Book Review GUST The Tale Wind of Office Politics

Book Review GUST â€" The Tale Wind of Office Politics Heres a slight detour from the job search, career management or networking books that I usually review. I got a copy of GUST at last years Successful and Outstanding Bloggers conference and have had a number of communications with the author, Timothy L. Johnson. Ive only read one other business book like GUST, which is written like a novel, complete with characters and drama. Have you ever read The Goal? I think every business student in my era had to read it in their senior year. It was a cool book, and I was impressed to see a VP or HR at a $3B company with The Goal on his bookshelf. Anyway, back to GUST. My first impression as Im reading this book is man, this office setting is so draining that there is no way I would work here! But then I remembered how long I stayed at my draining job. No matter how bad things got (and they got bad), I always thought they would get better. I think a lot of people put up with bad jobs for a variety of reasons fear of the job search, is the grass really greener on the other side (pretty sad thought, if all jobs suck as bad as this one), worried about tarnishing resume, worried about not returning any loyalty that you felt from your company (training, transfer, etc.), worried about letting your boss or coworkers down (either because you respect them or because of peer pressure), concern about a bad employment market (will I be able to land again), etc. And so we stay in poor work conditions. GUST is about office politics, not any of these other things that make a job miserable. The main character is a consultant brought in to manage a project to completion while unraveling the political problems, and help the CEO understand what needs to change. And the company is a mess. The consultant walks her team through various aspects of identifying politics, the reasons behind political behavior, and tactics to work around this behavior (to keep your sanity and keep the project moving forward). Timothy L. Johnson does a great job of making my stomach churn, while giving me tool after tool, technique after technique, and arming me to prepare with office politics. If you are currently living with office politics, and want to figure out how to weather them, pick up a copy of GUST. Check out Scot Herricks review here. Book Review GUST â€" The Tale Wind of Office Politics Heres a slight detour from the job search, career management or networking books that I usually review. I got a copy of GUST at last years Successful and Outstanding Bloggers conference and have had a number of communications with the author, Timothy L. Johnson. Ive only read one other business book like GUST, which is written like a novel, complete with characters and drama. Have you ever read The Goal? I think every business student in my era had to read it in their senior year. It was a cool book, and I was impressed to see a VP or HR at a $3B company with The Goal on his bookshelf. Anyway, back to GUST. My first impression as Im reading this book is man, this office setting is so draining that there is no way I would work here! But then I remembered how long I stayed at my draining job. No matter how bad things got (and they got bad), I always thought they would get better. I think a lot of people put up with bad jobs for a variety of reasons fear of the job search, is the grass really greener on the other side (pretty sad thought, if all jobs suck as bad as this one), worried about tarnishing resume, worried about not returning any loyalty that you felt from your company (training, transfer, etc.), worried about letting your boss or coworkers down (either because you respect them or because of peer pressure), concern about a bad employment market (will I be able to land again), etc. And so we stay in poor work conditions. GUST is about office politics, not any of these other things that make a job miserable. The main character is a consultant brought in to manage a project to completion while unraveling the political problems, and help the CEO understand what needs to change. And the company is a mess. The consultant walks her team through various aspects of identifying politics, the reasons behind political behavior, and tactics to work around this behavior (to keep your sanity and keep the project moving forward). Timothy L. Johnson does a great job of making my stomach churn, while giving me tool after tool, technique after technique, and arming me to prepare with office politics. If you are currently living with office politics, and want to figure out how to weather them, pick up a copy of GUST. Check out Scot Herricks review here.