For those just catching up to the series, you can read the first post here on how I picked books for my recent quick vacation.
The next post was on the first book – Soccernomics
The next on A Perfect Mess
And the one before this on In Defense of Food.
Ok, The Power of Pull is much like other business books I have read lately. It is sort of a combination of Tribes+Trust Agents with an academic’s slant.
On the one hand, I felt I had read all of this before in other works. While some of the case studies are original to the book, they are so similar to others that I didn’t get a lot of fresh discovery. On the other hand I did note that in my note-taking in the back flyleafs, I had jotted down multiple page numbers for reference.
The contrast of the book is between “Push” – sort of the idea that we used to push products and ideas out to consumers and they would respond, instead of crowdsourcing and co-creating with users to create “Pull”.
I did find one section very useful in describing “a shaping view”. In the authors’ view it describes “a vision, a shaping view, a galvanizing statement about the future of a market, an industry, or a broad social arena that says how tomorrow will be different from today and how everyone will be better off thereby.” (I note how the editor probably put that last word in there to not end the sentence in a preposition)
I think they have hit a good description of powerful vision in our niche arena here. I think what passes for vision in churches and parachurches is often too specific and descriptive. But good vision is broader – a shaping view – that helps guide all the actors towards a direction AND shows how things will be better. I think that type of vision empowers. It assists leads in making iterative decisions to move in a direction that allows for flexibility.
I am going to try and use “shaping view” as a description rather than vision in the future.
For my money, there are a few good observations as well about the power of weak ties theory, which I think is also huge in our arena. But after that, very skip able book.
Dave Travis
Managing Director
Leadership Network
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