Leadership Re:Vision – promotion update

The publicist at Tyndale emailed a link to this great review from Christian Book Previews.

Leadership RE:vision by Jim Seybert is iconoclastic, radical, revolutionary, and, in more than one instance, illogical and dangerous. Seybert’s advice purposely flies in the face of traditional training in the areas of leadership, management, organization, and planning.

I was especially excited to see where the reviewer took issue with my work, because it shows the book forced him to THINK. Having my work branded as illogical and dangerous is high praise in a world where most all the business and leadership books look and sound the same.

The reviewer said Chapter Four was “shallow and outright nonsensical” because I criticized leaders for expecting workers who remain after a layoff to be happy about doing the work of two or three people. He incorrectly assumes that I advocated paying those left behind a higher wage. I didn’t. The premise of the chapter is to suggest that if you are forced to have fewer people, then you should seriously consider doing less. Too many workers are being forced to choose between their families and their job and my contention is that God would never put an employee in a similar situation. The God who promised “life abundant” would never want an employee to be burnt out and taken advantage of by a leader who demands the same number of bricks with a smaller supply of straw.

He also found fault with Chapter 11 and suggested that I must be out of touch with reality when I urge leaders to take risks and, as the chapter title suggests, “Quit Playing it Safe.” To support displeasure at what he referred to as an “over-the-top gamble,” the reviewer cites the verse where Jesus is recorded saying no man builds a tower without first determining the cost. I’m in complete agreement with the reviewer on the source, but disagree with his conclusion. Jesus never told his followers to NOT do something if it was too costly. In fact, he was all about going beyond logic and doing what was correct, despite the cost. All he was saying in the referenced verse is that no one should enter into something without understanding the cost. I don’t see anywhere in scripture where Jesus encourages people to back away from a challenge. His life was all about risk, and ours should be, too.

My thanks to Christian Book Previews for an honest and thoughtful review of Leadership Re:Vision. I said in the book’s Introduction that I intended to rattle some assumptions and in this case I have hit the bull’s eye.