A quick post on a quick book, I think, for this one.
I picked this little book in Barnes and Noble in Palo Alto (as one does... can you name-drop places?) nearly a year ago as a little light entertainment for a train or plane or something. Somehow, however, I never read it. Until last week, that is, when I scanned the "unread books" part of the shelves to see what was lurking there.
I didn't expect enlightenment, or philosophy, or gravitas, of course, just a few laughs. However, Sh*t My Dad Says turned out not only to be extremely funny, but also quite engaging and ultimately rather touching. So what is this book?
Halpern explains its origins at the outset. He was brought up with his brothers in middle class San Diego by a pair of hard-working parents, both of whom came from quite tough backgrounds. We only glimpse the mother occasionally, mainly because his father is the show stealer. It is his way with words, and an attitude to life you might summarise as no-bullshit-enlightened-macho, that single him out as the subject of this book. At some point, Halpern decided his father's earthy pronouncements deserved wider appreciation and created a Twitter feed (@shitmydadsays) to pass them on. It was only meant for friends, but spiralled quickly to a following of over a million, and ultimately a book deal was proffered.
It is with some trepidation, and a sense of novelty, that I click on "new post" to discuss my latest read. It is close to home in several ways.
First - and this is the trepidation bit - the author is a friend and a (former) colleague. She is also a prominent Facebook friend, which means she will definitely see this review. I considered not doing a review in this case, really out of some sort of quintessentially English embarrassment, but justifying this with the notion that I could not be expected to be impartial and objective in the case. But then it struck me that there is no particular expectation of impartiality or objectivity on this blog, and, besides, I promised myself that I would post on every book (well, proper book) I read. So I'm posting, that's that. Besides, I did at one point promise Paola that I would tell people about her book.
Second, lots of people who read this (yes, there are four or five who do, assuming they are not lying through their teeth when they "like" the related FB posts) also know Paola. So there is a kind of in-the-family feel about this.
In July 2013, I was fortunate enough to attend a Stanford Business School course. It's title was "Leadership and the Effective Use of Power". The term 'power' makes many uncomfortable. At the very beginning of the course, the professor put the question to the class: "Which of you wants power?" A couple of hands rather hesitantly went up, but everyone else looked rather uncertain. Then the professor asked a second question: "Which of you wants to change the world?" No problem this time, lots of hands up. Then the professor again: "So how are you going to do that without power?"
The course was about leadership, and far from being a education in the brutal subjugation of others, it was about things like building effective teams, influencing without direct authority, giving and receiving feedback, accessing resources, managing upwards... All rather Californian in fact. So it was something of a shock to the system when, on the penultimate day, a guest professor was brought in to stir things up a bit. His name was Jeffrey Pfeffer, and he had us out of our new Californian comfort zone in no time at all.
He started his class by contrasting the behaviour of two corporate leaders in broadly quite similar circumstances. The first was Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, the second Tony Hayward of BP. Both were testifying before Congressional committees following disasters their companies were responsible for, sub-prime lending based financial meltdown and the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. His point was that Blankfein, for all that his company was - in Pfeffer's view - even more culpable than Hayward's, came out of the process completely intact, having cowed the congressmen with a display of personal and corporate power, communicated in what he said, how he said it and in his general demeanour and body-language. Hayward, by contrast, was weak: he evaded questions, he hid behind lawyers, he stonewalled, he deferred to his questioners, allowed himself to be interrupted and, ultimately, he apologised. "Never apologise!"
