The Third Opinion: How Successful Leaders Use Outside Insight to Create Superior Results

Astute but poorly written, this jargon-filled business book centers on a powerful piece of common sense: when you have to make an important decision fast, it helps to get some good advice. Where to turn for such advice is the real problem, of course, and Joni offers many cleared headed suggestions for developing a reliable network of trustworthy advisors.""For such a network to exist,"" she observes,""it has to be created in anticipation of the crisis."" Thus, business leaders would be wise to adopt the three habits that she describes in this book: the Habit of the Mind, the Habit of Relationship and the Habit of Focus. Readers willing to wade through her overly complicated descriptions will find a bedrock of sound principles in these habits, which encourage them to listen, to approach a problem from many angles, to nurture professional friendships, to separate urgent matters from trivial ones and to create teams of curious and practical thinkers. Soni illustrates these ideas in a Star of Complexity Map, which measures a leader's degrees of support, lines of sight and structural trust (how the business affects others within the group). But her entire book is a bit of a complexity itself. The number of buzzwords, although clearly explained and illustrated by a number of real life situations, seems unnecessarily dizzying, and some of the charts confuse what are essentially logical solutions. Nevertheless, there is valuable information here for current, and would-be, business leaders, and many readers will appreciate Joni's decision to include three chapters that tailor her suggestions for professionals at the beginning, middle and height of their careers.