Book reviews
Kate Mercer’s book, ‘A Buzz in the Building: How to build and lead a brilliant organisation‘, has received some very favourable reviews since its publication in March 2016. Here is just a selection of the comments from readers:
This is a really useful hand book for someone who wants to better understand the nature of change and how it can affect people. It explores the role of the leader in smoothing the way by improving how they connect with others in the workplace. It is very practical and filled with examples from real life situations. It introduces concepts drawn from coaching as well as aspects of positive psychology. It explores what creates a winning mindset and sets out ideas and exercises to help achieve this. Underpinning the book is a sense of unconditional positive regard for people who are trying to do their best in the VUCA world that we life in. A Buzz in the Building clearly demonstrates Kate Mercer’s consultancy experience and expertise. Each chapter opens with some commonly heard workplace comments that will resonate with most readers. A real client scenario then outlines how the issue was dealt with and the chapter ends with practical working skills.
Kate has delivered a well-structured, informative book that offers practical down-to-earth examples and solutions. Highly recommended as a guide for those starting their leadership career or as a good reminder for those already in a leadership role.
Akasha Lonsdale-Deighton
I came upon Kate Mercer’s book by chance. I’m glad I did. The book is unique amongst management books, in my experience, in that it addresses an issue and in a way which no other books do, to the best of my knowledge; namely how to develop your business without stressing about it. The ‘Halleluya moment’ for me occurred on p37 where the author sets out three tables of warning signs to watch out for. These occur when your small ‘1st Generation Start-up’ business gets too big for itself and has to make scary decisions about ‘what next?’. Then when the business has reached the end of ‘2nd Generation Consolidation’ and again when it has reached a stage of ‘3rd Generation Structure & Control’. My own small organisation had reached the end of ‘First Generation Start-up’ and my co-Directors and I were stressing about what to do next with our success. Then we found the book, the warning signs ‘struck a chord’ with us, and without hiring expensive consultants we found a wealth of advice and guidance about what could happen next. The main chapters of the book then set out a series of issues to be addressed; some chapters address Mindsets and some address Skills. In our case the Mindsets were most useful. They challenged our perceptions about how to run our business and gave us the confidence to do difficult things, like ‘let go’ for starters! The Skills chapters would be particularly useful for relatively inexperienced people managers, and for the more experienced, they serve as a useful refresher; after all you need to be reminded of the basics at regular intervals throughout your career. Finally the Conclusion section on p145 deserves a mention. This is four pages of relentless home truths which make me suspicious that the author may have been a ‘fly on our wall’. All so true. A refreshingly honest companion to any management team responsible for taking the next steps without completely messing things up!
Jon
A very useful, well written book with plenty of sensible practical advice. There is good advice here regardless of the size of your business and plenty of thought provoking ideas too.
Terark
I am sure and certainly will be using your book which is a great manual in follow up to the specific sessions we had from Kate. So it’s on the Fortress reference book list and no doubt a few more copies will be coming off the shelves. It is an easy read too which makes it so much better particularly for some of the developing individuals to follow. Well done !
An Amazon customer