Death to All Sacred Cows: How Successful Business People Put the Old Rules Out to Pasture - Hardcover

Fraser, Beau; Bernstein, David; Schwab, Bill

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1401303315 ISBN 13: 9781401303310

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing, 2008

Synopsis

"Teams Create the Best Solutions."
BANG.

"Always Trust Your Research."
BANG.

"It's Okay to Put Up with Jerks, If They're Talented."
BANG.

When you think about it, there are a lot of Sacred Cows grazing lazily in the halls of corporate America. And we think it's time someone shot them. Dead.

Don't get us wrong. While the authors have nothing against cows in general (they love steak), they do have a problem with Sacred Cows. Blindly doing things because . . . well . . . that's the way they've always been done. Formulas may be comforting, but they rarely work in the real world.

This is the funniest--and truest--business book you'll ever read. Not only do the authors demonstrate how to identify and kill the Sacred Cows in your workplace, they also reveal brilliant alternatives that will put your career in overdrive and help make your business more profitable, innovative, and happy.

From branding ("Branding Is Expensive." BANG.) to leadership ("Follow the Leader." BANG.) to hiring ("Only Hire Someone Who Has Done the Job Before." BANG.) no Sacred Cow is left standing.

Oh, and here's another Sacred Cow of business books:

"No one reads flap copy."
BANG!

About this title

About the Author

The authors practice their own theories of business every day at their own cutting edge advertising agency, The Gate Worldwide. The Gate Worldwide has offices all around the world, including New York, London, Johannesburg, Singapore, and Shanghai. Visit them at thegateworldwide.com. Beau Fraser is managing director of the New York office of The Gate Worldwide. David Bernstein is Executive Creative Director of the New York office of The Gate Worldwide. Bill Schwab also works out of the The Gate Worldwide's New York offices, and has overseen campaigns for BMW, Reebok, Campbell Soup, and Nikon.

Reviews

Written by the owners of advertising agency The Gate Worldwide, this book aims to take the sacred cows of business out to pasture, showing how adages like always trust your research, success breeds success and the customer is always right, are not only old and tired but may lead a business completely astray. At first the book's quirky, humorous style is a welcome change from drier business books, but after a while this chattiness starts to distract from the advice, which tends to be old itself, less than cutting edge. For instance, the Super Bowl XXIX Budweiser campaign in which frogs croaked out the company name was clever, but is now 12 years old; likewise, one discussion of Nike harks back to the Michael Jordan era. The authors may be experts in their field, but this book leaves the reader asking, Where's the beef?
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1401303315
• ISBN 13: 9781401303310
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224