“Sack Your Boss!”
Author: Jonathan Jay
Price: 12.99
Publisher: Crown House Publishing
Pages: 164
ISBN: 1845900022
“Have you ever dreamed of turning the tables and sacking your boss?” is the jauntily posed question on the back of this book.
Most people would admit to having had that fantasy at least once, or else they haven’t lived. The ‘pick-up’ appeal of a book with a title and cover like this is probably pretty high. What happens when you actually bother to read the contents is, however, quite another matter.
At the same time as I began reviewing this book by Jonathan Jay, founder of The Coaching Academy, I was also reviewing the rather more superior You Can Have What You Want by Michael Neill. The authors share many similarities – both are success coaches, and former hypnotists and actors – but the similarities end right there.
Jay’s book is more expensive and also shorter, and if you like your advice shot from the hip with plenty of ‘school-of-hard-knocks’ examples, then you may well enjoy this book. However, I’m afraid I didn’t.
It was amateurish and smacked of ‘jack the laddism’.
Jay is, I’m sure, a likeable character in the flesh. He probably performs well on stage and TV, and there are some sensible and practical observations in his book. But a writer or thought leader he is not.
He does include a section on writing a book in his ‘Crash course in marketing’ chapter. If you can write, he says, you can talk, and as a published author, you will have instant credibility. Sorry, Jonathan – not on my bookshelf, you don’t.
Useful? ***
Well-written? **
Practical? ***
Inspirational? **
Value for money? ***
Overall? ***
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Reviewed by Janet Davies, freelance management trainer and editor of the New Life Network
