This review was submitted by duplicate_accou....
"The Power Of Habit" is a very interesting book in the vein of Malcolm Gladwell's work.
The book is basically divided into three areas: (1) Personal Habits, (2) Corporate Habits and (3) Societal Habits. I would also use that same ranking to describe how useful and actionable the sections are. The bit on Personal Habits could be a real life changer for some; but by the time the book's thesis is extended to Societal habits I really felt the author was over simplifying his examples.
From a management standpoint, you will learn how to spot your bad habits and substitute more effective behaviour. The Corporate section has numerous facinating stories about how habits were leveraged and/or changed to make companies successful. For example:
- Paul O'Neil turned around Alcoa Steel by changing one keystone habit that had ripple effects throughout the entire business.
- The story behind Proctor & Gamble's failed launch of Febreze, and how customer habits enabled them to turn around the product
- How Starbucks' Howard Schultz uses his employee training programs to create habits that change lives and have a direct affect on the company's success
- How Target collects enough customer data to enable them to start selling pregnancy products to customers who haven't even told people they are pregnant
I found the book really facinating and well worth the time. I've started to use the data on how personal habits work to get better results for myself; and the corporate examples have really got me thinking about how I can optimise the habits of my work team to be most effective.
Comments
Power of Habit is worth the read
I agree wholeheartedly with MarkMT's review of "The Power of Habit."
I found the book informative and an easy read. MarkMT's review provides a good summary.
Was able to download it to the Kindle app as a free download from our local library. This forced me to read it in 14-days; actually finished it in seven!
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Very effective book
I actually liked this book quite a bit and agree with Mark's assessment that the first section on personal habits was the most powerful.
I used the model of habits in this book to re-engineer one of my own personal habits that I had been trying to change for ages (nail biting). The changes have stuck and I feel free of the nail biting habit now.
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