Unstuck

Rating:
Summary: A great plane read.
Review: This is a perfect book for anyone whose slammed with work, headed onto a plane, and seeking fresh ideas. The authors, a designer and Grad Professor, take the reader through a self-guided tour of organizational design and leadership 101. There's no predicatable narrative to the book, as many pages contain provocative questions with corresponding page numbers. While this may leave some readers lost, those that embrace the unique design and layout of the book won't be disappointed. My whole team is hooked on several pages from the book and unlike most traditional business books (zzz...), we're really using Unstuck.

Rating:
Summary: Horrible
Review: This is the IKEA approach to business behaviour: cheap, nasty, and mass produced. So what if the authors spent more time designing the book instead of writing it - still no excuse to buy. Every year a book like this comes along that tries to be cute but is just annoying, just about every UNstuck solution should be followed by "well duh".

Example - "Don't embrace destructive behaviour", "Try not to limit creativity", "Encourage instead of reprimand". If you need to be told these things you shouldn't be in business at all.

Just an awful book.

Rating:
Summary: A good how-to guide for getting your team out of a rut
Review: Unstuck is a great book for helping to get your team or your business back on track. Maybe you're not living up to your potential, or you sense there is a problem, but you're not sure what it is or how to fix it. With Unstuck, you first spend a little time diagnosing why you're stuck. The categories are explained really well, so it is easy to see where you fall. Once you know where your problem is coming from, there are over 100 pages of tools, techniques, and examples, including short case studies, that will help you get unstuck. What makes this book fun to read, in addition to the great design, is the fact that once you know what your problem is, it gives you page numebr for the ideas that will best help you. It is sort of like a choose-your-own-adventure book for grown-ups. Or you can read it all the way through for all of the ideas. The only thing that I wished were different was that I was searching for help getting out of a rut in my own life, and Unstuck focused on helping groups with problems.

Rating:
Summary: Each page is a refreshing take on leadership & teams.
Review: Unstuck is part strategy guide and part owners manual for anyone who manages a team. It's the perfect contribution to my library of business books that, on the whole. look more and more the same. There isn't a single page in the book that is not inventive - from the design of the book to the diversity of research and "recommended reads" located in the final pages. Overall, the tone of the book is concise and creative. At the same time, key concepts are rooted in management theory - HBR cites throughout... even a clinical sociology review! Another favorite of mine is that the text of the book is combined with a great, functional design that has you quickly turning from one page to the next. Recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Great book for teambuilding
Review: Unstuck is the perfect book to use for a teambuilding exercise. Pass the book out to each member and let them read it in their own way. Not only is the book short, but you don't even have to read it cover to cover -- the authors encourage readers to take a non-linear approach and suggest paths to becoming unstuck. Gather up the troops and compare the experiences. Did everyone identify the same problems with the team? What types of ideas were sparked by reading of the book?

Much of what the authors say is common sense. But, sometimes common sense is the first thing that's lost when things start to go wrong. Unstuck is more fun to read than most of the business type books out there, but it also includes references to more serious and in-depth resources. Plus, it looks good on a bookshelf.