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Review: Innovation’s Dirty Little Secret by Larry Osborne



Review: Innovation’s Dirty Little Secret
Larry Osborne
Zondervan
2013

This book is much better than it could’ve been.  Yes, I’ve read Lencioni and a few others and this one can hold its own with them.  First of all it isn’t all about how to run a church.  It isn’t pure business either.  What Osborne covers is important for both sides.  Lots of people skills here and he doesn’t mince words about how to deal with problems---your own and the others.  Deal with them, but maybe from an angle you hadn’t expected to read.

His first section starts right.  You have to have an exit strategy ready at the outset.  Innovations fail frequently and damage control matters for everyone and especially the leader of the group.  Communication strategies matter.  Picking the right battle, having a clear vision that is clear to more than the leader matter.  Enlisting the right people at the right time matters, identifying the right people matters.  The size team and governance matters.  All that is stuff you know or have read about.  Osborne gives his reader a few tips about each of those areas and a little more.  I say a few because this book is only 170 plus pages.  An airport read size book.  Important for the guy that's busy.

His style is condensed and direct and in some cases may even ruffle your feathers.  That’s OK.  They’ll settle back into place.  But hopefully not before you have given some thought to why that was so.  He warns of the dangers of success, too.  It does come with some.  

This one is one for you and your team to look at and absorb what the author has to say.  Talk about it and begin the process.

This book was provided to me by the publisher via Booksneeze in exchange for a review.

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