Saturday December 19, 2009

A book that unravels a new way of working

Review by CHOO LI-HSIAN

I Hate People!: Kick Loose from the Overbearing and Underhanded Jerks at Work and Get What You Want Out of Your Job
Author: Jonathan Littman and Marc Hershon
Publisher: Little, Brown & Company

“Hell is - other people.” – Jean-Paul Sartre

IT would be most unfortunate if the tough title I Hate People turned some people away from buying this helpful and hilarious book. In spite of its title, the book is not an anthem advocating anti-social behavior at the office.

Instead, it promotes a concept that gives us permission to be true to our real feelings and the courage to march to the beat of a different drummer. It is a therapeutic reminder that sometimes “being nice when everyone else is just playing nice is not wise.”

Playboy contributing editor Johnathan Littman (co-author of IDEO’s The Art of Innovation) and Marc Hershon, veteran comedian and branding expert (who helped create the names for the BlackBerry and other influential products) have created a fun read aimed at those of us who feel frustrated in the office and are looking for ways to carve out more time and autonomy for ourselves.

Touted as “jujitsu for outsmarting corporate oafs,” the book starts by identifying and classifying each of The Ten Least Wanted personality types who pose the greatest threat to you in attempting to get your work done.

We are then introduced to the concept of Flying Solo. Instead of offering constructive ways of collaborating with problematic colleagues as other business self help books do, I Hate People suggests ways to avoid them altogether by being a Soloist, a “corporate loner who taps into innovative reserves rather than bending to be a team player.”

We live in an age where “teamwork is the new vogue” and the “value of groups in corporations is assumed.”

However, the authors point out that in reality, talented people are often “shackled by underperforming teams, slacker teammates and out-of-the-loop bosses.”

Does teamwork really trump individual effort? Not really, it seems. In 1913, Maximilien Ringelmann, a French agricultural engineer, engineered a virtual tug-of-war.

He had individuals and groups pull on a rope attached to a strain gauge to measure the difference between solo and mass effort. He found that a group of eight “yanked just half as hard as the average individual tugging by himself.”

To drive home this point, the authors share with us stories of successful Soloists from a broad range of industries and companies. These include the unofficial “Father of the Apple iPod”, Tony Fadell who after a stint as CTO of Philip’s Mobile Computing unit, went on to create a music maker that was a combination of a hard-drive based music player with a Napster-style music subscription service that eventually was picked up by Steve Jobs – the rest, as they say, is history.

There is also Ken Kutaragi of Sony who tinkered on the side and invented the Sony Playstation; Craig Newmark, corporate misfit and founder of Craig’s List and many others.

The authors further note that manufacturers now seldom come up with many major innovations due to the lack of divergent Soloist type thinking.

Nowadays, “majority of ideas are nearly always derivative: modifications of existing products, knockoffs of competitors’ products or throwbacks to simpler designs.”

The last half of the book deals with the work environment. Whilst still maintaining a light tone, this half can be a bit trying to read.

Amongst other things, it tells of the constraints and demands of office life, using rather clichéd examples such as irritating interruptions, inane meetings, disruptions, unreasonable expectations and demands, and excessive rules and red tape.

In spite of this, as a self-confessed Soloist, I would still recommend readers to get away from the “groupthink that gums up organisations”, “customise their corporate nest”, “sheer some sheeple” and join in the “I Hate People” movement.

It is a journey that begins one morning at the office where you may just discover a new way of working, both alone and with (like-minded) others through Solocrafting as savvy Soloist.

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Saturday December 19, 2009

A book that unravels a new way of working

Review by CHOO LI-HSIAN