Whale Done!: The Power of Positive Relationships
Kenneth H. Blanchard, Jim Ballard, Chuck Thompkins
Simon & Schuster
Is it just us, but are there that many lessons to be learned from
sea creatures? (See another review on this page extolling the
genius of penguins.) OK, to be fair, this is the story - a parable,
really - of a man who is so unhappy with his job and his home life
that he looks for and finds new ways of thinking about his life by
adopting the methods of whale trainers at Sea World. "What do your
people at work and your spouse and kids at home have in common with
a five-ton killer whale?" asks publicity material for this book.
"Probably a whole lot more than you think." The hero of the tale
(or is it, tail) ultimately finds that the secret of training the
killer whales is anchored in changing negative behaviors and moving
them toward desired outcomes. This is the same sort of stuff you
can find in many other books on this topic, but it might be easier
to swallow when it is served up as a pail of fish.
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others
Die
Chip Heath, Dan Heath, Charles Kahlenberg (Read by)
Compact Disc
Random House Audio Publishing Group
Frankly, trying to determine why some ideas get traction and others
are DOA seems like something best discussed while using a Ouija
Board. This book addresses the question of what is a worthy idea
and how we can improve the chances of those ideas. "Throughout the
book, sidebars show how bland messages can be made intriguing,"
writes Publishers Weekly. "Fun to read and solidly researched, this
book deserves a wide readership." This CD version makes it even
easier to interact with the book, although some of the anecdotes
work better when they are read instead of being read to you. The
essence of the book, and its explanations of the "stickiness" of
ideas, is not watered down in any way.
The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller
and the World Economy Bigger
Marc Levinson
Princeton University Press
If you have sat at a rail crossing at any time in the past decade
you have witnessed rail car after rail car hauling shipping
containers. You probably gave them no thought. The fact that these
ubiquitous shipping containers make virtually no impression on us
should give you an idea how big an element they are in our lives.
This book, published on the 50th anniversary of the development of
the shipping container, traces the big boxes back to a visionary
entrepreneur, Malcom McLean. McLean's idea not only helped lower
transportation costs: It helped create a whole new kind of port to
handle the ships. "Levinson presents a clear, comprehensive history
of the now-ubiquitous shipping container while highlighting its
crucial economic role in global interconnectivity," said a review
in the Library Journal.
Our Iceberg Is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any
Conditions
John Kotter, Holger Rathgeber, Peter Mueller (Illustrator)
St. Martin's Press
Is this a children's book? Well, it does have cute penguins,
Hollywood's current favorite critters. But a trip through the
offices of a pretty serious organization found this book on the
desks, credenzas, and bookshelves of a number of managers. What
exactly is going on here? Well, it does preach the importance of
dealing with change. Fred, the lead penguin, if you will, realizes
that the home of the Antarctic birds is melting and he goes about
enlisting help. This tale of coaxing the various birds (cleverly
written to approximate the people in your organization) to address
the problem and develop solutions is not as out-of the box (or
off-the-iceberg) as it sounds. And, in fact, the messages are
mostly timeless and have been addressed many times previously. But
Kotter, a long-time Harvard professor, gets high marks for this
clever tale. Some reviewers have compared this book to Jonathan
Livingston Seagull, the drippy 1972 self-help tale. God forbid.