The Corporate Curmugeon"" offers a business parable filled with practical career insights about a young businessman whose mentor, Max Elmore, shows him that success and job satisfaction can be found in innovation and experimentation.

The main character in Dale Dauten's magnificent story, The Max Strategy, is Max Elmore, an old man with infectious enthusiasm, insatiable curiosity, and wisdom gained from a lifetime of management consulting to leaders across a spectrum of organizations. Max meets the book's fictional author during an extended delay at O'Hare Airport, and during their ensuing conversation, one of the topics Max discusses is 'becoming a flukologist':

"Burton Malkiel (A Random Walk Down Wall Street) dreamed up an imaginary coin-tossing contest. A thousand contestants in a line; heads was a winner, tails a loser. So the thousand people toss their coins and about five hundred get tails and lose. The five hundred with heads toss again. After seven tosses there are just eight coin tossers left. By this time crowds start to gather to witness the surprising ability of these expert coin tossers. The winners are overwhelmed with adulation. They are celebrated as geniuses in the art of coin tossing - their biographies are written and people urgently seek their advice. After all, there were a thousand contestants and only eight could consistently flip heads."

"Naturally, if you aren't smart and hardworking and all that, you're going to fail ten times out of ten. But if you do all the right things, guess what? You fail nine times out of ten. Think how many great novels you've read that never became best-sellers. Think how many actors you see in local or regional theaters who are as good as those on Broadway. Their problem isn't talent or work ethic; it's that they aren't expert coin tossers."

"Remember this: The coin tosser who gets the most 'heads' is the one who gets the most tosses. Given enough chances, chance is your friend."

"Yes, a fluke is a fluke. But you could use a fluke in your career, no? So maybe we should learn their secrets and become 'flukologists.'"

"If you innovate instead of imitate, and work every day to be different from yesterday, you'll improve your odds: You no longer will fail nine times out of ten. You'll fail eight times out of ten."

"Real achievement is a kind of lottery. You enter by being competent and hardworking. Most people get one shot in the lottery, playing at one-in-ten odds. I'm trying to show you how you can enter again and again, at two-in-ten odds. Here's the logic. Most people try to be like the successful people in their field. The result is that everyone does what everyone else is doing. If a great new idea comes along, sure, they adopt it. So does everyone else. You see what is happening to each of them? Each is trying to be exceptional, but ends up going about it by being just like everyone else. The upshot? They have, at best, a one-in-ten chance of producing results in the top ten percent of their profession."

"If you want to be extraordinary, the first and hardest step is to stop being ordinary."

"People try to conform to success, but to be successful is to be a non-conformist. Let's put it this way: You don't become a Picasso by taking a Picasso print and running it through a Xerox machine."

"You can't get to better without first getting to different. Every blessed day. Believe me, it'll wear you out. No, I'm not suggesting the easy way out: this is the exhausting way out. But it's also the exciting way out, the alive way out."

This week, I'm teaching at the Wow Institute in Henniker, New Hampshire. 75 fundraisers from across North America have come seeking ideas to make them better. If we're successful, participants will learn to become innovative flukologists and expert coin-flippers who reject 'ordinary' and are committed to pursuing 'different' every day. It's the risky path, but it's also the only path to 'better,' the only path to 'extraordinary.'

(from www.crawdaddycove.com)

This book was my introduction to Dale Dauten and remains one of my favorite business books because of the novel way the author finds to make practical advice memorable.

The book is organized as a conversation between a successful entreprenuer and a stranded burned-out businessman at snowed-in O'Hare airport. Max Elmore,our hero, helps his new friend see the nature of innovation and the connection between innovation and business success.

For the person who wants the reputation as an innovator (and ain't that what makes life fun?) this is a little book that can be read and understood in a few short hours.

If you have the courage to devote the additional time to completing the exercises outlined in the book you can expect to uncover some interesting experiments that might lead you to some new methods and new thinking.

If you are interested in innovatation and experimentation as an employee or a business owner, the few hours reading this book will be richly rewarded.

A very very good book. The great thing about this book is that once you start reading is, you will not let go... The book tries to reinvent our thinking from the normal rut. Definately a good read. You might not agree with the author at certain junctures, but then he comes up with very good examples.

This is a good book, but I'd say it's a bit thin on detail and information. It is basically composed of many feel good success stories.
There's no knowledge here that I found to be of of the ordinary or particularly helpful, but's a good easy read.

Couldn't put it down. I would recommend this book to anyone that has DARES to dream... It puts success in "simple" terms and not anything like the corporate books I have read in the past- that advises mostly on the "rules" on how you "should" do things....I LOVED IT! I'll probably re-read in about 6 months...