Reviews for Creative Professional: Turn Your Talents into a Successful, Satisfying Career

The average rating for Creative Professional: Turn Your Talents into a Successful, Satisfying Career based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-04-07 00:00:00 Chad Olson There are two forms of courage in business. That which enables you to mentally put aside the old ways of doing things and think of new ways and the greater courage that you put to use when you execute the new strategies. Both are hard, and it all starts with learning ways to think differently. That is the primary point of this book, and the advice is solid and of great value. The primary learning strategy is to identify what the authors refer to as "stalls". They are business strategies that somehow limit what can be accomplished. Most of the stalls are very simple. One of the simplest was a hotel where the room service delivery time for breakfasts was unacceptable. More people were added to cook and deliver the breakfasts without a significant reduction in the delivery time. Upon further investigation, they learned that housekeeping was changing the sheets at this time and the housekeepers were stopping the elevators to load and unload the carts. By changing the times when the sheets were changed, the breakfast delivery time was reduced to an acceptable one with a smaller staff. The tale is very illustrative, in that the "obvious" solution to a problem did not correct it. A more detailed analysis of the problem was necessary to solve it. The advice offered in this book will not help unless it is implanted in a mind that is willing to think broadly and occasionally with some imagination. However, diligence is often more important than imagination. Most of the problems are ones where the solutions are obvious in retrospect. Nevertheless, even simple solutions can require the leaping of the reluctance to try new things hurdle, and that is where the courage of the second type is necessary. While the book occasionally reads as a motivational pep talk, it does not happen often enough to overshadow the fundamental message. It is always possible to improve your business practices, and there are few businesses that will fail to find something of value in this book. This review also appears on Amazon

Review # 2 was written on 2014-06-25 00:00:00 Ann Willis The "2,000 Percent Solution" is an interesting and useful read, but I am a little surprised by the overwhelmingly positive reviews it has received on Amazon. At its core, the book is a simple collection of management parables that illustrate the central theme - change is hard to accomplish in the real world. The advice offered to help readers overcome resistance to change consists of a surface-level hodge-podge of one-line prescriptions that is loosely held together by a process improvement framework. It was a good and useful read, though it was a little boring in parts. As an overall assessment, I would give it three and a half stars, but I don't have the option of giving half stars.