Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Row Row Row Your Boat



Yesterday the boss gave us our annual 'holiday' gift. Typically its a box of Costco chocolates. This year we got the chocolates, but we also got this book. I'm not a big fan of books about business or "business education" in general. There is surprisingly little Methodology in the world of business. It is a field of study driven almost exclusively by Ideology, or worse, Ideology masquerading as Methodology. "Get Everyone if Your Boat Rowing in the Same Direction" is an example of the latter.

To be sure, I read the first couple of chapters. I even contemplated filling out the worksheet in order to discover whether my values match with my company's values. I stopped when asked to fill out a detailed personality matrix for me and my key employees. Not to mention the concepts in the book are so basic that many 3-year-olds would be able to grasp, and yet the author offers his services as a consultant advising future leaders during his "Vision Quest" retreats. Yuck!

Now, I appreciate Mike's thought. And maybe someday I'll read the whole thing (just so I can answer honestly in case he ever asks if I have read it) but I would have preferred more chocolates. And I don't even like chocolate that much...

2 comments:

Cupcake said...

I don't even know what to say about that. What a crappy gift! I hope you give your boss a copy of "How to Get Everyone on Your Team to Shit in the Toilet, not the Wastebasket."

MCMCMCLY said...

Actually, we got him a $120 gift card for Redsotne, which aparently is some kind of fancypants restaurant in Minnetonka that he likes, so yeah he got the better end of the deal.