Stop Listening to the Customer: Try Hearing your Brand Instead
Adam Ferrier
“The customer is not always right. Far from it. What the customer wants is often at odds with what is best for the business or brand. Adam draws on his years of creative agency experience, the wisdom of other voices, as well as marketing science to outline the dangers of listening to the customer too much and reveals what you can do about it. This book will show you how to build a strong brand or business.”
Overall the concept of the book is that the customer is not always correct. The customer doesn’t always know what they want, and even if they do, it might not be the correct thing for your company. The premise of the book is to put your brand and what your company stands for above everything else, including the customer.
I do agree with this premise. However, the book didn’t execute this the best it could have been. The author seemed to jump around a lot and it didn’t have a focus of what each chapter was about. The author also jumped around with short stories, some of which were good but some which could have been removed.
A good half of the book was convincing the reader that the customer is not always right. As the reader I was convinced of this rather early on! I wanted to know more about the author’s point of why the business should be hearing the brand instead. There was hardly any of this section of the book.
The author didn’t seem to explain their point and their side enough. It kind of felt like it ended abruptly and I wanted to hear more of how to actually listen to your brand. At what stages of the business life cycle should you be listening to brand and how much? The author doesn’t actually answer this question.
Overall there was not enough actionable material to take away from the book. Unless you are particularly interested in short stories or the author, I wouldn’t recommend reading this book. 2 stars from Suzanne.
I picked up this book as I was after some actual practical ways to improve myself as a leader and manager. That was exactly what I got! I loved that it had practices to do including a chart of “common mindset” and “effective mindset” for you as a leader to compare yourself in the areas and see where you can improve.
This book was not for me. Although it’s in the “management” section of the library’s non-fiction, it’s all about theory and there is nothing practical or examples of what to do next. Not only is it theory, but it also doesn’t show “the right answer” at the conclusion of the theories. It basically says this can happen, and this can happen and this can also happen. It has no point or message that the book is conveying.
This book is a small, short quick read. It’s a nice little pocket size read. Unfortunately, I don’t think I really got anything out of it. It has some nice tips, including exact questions for team surveys or improving in general. However I felt I have already implemented most, if not all, of the things mentioned in it. I guess it’s a nice little reminder that I’m on the right track.
Suzi picked this book up from the library, so the following review is hers. I was after a book that wasn’t theory based for a change, and had more real life examples and stories to learn from. he title misled me, sadly. “Leadership lessons from Australia’s iconic change makers” – from this, I really expected actual lessons, stories and examples. However, what I received was 2-3 pages from each leader of wishy washy, meant to be inspiring and motivating, crap. This was the type of motivating crap that says “lighten up” or “the measure of success must be yours” or “failure isn’t falling down, it’s remaining where you’ve fallen”. This was paired with a quote on a coloured background page in between each leader’s lesson. If I wanted motivational sentences, I’d read ‘The Secret’!
I absolutely love Lencioni’s books and this one is no exception! Like most of his other books (except this 
This book is a bit of a disappointment from this author. The way it comes across is as a kind of summary of his 5 other books. His other 5 books are fables and go into each item in more detail. The idea of this book was to put each thing in context, however I felt that was lost. He said at the start that you didn’t have to have read his 5 other books first before this one.
This is a review by my wife, who is my resident non-fiction and business book reviewer. She got quite a bit of enjoyment out of this one I think, since she kept going back to read it, and was laughing at times. We borrowed it via Scribd, but it’s not good enough to justify a paperback copy for a reread.
This book is firmly in the business non-fiction category. So, it’s actually a review by my wife (with edits from me for clarity and order). With that being said…
There are dot point summaries at each chapter end to make sure you’ve gotten the main points out of the chapter. This book isn’t going to be a complete reread, but it’s worth having as a reference book for flicking through when I need inspiration.
The cover, as you can see, is a business guy head desking on top of a meeting agenda. I figured I’d just skim over it and then read the other bookies waiting in my bedroom. A trusted business friend recommended it to me – otherwise I wouldn’t have picked it up on my own. Once I had it, I thought I might get more insights into meetings.