Selected Product:
| Polar Bear Pirates and Their Quest to Reach Fat City: A Grown Up's Book for Kids at Work
Paperback
Edition: New edition
Author: Adrian Webster
Publisher: Bantam Books
Release Date: September 2003
ISBN-10: 0553815954
ISBN-13: 9780553815955
List Price: £7.99
Average Customer Rating:
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How bad
| Customer Rating: | | Probably the most appalingly bad management book I have ever read I fail to believe that this man has ever managed to tie his own shoelaces let alone a business. |
Business Insight? Don't Make Me Laugh!
| Customer Rating: | At first sight, this comes across as original and engagingly written. Many of us will initially recognise the archetypal characters lampooned, especially from work. Don't be fooled, though. Keep whatever wits you have about you, and you realise a couple of chapters in that the whole thing is getting a little wearing. You begin to ache for a bit of actual advice amidst all the increasingly forced joviality.
What starts out as caricature soon becomes stereotyping - not the best habit for the workplace. No-one is always true to type; but the author is so far into his own rather repetitive creativity, and so far from any coherent theme, that he implies just that. Rather limiting for a "champion of change"!
The acronyms become especially tedious. It seems any clever-clever phrase is going to be initialised, so that the effort of remembering what it's actually for starts to sap any enjoyment or mnemonic effectiveness. The level of contrivance we're looking at is ultimately equivalent to David Brent on a bad day. You start to wish he'd just STFUAGOWI... (hoho, heehee).
This is fodder for the enthusiasms of personality-challenged business geeks on whom opposable thumbs are largely wasted, other than for twiddling or leafing through this sort of puerile gibberish. Nothing is developed; the list of cute nicknames just stretches on and on, ultimately becoming witless evidence of Webster's own zero disposition to change. I agree that the negative types need resistance, even ridicule, on occasion. But simply despising people, writing them off as one-dimensional, and offering no thoughts as to how we can change them - or our dispositions towards them - is an approach as ironically negative and rigid as the attitude it seeks to challenge. Good old "positive reinforcement" seems to have slipped our Adrian's mind in the gleeful momentum of making up names to call people.
This is when this kind of stuff, and the way it's spoon-gobbled by desperately out-of-touch, snake-oil swallowing execs looking for their latest fix, really starts to make me despair. To all those at the trough, can I just say: "Why don't you get your snouts out of this swill and try injecting a bit of your own personality and humour into work, for God's sake!" Honestly, if you have to rely on this sort of pap for inspiration, you're very likely ITWJ (In the Wrong Job, haha, teehee).
Ultimately, we realise we should have expected this from the start. From the outset, this guy says if you don't want to change, don't bother reading this (and, by extension, buying it). In fact, he tells us that if we feel OK, we shouldn't be happy about it; and then if we are - again, there's nothing for us in here. What a pity he didn't have the "courage and innovation" to put that on the back cover! I'm also willing to bet that this is one of those cast-iron egos that, if challenged, defaults to the safety-mechanism embedded in this book: "Hey, relax! It's a bit of fun! and if you disagree - you're just another Neg!"
Well, sorry to dampen the "fun," but where this has any use, it isn't original. What's actually new is pretty useless; and, in the end, self-contradictory. It's a one-joke, finger-pointing, anti-redemption gig; and, if you read with care and insight, the joke ends up on the author. If you want a truly witty and endlessly evolving, beautifully thought-out, on-going critique of business behaviours, I recommend the "Dongethigedilb" approach - Don't get this, get Dilbert. |
Bears eat Cheese
| Customer Rating: | | Having worked in retail for over 25 years and on my first part of the journey been given How To Win Friends and Influence People.....think i may have read most Leadership books over the same period.The best ones either approach the subject in a simplistic,common sense way using role models and situations to get the message over (On Becoming A Leader - Warren Bennis)or use analogies or funny stories (Who Moved My Cheese or How To Be A Complete And Utter Failure in 39 and a Half Steps)This book falls into the latter category.Its warm and witty...subtle and suprising...My brother was given the book at one of Adrian's seminars...read it and passed it on to me...a great book...easy to read and unlike most business books ...FUN |
Review of Polar Bear Pirates
| Customer Rating: | | I found this book both informative and hugely entertaining. Adrian Webster's characters can be found in all the places I have ever worked. The character's descriptions and typical phrases are extremely accurate, which make the book all the more funny. Webster also gives advice on how these people should be approached, I found this extremely helpful. An excellent read. |
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