Influencer: The Power to Change Anything by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler
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Book Reviews of Influencer: The Power to Change Anything
Book Review: So Many Useful Ideas
Summary: 5 Stars
In general, I am not easily impressed by these business books that purport give some great insight into how to make things work. If somebody really had the ability to "change anything" then he wouldn't be wasting time writing books, he'd be out there changing things, if not for the better, then to his advantage. With that caveat in mind, however, I have to say that I enjoyed this book.
There are a couple of reasons why I enjoyed it. First, it is so much better written than most. I don't know how its five authors actually collaborated to produce this volume but it reads very well. It doesn't show the effects of too many cooks. It delivers a series of very clear, easy to follow steps. If it doesn't support itself with a lot of quantitative research, it has a selection of well-chosen anecdotes. The Guinea worm stories and the Delancey Street stories have etched themselves into my memory. I've already shared them with a number of people.
Second, the six sources of influence, the elucidation of which takes up the bulk of the book, are simple to understand and seem very reasonable. In fact, most of us have used or experienced each of the types of influence before. It is the author's cleverness to synthesize them for us. Not only that, that demonstrate how to use them effectively. Ultimately, they make the point that, to have real success in influencing others, you must use as many of the sources of influence as possible, preferably all of them. Too often, change doesn't happen because we don't use all the sources of influence available to us.
Like many books of this type, it wouldn't have suffered any by being a little bit more compact. Still, as someone who works for change in my day to day life, I was able to draw a lot of useful information out of it. Perhaps more useful things than in any book I've ready recently. That's high praise indeed.
Book Review: Too much tell, not enough show
Summary: 2 Stars
When your book has the subtitle "the power to change anything," you really need to deliver tools to let readers effect change. Instead, this book is dry and jargon-heavy, telling what some alleged influencers did, rather than showing how the reader can do it as well.
As a result, it's a marginally interesting read at best, and of dubious value.
Book Review: Influencer
Summary: 4 Stars
A great "how to" book that should be required reading for anyone in management. We've used a couple of the strategies over the years, but not as effectively as a combined and orchestrated manner as we will in the future. This book exposes some of our strategic deficiencies that we are setting out to change. A great guide that could have saved us substantial time and money in the past, and will surely help us in the future. It's an easy & quick read - and great on CD as well.Book Review: Read this book if you want to impact the world
Summary: 5 Stars
I was invited to a webcast featuring the new book by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxwell, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler, Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, McGraw Hill:New York (c) 2008. I left the room convinced I had to buy it and also give it to two managers as belated Christmas presents. I picked those two not because I thought they needed it most, but rather because I thought they would be most receptive. I have now read the book and can recommend it highly to all of you. You can breeze through it, but I recommend that you do as I did and take your time thinking about how their "out of box" solutions might apply in your life and work.
Those of you who have heard me speak about learning through "stories" will appreciate my surprise and delight to find 12 pages devoted to using stories. These pages were at the end of a chapter and started with the subheading "Use stories to help change minds." Many of their examples were short stories. I didn't appreciate how they kept promising "more about that later". But this is still a book to make you think about how you can influence the world.
Parents and teachers will be interested in the findings that the "use praise versus the use of punishment." is a behavior that separates top teachers from poor teachers (p. 33). They also found that "top performers rapidly alternate between teaching and questioning or otherwise testing."
Book Review: Good book but need to change it up a bit.....
Summary: 4 Stars
Good book with a good system which takes you through the different steps required in influencing. The one negative is they seem to draw on the same examples over and over again. Sometimes it is hard to tell what the difference is between the various sections. It does get the message across that you can influence anyone to do anything. It also helps lead you into a direction so it is a pretty decent book.
I liked the last part of the book where they gave an example in corporate America where they went in and changed attitudes and behaviors. I would have liked another few examples like this throughout the book.