Catapulted by Dr. Dave Jennings (review)

Last Year, all first year MBA Students at BYU had to take a communications course from Dr. Dave Jennings. This year, he quit to promote his new book: Catapulted.

So I ordered the book and then Amazon posted to my account that they delivered it to me... only I never got it. I called Amazon to inform them I didn't receive "Catapulted" and they sent it again. I still didn't get it, but a few hours after they said it was delivered the guy that is now in my apartment at Wymount showed up on my door step delivering me both boxes. So, I hope this one extra book helps Dr. Jennings out :)

And now for a review
The book was pretty good. It is told in the form of an alegory -- I'll admit I don't like leadership books like this because the stories aren't real and I feel there is too much "theory" in it all. The only book I've ever liked in this form has been "The Greatest Salesman in the World"

That said I did like a lot of the advice in the book. It talks a lot of leadership and finding where you want to lead someone. It also puts a very necessary focus on people and relationships.

I don't want to give away the "meat and potatoes." I've heard similar things from Zig Ziglar, but "Catapulted" gives the reminder that we can't just follow money and we can't just chase promotions, we really need to focus on accomplishing the goals our values would let us have, and we need to lift others not climb over them as we do.

Short review I know. But he book is not expensive and its a quick read. I really suggest reading it and noting down the advice. There are conversations between the protagonist and a few supporting roles. Again-- very fictional, but you do pick up on some good insight from Jennings. Doing it over again, I would definitely buy the book.

My one complaint about the book is that Dr. Jennings did not focus on his "pit of despair" or "pit of opportunity" that he would talk about in class (and which I assume were his own invention). He hints at similar principles to what he taught us in class (about overcoming challenges.) These were my favorite lessons in his class and I think he'd be well served to write another book on these subjects--and to do it using more anlaytics and logic instead of one general allegory.