Your book titles are negative aren’t they?
I never thought I would write one book, let alone seven. In order to do so I didn’t need motivation as I had ideas and case studies, I needed structure, advice and to educate myself as much as I could on my subject matter.
Even when I was a senior manager, I always lived by the mantra of ‘opinions are good, but facts are better’. That’s not to say that I didn’t (and don’t) have my own opinions. I share these regularly in my blogs and podcasts, but I always felt that if I couldn't justify them with tangible evidence, then no-one would ever read them.
When I was writing my first book, I was told that ‘people reading it' should be a secondary concern. Its primary function was as a business card to get meetings and hopefully get work. It was some of the worst advice I’ve ever received. It suggests that I should abandon my integrity and rather than writing what people are talking about and presenting solutions that they may need, the process was enough.
I have never taken this approach. I have always written books that I think will be of value to those who may read them. It would have been much easier to fill a book with my opinions, take one good idea and repeat it for 250 pages or else come up with a catchy title that bears no relation to the content, but I always ask myself ‘how does this book serve the reader?’
That’s not to say that everyone will like what I write. I’m aware of that, however, I like to think that I write about the issues that people are concerned about or living right now and provide actionable advice they can immediately take to improve their situation.
This includes using the language that people use, rather than trying to confuse you with big or abstract words that don’t accurately describe what people may be feeling. Many people have suggested that I do this, including recently, when someone said to me ‘Your book titles are negative aren’t they?’ They were referring to Culture Fix and Detox Your Culture.
I’m not one to be upset by opinions, but I suppose I had never thought about this before. Again, I’ve always used titles that speak to the people that might read them.
When I wrote Culture Fix, people had been telling me for years that their culture was ‘ok’ and that one or two things ‘needed to be fixed’. Similarly with Detox Your Culture. Toxic cultures have ruined lives, reputations and results. Whenever I spoke to leaders, they were interested in the steps required to mitigate the risk of this happening and thus, detoxifying their cultures.
I spoke to a People and Culture leader at a conference that I was speaking at recently, who patiently queued for me to sign her copy of Detox. When she got to the front I said that it was great to see it full of post-it notes and the front cover looking battered! She said that she takes it everywhere and that it ‘is full of simple actions to change the way we work’.
Of course - as an author - you’re always chuffed to hear this and it was a good reminder to me, that even though one person might see the title as negative, another had taken the time to read the book and found that it’s what’s inside that counts.
Here’s a list of my favourite books whose title might not immediately bowl you over:
Uncommon sense, common nonsense - Jules Goddard
An everyone culture - Robert Keegan
Flow: The psychology of optimal experience - Mihály Csíkszentmihályi
Team of teams - Stanley McChrystal
The antidote: Happiness for people who can't stand positive thinking - Oliver Burkeman
‘Detox Your Culture’ is in the running for a UK national business book award next week alongside lots of other great books, which is a good reminder that you should never judge a book by its cover…or its title!
