The Wisdom of the Flying Pig

I have always wondered why I was such a sucker for those cool little books on managing that come out every once in a while. I am thinking of things like The One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson that was so popular some years back, as well as their more recent one, Who Moved My Cheese, or even Tom Peter's mega hit In Search of Excellence.

Prior to that, I used to look forward to getting these little gems published by Price Pritchett that were chuck full of quotes, affirmations, and pithy inspirational statements about "the right way to manage" in the 20th century. (Shows you how long ago that was!) They had great titles like Carpe Manana.

I still have them, and every now and again a break them out and sit there and nod my head wondering why it still rings so true and remains so hard.

I was reminded of all of this again when there arrived in the mail a cool looking, slick covered 103 page 5 x 8 book that was so slippery I had trouble turning the pages. In it was a note from its author, Jack Hayhow that read:

"Dave, Your post on 2/16, Building Retention the Old Fashioned Way, made me think you might enjoy the enclosed book."

The book was titled:The Wisdom of the Flying Pig, Guidance and Inspiration for Managers and Leaders.

How right he was.

Maybe I liked it so much because it seemed to be written for someone like me where patience is measured in nano seconds and any chapter that is more than 2 pages is a struggle. Maybe it is because it was full of lines like:

Reciprocity is a fundamental law of life and an indispensable lever for management effectiveness.

Managers don't get paid for what they do, they get paid for what their people do.

Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct.

Using learnings from Drucker, Dr. Seuss and Cyndi Lauper, and a lot of folks in between, this little book, I thought, did in fact live up to what its author says was its intent on the back cover which simply stated is Word for word, we intend for this little book to the be most productive business reading you've ever done.

I don't know if is was the most productive business reading I've ever done, but nothing else comes to mind at the moment, and even if it wasn't, it's right up there.

I have spent lots more than $17.95 for business books, but I don't think any I have read in recent years provides a better ROI.

You can check it out at www.pigwisdom.com