much time to do anything else other than studying!!!! (This irritated me quite a bit............... Some of my friends can easily tell why)
- Women will rule the world. According to Tom, the chaotic new world requires people who can do many things at the same time and women are inherently capable of doing this. (Sorry guys, I am not 'inventing' this on my own)
- Value-added service is no more an additional service but a necessity. It is something that every company should do for its own survival.
Book Design: One of the highlights of this book is the beautiful design of the book. The color combinations and the appropriately placed photographs make this book such an interesting read. The small anecdotes at the sides & bottom of the pages along with interesting statistics is another highlight of this book.
Bottom Line: This is an absolute 'Must-read' for all people aspiring to lead a team at some point of time in their career. Buy a book & keep it in your desk as a quick reference.
5 comments:
Nice Solid Clean Review ! Just a thought on how deep you go on during the review! For example with "To Kill a Mocking Bird", I am positive it gave you lot of points to put forward but the review was very concise and short. I have been lately thinking about that too on going in depth on what the reviewer exactly felt which would open up lot of gates to the people who wants to read it in a better way. Not misleading but a nice in depth experience would not hurt for sure. Sorry if it is totally opposed to what you pose to write :-).
Shouldn't hire a 4.0! Thats wierd, if I remember correctly u were a 4.0 right.
there was a nice lecture on leadership by swami nithyanada that I saw recently, check it out when u have a few mins
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdRp3qEz1XI
Ashok,
Thanx a lot for the feedback. Only yesterday I was thinking of getting a feedback from someone on how my articles are and here it is. Like a typical libran, I am not able to decide on which is the best way to review a movie/book.
The short, concise review: I feel a short review would just pique the interest of the reader and it would be upto him to read/watch the same to experience it himself. Writing a detailed review for a book becomes too time consuming for I am left clueless on what should be included and what should be left out of the review.
The long, detailed review: I also felt that I did not do justice to a book like "Essentials: Leadership" when I wrote the review. It is a marvelous book which is well-written and as I wrote, it should be present in the table of every 'aspiring/present' leader. A more detailed review would have been appropriate here.
And just yday, I started reading the autobiography of Steve Waugh "Out of my comfort zone". It is a 720 pages book and I had the thought of splitting up the review of the book into various parts/blogs so that it covers the entire gamut of the book. Now that U have also proposed the same, I would surely try it out.
Kanna,
Yes. U r memory power is great!!!!
What he says should not be taken literally. The point he wants to make is that the people we hire should be more of an "All round" guy than just a "Padipps".......
Thats Great !!! Definitely splitting the parts will give you more room to dig on lot of things. In the meanwhile, if you want to get some idea on nice review, go through Roger Ebert's movie reviews in the http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage
I have a book written by him. Even though he gives the whole story for a movie, I would suggest to read it once you watch the movie. He brings out the points which you cannot express properyly. Jonathan Rosenbaum is one another reviewer who also goes very extensively in to the movie. Also let me know how my reviews are coming up. In the past 2 weeks I was able to write reviews for all the movies I am seeing. Let me know about it and feedbacks makes me improve.
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