The preface starts of really strong with a short background of Jake Knapp’s personal life and career. While I have to admit guilty to being very motivated, driven and impressed by people who’s success is of his caliber, it is the passion with which he delivers the purpose of the book that intrigues me. You can tell that he enjoys what he truly loves what he does, and for that reason I want to listen to what he has to say and learn from his breadth of experience.
The book start off with a couple anecdotes of the success of the methodology being described to immediately captivate the audience. When you hear of a robot company, Savioke, that delivers a toothbrush straight to the door of your hotel, and proceeds to do a happy dance, how do you not want to keep reading? Whether you are in tech or not, this short success story immediately makes you wonder how you can achieve something similar. Like the people behind the cameras during the experiment, you can tell that Jake was rooting for every member of that team, and by proxy, so is the reader.
Whether you are interested in robotics, brewing coffee, fitness, communication at work or medicine, Jake did a great job and using examples from a great variety of examples so as to appeal to readers of various backgrounds. I would go so far as saying that this is a must read for anyone who enjoys solving problems in our outside of work. Managers, designers, engineers and pretty much anyone from any other profession would benefit from the whole and individual concepts taught throughout the book.
It is extremely easy to read, and has a very good flow so it’s easy to follow. The book itself felt like a sprint as the facilitator, the author, took you into a book-long meeting, and made you question how you ever resolved anything at work in the past. It was the perfect mix of prefacing every problem with sufficient reasoning for it to require a solution, showing several alternative solutions that one could follow without facing the paradox of choice, and inserting real life examples exactly when they were needed.
As I was reading about the various methods to identify problems or iterate on solutions, all I could think of was how I could apply it in my workplace. As I was reading about the various success or failure stories, I kept making mental notes of dos and dont’s, while also being motivated to reach the same spot as all these other individuals have in the past.
One thing I noticed was a very interesting and consistent mix of gender references. I applaud Jake for not introducing gender biases and always referring to one party (i.e. the interviewer) by one gender and another (i.e. the interviewee) by another. This may it very easy to differentiate who he was referring to, and eliminated gender bias.
This book was absolutely entertaining, educational and even exhilarating at some points. I can’t wait to find myself in the situation where my team and I will need to go through a whole sprint so I can experience everything myself. In addition to the clear and succinct writing, Jake was kind enough to summarize everything in the end so no one ever has an excuse to not follow everything step by step.
Thank you so much for sharing this book with the world. A MUST read for sure.