Gray Matters : The Workplace Survival Guide

Rating:
Summary: Light-hearted but Educational
Review: Gray Matters by Bob Rosner et al is an entertaining read. Don't be put off by the comic book within-the-book format, as it actually is helpful in emphasizing the book's themes (creating function out of dysfunction, leadership vs. management, building relationships with your workforce and your customers, etc.) I'm not in marketing, and a lot of the book's examples focus on product sales, but anyone who works in corporate culture can find some useful illustrations. None of the insights are new: we all know that people resist change, don't walk the talk, don't understand their business, aren't team players, ad infinitum. But most business books are either too dense to read easily or are too trite to be relative. Gray Matters is in between and comes close to a bulls eye. I especially like its part 3: "the Seven Deadly Workplace Sins".

Rating:
Summary: A book for even those who "know it all"
Review: I approached this book with an attitude of "I know this content already," "I could have written this book". . . . But a few pages into the book, I realized I was learning.

The content is surprisingly complete. When skimming the Table of Contents, the topics did not seem comprehensive. But after reading this book, the important things were covered; including sensitive areas that are usually not discussed.

I appreciate that much of the content is in comic strip format. I know, I know, this doesn't sound good. But I have so many books that I've started and stopped because I don't have time to read it all. So it's very gratifying to get through the content of the book in one evening.

In summary, I learned some important stuff from this book and know that I can return to this book for reminders and details. Five stars!

Rating:
Summary: Using Your Gray Matters
Review: I have a friend in business school, and when I hear of what he's being taught, I have to laugh sometimes, because I know that there is a lot of difference between theory and reality. In the "real world", people don't care about cooperation and teamwork and profit margins. They care about keeping their job and doing their job with the least amount of pain/effort possible.

Gray Matters: The Workplace Survival Guide by Rosner, Halcrow and Lavin is an enlightening look at the typical workplace in an atypical way. It uses an entertaining comic book format to act out the various principles that are articulated in the book. The "hero" of the comic, Gray, has to battle the evil workplace villains, namely "lack of cooperation" and "management" on his way to trying to save his reorganized division from possible closure. Unlike other books that try to teach business philosophy in a "fun" way, Gray Matters does a few things brilliantly:

1) The team that he's organizing isn't cooperative - Gray needs to learn to suck up to them in their favored ways, including appealing to egos and giving away his own ideas to another for the sake of team success. Anyone that has been in real business knows that there is plenty of sacrificing individual success if team success is to be realized.

Note though, but not for the risk of plant closure, Gray may not have stepped up, and the others in the story may not have cared that he did. This is an important point that needs to be recognized: people need a reason to team.

2) The team members have many annoying quirks that Gray must learn to recognize as valuable. That is, once he gets over being irritated, he starts to realize that there is something that he can learn and use from everyone.

For (the book's) expediency's sake, the nanny is forever in the right spot, with the right advice, showing the reader that sometimes you have to get the answers from someone you'd least expect. But, all the people have something to offer...recognizing that something is the trick.

3) The authors also show that home life is obviously affected by what goes on at work, and sometimes the answers that you can readily see for your family are seldomly applied at work. That is, what attitudes keep you from applying your family wisdom at work? Are not the relationship dynamics similar?

The book's chapters are set up with an introduction which prepares you for the scene ahead, a comic that plays out the business concepts, and a summary of the "take-home" points. The introduction is similar to many business management book in lay-out and theory, and the summary is a good synopsis of the important points, but it's the comic that adds the real value.

This is because, often, books describe the hard skills needed to attack business problems ("you need teamwork and support from upper management, yada, yada, yada..."), but never introduce you to the soft skills -- the method by which you actually garner the teamwork/cooperation/support. For instance, all management books will say that teams need a leader. How to become that leader is the trick. And, it's not about having the vision or charisma. It's about appealing to each person on their level and showing that you are there to help them. Gray learns that, at times, he needs to suck up to people, and at others, he needs to crack the whip. Not an easy balancing act for anyone, but this book describes the nuances of personal/business relationships.

Gray gives an accurate, albeit condensed, portrayal of the pitfalls and lessons of trying to organize a team. Don't be fooled by the comic book format -- this is a Grade A business lesson in an unusual package.

Check out www.workingwounded.com for more.