Book Review: Sway
Book Review: Sway – The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior by Ori Brafman & Rom Brafman
There are many books that we all read (i.e. anything and everything by Seth Godin and Malcolm Gladwell). The Brafman brothers should also be on that list. If you enjoyed “Flirting with Disaster” by Marc Gerstein you’ll probably love Sway.
Ori is an organizational expert. He wrote “The Starfish and the Spider” – another great book. Briefly organizations with a centralized spider leader sitting on the top of an org chart struggle greatly when they lose the spider. Starfish organizations have decentralized autonomous divisions that survive the departure of many leaders and can thrive when cut off from the rest of the organization. Starfish good, spider not so much. Rom is a practicing psychologist. Together the two have a funny, engaging and sneakily educational writing style.
The book pulls together a large amount of research concerning how we make decisions and spoon feeds it to us in yummy easy to swallow bite size pieces. Time and time again the brothers will make you aware of thought patterns you unconsciously fall into on a regular basis. It would be down right spooky if it weren’t so fascinating and if you didn’t feel greatly empowered by your new awareness of these mental traps.
There was only one aspect of the book that I didn’t like and that was the intentionally disjointed chapter summaries. They’re annoyingly reminiscent of the format found in “The Black Swan” by Nasim Nicholas Taleb and make just about as much sense.
Sway is an enjoyable, educational and absolutely irresistible read.