Improvise: Unconventional Career Advice from an Unlikely CEO

by Fred Cook

This year alone, 3.2 million US students will graduate from college and unprecedented percentages of them will be unable to obtain jobs in their desired fields. The key for young professionals to escape this cycle isn’t in the outdated tactics of climbing the corporate ladder, but rather in forging their own unique paths.

Improvise , by GolinHarris CEO Fred Cook, is an inspiring story of how Cook followed an unusual yet fascinating path from young adulthood to the corner office. Improvise combines Cook's lifetime of uncommon experiences with his insights from a successful corporate career, as a means to help recent graduates and young entrepreneurs uncover the professional skills that exist outside any traditional office.

Following college, Cook was initiated into the business world through a dozen lackluster yet enlightening jobs, including pool hustler, chauffeur for drunks, cabin boy, doorman, and Italian leather salesman. Now he provides counsel to blue-chip companies like Nintendo, McDonald's, Wal-Mart, BP, and Toyota, and has worked personally with Jeff Bezos, Michael Eisner, and Steve Jobs. Filled with colorful anecdotes and hilarious yet poignant moments, Improvise delivers practical tips on how people can change their perspectives, using unique life experiences as means to an end.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Personal Development

192 pages, Paperback

First published April 15, 2014

Reviews

[Grant Cousineau · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mentor at work recommended this book as I began searching for the next step in my career path. He didn't over-sell this book, but rather thought it might help break my conventional assumptions about planning a career. Given, my mentor is an experience corporate communications director who spent years as a reporter, bouncing around the country, so he has some familiarity with the idea of "changing lanes." But it's a short, easy-to-read book with some useful insights in it, for just about anyone. Whether I feel like I have the new tools I need to figure my stuff out, I'm not sure yet.

The thing is, there are a lot of successful people out there willing to give you their advice, and Fred's one of them. His story is certainly interesting. He barely had any traditional career experience by his late 30s, and improvised his way from nothing to CEO. It all worked out for him, and in hindsight, it's easy to see why. His experiences did add up to something meaningful after all.

But the thing is that his techniques and approaches are unique to him. Think about it this way: you can't make an introvert and extrovert. You can't over-exaggerate on a resume in the internet age like he did 30 years ago. Most of us don't have parents financially secure enough to take a few years off after college and go live in Greece, knowing that if things don't work out, there's a safety net to fall back on. His experiences worked for his mindset, in his era, with his unique circumstances, and that's great. There's definitely something to be said for some of his ideas, like how he studied up to be a passable tour guide by interviewing a taxi driver and reading brochures, then basically BS-ed through what he didn't know. But suggestions like "Find funding," feel hollow when his examples are a colleague who leaned on a rich college buddy, and the founder of Jimmy John's whose father had $25,000 to help him get started. It's good advice, but not as easy for everyone as he makes Fred sound.

I'd say the book has maybe 30-50% usable information, filled in between with obvious, Google-able tips and memoir stories about Fred's strange life experiences...as well as some illustrations that give the book a lighthearted feel, but really are just empty fillers to help meet a 190-page count. I wish it would have gone a little broader, and used examples a little more accessible to the every-man, such as how working in the service industry can lead to soft skills translatable to the office environment, or maybe share the best advice he ever got about starting a business that he wished someone would've told him. Something with nuts and bolts. But instead, it's a man with an interesting life who made everything work in his favor, and points to it as a blueprint anyone can follow. In short, it's a small, light book that even a middle schooler could read, that makes it sound like becoming a massive success is as simple as just doing whatever you want and making sure you have fun, which might not be the best advice for everyone.

[Lynn Hoff · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book started out ok, with some good reminders to get out of your comfort zone when it comes to people, places, and processes if you want to find new ideas. But it eventually devolved into a condescending lecture, with advice we’ve all heard before about making connections and standing out work, with advice about using unconventional episodes to build a career. All fine and dandy (and why it was recommended to me, an unconventional 52-year-old) but as Cook himself admits at one point, he incurred no student loans and his parents let him job hop for years with no judgment. How many of us get that deal? Add to that his sexist asides throughout the book (to wit: in his tale of being a tour guide, he says, “But from my perspective, the trip was a resounding success, since no one got sick, lost, robbed, or accosted—with the possible exception of an Israeli girl who spent a few nights in my room.” Girl? He was in his 20s. Either he chose to call her girl instead of woman, *ick* or she really was a girl *double ick*) This book was overall pretty terrible.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not all of it is equally applicable to someone who is not in the beginning of their career, but a great balance of personal narrative and professional advice and perspective. Bought multiple copies to share with my junior staff.

[Katie K · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inspirational!!

Reading this has pushed me to consider all aspects of my life - especially my expectations and worries. Inspired to be unafraid and improvise!

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had to read this for class - a great read for young professionals with aspirations of wanting to become leaders!

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a gutsy book on leadership & career development and in my opinion there should be more like it. Maybe there aren’t many CEOs with similar levels of ‘unconventional behaviour’ in their past. But I’m willing to bet there are plenty who got themselves in and out of the same kind of scrapes Fred Cook shares in this book. Although most other CEOs are ‘less inclined to fess’ for obvious reasons.
In the introduction to ‘Improvise’, Fred Cook mentions his PR work with business luminaries like Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs. With amusing irony, he then goes on to break his own rules and confess the kind of stories he would have been paid by Jobs, et al to keep out of the papers. But that’s not a criticism from me. I’m glad Fred Cook is still willing to break rules, even his own. Rule-breaking is far more in-keeping with his career and the heart of the lessons & experiences he aims to share in this book.
The biggest wish I have upon reading this book is that there were more books like it and that more career stories could be told while the events were actually happening. Maybe I’m asking for the impossible but I’d like to read more career journeys from the middle. For instance, I’d love to read some of Fred Cook’s journals because I think I would be able to connect with his experiences (and with him) even more. Fred’s journals would tell his story from a time when he was putting his theory of improvisation into practice, and living it for real. Sure, that version of Fred wouldn’t have been a CEO, and he wouldn’t have known where he or his career would end up, but perhaps that would be the charm? None of us know where our careers are going. This kind of uncertainty makes us feel quite alone but the truth is we’re anything but alone. There are millions of people out there just like us. Thousands of young Fred Cooks following their own sense of adventure, doing what they think is best, regardless of how conventional or unconventional it seems to anyone else. I’d be the first to say that perhaps my wish for ‘live career stories’ is not a fair criticism of Fred Cook or ‘Improvise’ because Fred has done the next best thing. He has shared bravely in retrospect from a position of significant achievement and a fair degree of influence and power, and I thank & applaud him for that.
In the author’s words, this book is dedicated to, “those who don’t know exactly where they’re going, but have the courage to figure it out along the way”. I can think of no higher praise or recommendation than saying I believe Fred Cook authentically wrote ‘Improvise’ to support the people he pictured when he made this dedication.

[Courtney Sieloff · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fast fun read. Full disclosure, I met the author when my boyfriend (now husband) was living in his basement. ;) I work at one of the big PR agencies and while this book was targeted towards a someone beginning a career, I found it refreshing and a good reminder of what my role can be. I think the best part of this book, though, are Fred's stories. The early successes and failures aren't glossed over, proving that trying - and failing - is the best learning experience. So often the path to professional success are set early, and it was fantastic to know that those of us who take an alternative path can still achieve big things - if we continue to think big.

[Bob Pickard · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great for an