I’ve been lucky enough to be sent a copy of ‘It’s Not About You – A Little Story About What Matters Most in Business‘, which is the new book by Bob Burg and John David Mann.

It’s a business parable, following fictional character Ben as he attempts to convince furniture makers Allen & Augustine to agree to a merger, and highlighting important lessons about leadership along the way. I hadn’t read Burg and Mann’s first book, The Go-Giver, which also uses the parable format, but obviously it’s been a tried a trusted way of imparting wisdom and lessons since the Greeks. And Burg and Mann both have decades of experience in sales and business leadership – and also experience of each writing various previous books, including previous collaborations.

I’ve read through it twice now, and purely on a story level it’s enjoyable enough. The plot and characters are all to serve the ultimate purpose of the book so it would be unfair to judge it purely on a literary level, but I’ve certainly read worse works of pure fiction. It’s also a fairly quick read in terms of length and pacing – treating it purely as a story it’s a few hours at most to find out what happens.

Blurry photo of a good book - my copy of It's Not About You

But obviously the intention is to illustrate lessons about leadership and business, and to provoke you to think about them as they’re illustrated by the Yoda-like Aunt Elle. And the combination of real-world, out-of-the-boardroom examples work fairly well, along with the explicit summaries of the key lessons at the end of each chapter, which are justified in the fictional sense by Ben being given a blank book by his wife Melanie to store his knowledge. They’re also repeated at the end of the book.

But is It’s Not About You useful?

So obviously it’s enjoyable enough as a quick parable in leadership, but has it got useful lessons in it? The short answer is yes, and without spoiling anything, the title makes it fairly obvious that the lessons are about leadership, building businesses and most importantly how you can inspire, lead and interact with the other people in your company, rather than trampling over them.

With that in mind, it’s obvious in line with some other business authors, such as Seth Godin, and CEOs such as Zappos Tony Hsieh, who both give quotes on the dust jacket.

If you’ve read their books, there are still a couple of things that you might learn from It’s Not About You, but the main advantage is reframing the advice as a personal story, and the fact that it’s perhaps easier to stomache the lessons in how to act when they’re being told to someone else, and you’re not being taught at. I can certainly think of a few people who would probably prefer to read It’s Not About You than other business books, and they’d definitely get some valuable lessons from it. Essentially the value of the book is whether it transfers the lessons about leadership to you in a way which actually inspires you to change/act, and it’s definitely made me consider changing the way I do certain things already, so in that respect it’s well worth picking up a copy.

It’s out in the UK towards the end of November, in hardcover, e-Book and AudioBook formats, and you can pre-order from various retailers, including Amazon.