Book Review: Noble Enterprise

Last month I received a review copy of NOBLE ENTERPRISE: The Commonsense Guide to Uplifting People and Profits by Darwin Gillett. I had my doubts about the book when I received it..the cover art and use of the word ‘spirit’ sprinkled on the front and back covered just gave me a bad feeling about the book.

I started reading the book last week and found it to be interesting yet hard to read.  The concept of the book is that organizations have forgotten that there is a connection between employee morale and profitability.   The entirety of the book is based around showing how focusing on your people will bring profit.  In fact, the by-line of the PR Release that came with the book states that the book is a:

…guide to gaining the competitive advantage by developing the inner talents and energies of your employees.

In general, I would agree with this concept. The author goes to great length to tell the story of a company that was losing $1 million per day and came back from the brink of disaster using the concepts of allowing people to be who they are and putting their need ahead of the business. The story is a great one and has some really good lessons about leading people.

That said, the book falls into the trap of trying to do to much.  While reading it I began to wonder if it was a book on leadership or a book on spirituality in the workplace.  Perhaps it is both.  Nothing wrong with that but the approach taken causes the book to miss the mark. As an example, let’s take a look at a snippet from the release that came with the book.  This snippet gives you a lot of insight into the book:

Noble Enterprise guides and inspires business owners and executives to lead their people in creating business performance far beyond the norm, in the process awakening and activating the rich array of human energy, wisdom, passion and purpose for personal growth, for business growth and prosperity and for enhancing society’ development.

Whew.   That was one sentence!

When I read this sentence, I get confused.  What’s the book’s real purpose?

This lack of focus and the fact that many passages within the book are long and wordy took this book from being a great one to being an OK book. I like the concept of this book but have a problem with the long-windedness (is that a word??) The book is full of long sentences like the one above that really do nothing more than add  to the book’s word count.

I love the idea of “people first” and would like nothing more than to wholeheartedly recommend this book but I can’t do that. If you’re willing to slog through long complicated passages to get a few gold nuggets then grab this book. I think there are some good insights held within the book’s covers.  In short, I’d say this book is good read but not a great one.