How Seth Godin Should Read a Business Book
Seth Godin is a gifted packager of ideas for businesspeople. But does he know how to read a business book?
His post on just that topic, How to read a business book , is getting a fair amount of attention on the Web (he links to about half-a-dozen posts).
Predictably, he says that people need to read the whole book and not just the introduction, or the main points in each chapter. Books, in other words, are not PowerPoint presentations.
His three main points:
1. Decide, before you start, that you're going to change three things about what you do all day at work. Then, as you're reading, find the three things and do it. The goal of the reading, then, isn't to persuade you to change, it's to help you choose what to change.2. If you're going to invest a valuable asset (like time), go ahead and make it productive. Use a postit or two, or some index cards or a highlighter. Not to write down stuff so you can forget it later, but to create marching orders. It's simple: if three weeks go by and you haven't taken action on what you've written down, you wasted your time.
3. It's not about you, it's about the next person. The single best use of a business book is to help someone else. Sharing what you read, handing the book to a person who needs it... pushing those around you to get in sync and to take action--that's the main reason it's a book, not a video or a seminar. A book is a souvenir and a container and a motivator and an easily leveraged tool. Hoarding books makes them worth less, not more.
These points are fine for what they say, but they leave an awful lot out. Who will hold you accountable for your three things? Who's going to make you look back and see if you followed up on that Postit note? and if you've passed the book on, how are you going to remember what the Postit note said? You should share, of course -- if you're the only one in your organization that's reading the book, you're the only one trying to change. That means failure. So keep your copy and buy others to hand out to staff.
And then expect to need to do more. Personal growth seminars have flourished since Dale Carnegie's "six weeks to create a new habit" notion, because change is challenging. It just doesn't happen without a lot of reinforcement, at least for most people. Business books call on people to make changes within their companies. That doesn't happen without a lot of people wanting to make the same change, and organized leadership.
In fact, my sense of how to read a business book is to figure out whether the idea is so valuable that, when you fail to bring it to life on your own, you'd hire someone like the author to come lead that change in your firm.
I think that's why a lot of business books get written, frankly -- in hopes of big consulting fees. Maybe I'm being cynical, and I'll regret this comment when I write my own business book. But there's no way that reading a business book will by itself cause change, anymore than reading gardening books, cookbooks or magic books (three Godin references) make you a great gardener, cook or magician.
Think of business books as a sort of travel guide to an idea. You read them and then must expect to refer to them again and again to keep on track, or find some new aspect of the idea. Just like any travel book, hiring a travel guide will probably improve your tour, and the likelihood that people will come along with you on the journey. You're also going to find that some people don't like the tour, or at least don't like the same parts you do.