[lsc]

I've read it, and found it about as valuable as the average business book, which is to say, not particularly.

The premise seemed to be that people work for things other than money. While this is correct, it's also obvious, and the book doesn't really add all that much to the discussion, I think.

[erik_p]

You might feel that way because you are already an enlightened thinker. In my experience, I've run into countless managers who I'd consider sending 'Drive' to because they fail to see or understand the obvious. In other words common sense isn't always common.

I also think it's more accessible and less dry than most business books. Shrug

[lsc]

I am hardly enlightened. I have something of an entrepreneurial personality, so obviously, money does drive me more than it drives most people, and that did take some getting used to and adjusting to. But if you live around people who work as employees and like it? It's pretty obvious that money isn't as important for them.

(to be clear, it should be obvious that money isn't everything to the entrepreneur, but generally, it means a lot more to us than it does to most people.)

Now, some of the suggestions in "drive" like letting employees decide their own hours are excellent ideas for small companies; Really, though, that sort of thing is very common in small companies. I've been doing it for many years now, and it's an excellent tool for employee retention. Sure, the guy working for me could get a pretty big raise for leaving, but he'd have to get up at about the same time every day.

This is an important insight if you are working at a large company. If you are working at a small company, this becomes a much more obvious solution; I've been doing it forever.

The other problem is that they seemed to oversell the idea. While flexibility is great, is has some pretty big downsides.

but much of the advice was targeted at very large companies, and I think if you followed a lot of it, it would be very easy to look dishonest and disingenuous to your less-emotional employees. Humans aren't in it for the money, but corporations? yeah, they are, and no matter how hard you try, most people aren't going to believe otherwise.

Maybe it's just that I value being honest and straightforward over being "Good" and possibly a little deceptive, but I found much of the book to be pretty slimy.

The thing was written in what I thought was the regular style for business books; breathless and almost but not quite ferris-esqe. "this is the next big thing!" easy to read, but very light on content. Really, this was my biggest problem with the thing; It could have been a /very good/ 4 page essay, but it was padded out to a 250 page book, which is just a waste of paper and my time.

Edit: re-reading my post, it seems unnecessarily negative. I mean, like I said, there were some good ideas. It's very likely that the general "this is totally great and different and world-changing!" tone is my biggest problem with the book, especially as I was already doing some of the things they suggested, and I'm an evil, money grubbing capitalist. Well, that and the verbosity. This is a valid complaint; the book really is a whole lot longer than it needed to be.