Review: The Myth of the Garage

The Myth of the Garage (Amazon) is Chip Heath and Dan Heath's latest book. And it's free on Amazon for your Kindle or Kindle App or the web-based Amazon Kindle Cloud Reader. And that's just awesome.

Chip and Dan (brothers) have written two other amazing books with long titles:

• Switch:How to Change when Change is Hard (My Review)
• Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Last and Others Die (Amazon)

If you've been craving more of the brothers Heath or you've been wondering what the fuss is, The Myth of the Garage is a great book to get. Myth is both original new content and past Fast Company columns. As a former FC reader (part of my "Simplify" goal for this year is allowing magazines to lapse until I can get all the past ones on my nightstand read) I have read quite a few of these, but it's been long enough that the book still felt fresh.

In typical Heath fashion, each chapter is short, self-contained, easy to read, has some great ideas, and is encouraging or challenging, depending on how that particular topic affects you - be it practically, directly, or maybe just from the thought-leadership or work-related perspective.

A few of the chapters I really liked included:

• Get Back in the Box - why thinking outside the box isn't always the right approach and could be hurting you
• Anchor & Twist: How to Explain an Innovation
• Watch the Game Film - why looking back is as important as looking ahead
• Is Talent Portable? - a huge problem with "getting the right people on the bus"

I read this book from my perspective as a line manager and there was some great stuff in there that challenged my thinking. This book is easy to consume, and at free, I can't think of anyone I wouldn't recommend it to.

It's also available as a PDF on their website heathbrothers.com

One Little Word

I regretted it the minute I said it. One little word I wish I hadn't said. I stammered an apology and moved on. It was out there, I couldn't take it back and I hoped that it wouldn't cause the listener to discount everything my boss and I had said in the past hour, trying to make our case. We debriefed later, I had a different thing I regretted, right at the end, that might or might not have mattered, but this was the one he remembered. He said he could see the regret on my face immediately. I don't think he disagreed, but yeah, I should have avoided it.

That word "little" - I basically basically ended up describing their request, their project as inconsequential. I meant to say that it was relatively or comparatively small, but instead, I ended up being possibly saying something slightly or insulting. I was trying to let the math speak for itself, but if I had even said "small" it probably wouldn't have been as noticable.

A shame, really. Darn.

#EEC12: In Other Words... (A Work-Related Post)

I'll be posting my notes from #EEC soon (first there's the matter of packing and flying and stuff). But in the meantime, here's a lot of great tweets from the event. It was a great conference and there was a lot of good stuff. Interesting to see the themes change from year-to-year as the challenge to become more strategic and more sophisticated becomes clearer. Click "Join the Conversation" below to get to the rest of them.

I've missed you

Last year, I committed to a post a day.  This year, I committed to simplification.  (Not sure that's working so well.)  But I decided I wouldn't try to sustain the post-a-day pace.  But I didn't intend to board up the place and let the weeds grow.  I'll try to post more regularly.

Worst. Spam. Ever.

Um... what?

I'm confused.. is she selling something?  What's the call to action?  Why would I want to learn more when professionalism and punctuation are obviously not important?