Johnny Bunko

After I went to see Daniel Pink, sponsored by the U of MN, he left me a message on my blog asking if I'd be interested in having a few copies of his book to distribute. Hell yes. He was interesting. I'm all about interesting people. Life's a sad place without mental evangelists - it's why I'm mopey about Erik and Klund leaving my workplace - they made it fun with all their generalized interest in everything. So Mr. Pink sent me ten copies of his book, Johnny Bunko: The Last Carrer Guide You'll Ever Need, which is manga that relates several career points (in comic book form), the illustrations done by Rob Ten Pas, who's from MCAD, right here in my own home town (yeah, yeah, I'm from Eagan and it's not even really a first tier burb - but close enough for cheese, as our Sconie neighbors like to say).

Dan's book takes all of 17 minutes to read according to my friend Erik. I think I took about 20 minutes. My old manager who works for a corporate tax affiliate assured me she would take longer because she likes to study the pictures. And I'm not sure how long Ming took, but he declared it excellent, which is seriously high praise from him, so however long it took was worth his while. Point being, it's a quick read. And it's great. In the first part, if you're not someone used to manga (and I thought I was, having a pretty in depth graphic novel background, but I wasn't), you'll wonder, "Why the hell am I reading this?" But if you stick with it into the second point, you'll realize it's actually somewhat inspired. Read 12 or Growing Great Employees, and you'll scarf down thousands of words and many hours, all the time believing they could get to the point in far less time. Daniel Pink gets to the point immediately, particularly if you're a millennial. He illustrates half a dozen points, including "don't go around your boss" (one of my favorites), in a fraction of the time, and in a format so easily accessible that if you don't apprehend the points the first time, you can just go back and reread it six more times and still not be as bored as you would be comparing employees to flowers and weeds.

I'm not sure about the whole Cameron Diaz/Barbara Eden as the managerial wizard comparison, but his protaganist's mentor definitely has more appeal than anyone you'd read about in the Harvard Business Review. I pushed copies out to my director, my manager (who was leaving for different pastures), my friend with a troublesome Millennial, a friend in the PMO who was reading about generational differences, a friend heading to a nonprofit downtown, a manager in another division, and the corporate library. I look forward to seeing someone wondering around with a loaner.