Where’s the common sense? During the COVID-19 pandemic, the TSA is allowing passengers to board planes with unlimited amounts of hand sanitizer, while maintaining its 3.4-ounce limit on all other liquids. You need a chainsaw to pry open your new pair of headphones from their package. Your eighth Zoom meeting of the day keeps freezing, and if you hear “No, wait; no, you go first” again, you will implode. But first you have to sit through an endless PowerPoint presentation that everyone claims they’ve read – no one has – that could have been summarized in one page.
What has happened to common sense? And how can we get it back? Companies, it seems, have become so entangled in their own internal issues and beset by reams of invisible red tape (and frozen screens) that they’ve lost sight of their purpose and culture. Inevitably, we pay the price.
New York Times best-selling author Martin Lindstrom combines numerous real-life examples of corporate common sense gone wrong with his own ingenious plan for restoring logic – and sanity – to the companies and people who need it most. A must-read for today’s executives, managers, and office workers, The Ministry of Common Sense is funny, entertaining, and immensely practical.
‘Essential reading for all of us who feel bogged down in workplace bureaucracy and wish to improve our quality of life at work.’ – Arianna Huffington, Founder & CEO, Thrive Global
‘Anyone who has ever worked in a big corporate structure will be nodding along and underlining every page in this book…Martin Lindstrom…offers a plan for eradicating internal nonsense – the sorts of risk-averse protocols and admin tasks that show a company has lost all sight of common sense. There are lots of good examples and farcical anecdotes here.’ – Financial Times Business Book of the Month
What has happened to common sense? And how can we get it back? Companies, it seems, have become so entangled in their own internal issues and beset by reams of invisible red tape (and frozen screens) that they’ve lost sight of their purpose and culture. Inevitably, we pay the price.
New York Times best-selling author Martin Lindstrom combines numerous real-life examples of corporate common sense gone wrong with his own ingenious plan for restoring logic – and sanity – to the companies and people who need it most. A must-read for today’s executives, managers, and office workers, The Ministry of Common Sense is funny, entertaining, and immensely practical.
‘Essential reading for all of us who feel bogged down in workplace bureaucracy and wish to improve our quality of life at work.’ – Arianna Huffington, Founder & CEO, Thrive Global
‘Anyone who has ever worked in a big corporate structure will be nodding along and underlining every page in this book…Martin Lindstrom…offers a plan for eradicating internal nonsense – the sorts of risk-averse protocols and admin tasks that show a company has lost all sight of common sense. There are lots of good examples and farcical anecdotes here.’ – Financial Times Business Book of the Month
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Reviews
Martin Lindstrom's delightful romp shows how too many organizations seem designed to drive their customers and employees crazy. And this gem is filled with useful (and fun) tips and tools that will help leaders build teams and organizations where common sense is the rule rather than the exception.
As a business and culture transformation expert, Martin doesn't just chop off branches and leaves. He goes deep inside organizations to target the roots of inefficiency, impracticality, and general boneheadedness.
Fun, fast-paced, and as actionable as it is insightful. Get ready to find out all the ways your organization can gain from better common sense. Highly recommended.
The Ministry of Common Sense forces us all to take a hard look in the mirror if we want to take our businesses to the next level to win big - and do so by simply eliminating needless layers of corporate BRIGHT RED tape. Thanks for this book, Martin, because you have saved me from senseless meetings!
Laughing aloud while reading a management book is not an everyday experience-and it happened to me dozens of times while reading The Ministry of Common Sense. Martin Lindstrom's 'common sense' approach is wise, humorous, and fundamentally practical. The book offers a path forward for engaging your employees in fixing broken systems to make work better and customers happier.
With wit and humor, Lindstrom argues that lack of empathy and blind acceptance of politics, technology, rules and regulations can strip us - and entire companies - of good judgment, damaging employee experience, culture, and customer satisfaction. If you are looking for a straight line to customer loyalty and financial success, check out The Ministry of Common Sense. It's a brilliant reminder that bringing humanity back to business just makes sense.
A good-humored take on a serious subject--we are taking a daily bath in bureaucratic self sabotage. Plain-spoken and practical; a fun way to learn how to restore common sense to your organization
Bloated PowerPoints and endless meetings are just a few of the corporate practices that bog down the workplace in bureaucracy. The result is low morale, squandered productivity and poor decision-making. Thankfully, Martin Lindstrom offers specific solutions to restore common sense to organizations that sabotage their own success.
A must-read for anyone wishing to introduce more common sense practices and greater empathy in their workplace.
You will laugh, you will cry, and you will learn the power of common sense in this incredible gift of a book. Oh, and buy one for your boss too!
Lindstrom proves that, more often than not, the bigger your policy manual the smaller your organization's common sense. More importantly, he shows leaders at all levels how to reverse that alarming trend.