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Toto's Reflections: The Leadership Lessons from the Wizard of Oz

Kevin Fickenscher

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Feb 26, 2017 Jeff rated it liked it · review of another edition

This book was a bit of a mixed bag for me. While a lot of the "lessons" were good ones to take to heart as both a person and a leader, the Oz fan in me was let down by portions of it.

I will start with my negatives and give fair warning that some will be unfairly critical. First, while simplicity is one of the lessons presented (and truthfully, something more of us should adapt), this book came across as almost too simplistic. While it shows that it took me well over a month to read it, that was This book was a bit of a mixed bag for me. While a lot of the "lessons" were good ones to take to heart as both a person and a leader, the Oz fan in me was let down by portions of it.

I will start with my negatives and give fair warning that some will be unfairly critical. First, while simplicity is one of the lessons presented (and truthfully, something more of us should adapt), this book came across as almost too simplistic. While it shows that it took me well over a month to read it, that was due to time available to devote to it. I easily zipped through about 100 (out of 144) in less than two hours. That's counting highlighting and rereading parts I wanted to take note of. I feel like the concept and it's lessons could have been put together in a different format that could have been just as good, if not better. Speaking of format, while the concept of Toto sharing the lessons he learned during his famous visit to Oz, I feel as though this was lean upon a little too much. Maybe it's because I'm not a huge fan of the first person narrative, maybe it's because it felt like it was both whimsical and self-important at the time, maybe it's something else. It is quite possible that because I have been a huge Oz fan for essentially my entire life, that the inconsistencies in storytelling drive me nuts (ironic if you know anything about the 14 books about Oz that L. Frank Baum wrote). At first it seems like Toto's tale is in-sync with the original novel, but that concept quickly takes a back seat to the classic 1939 film. And her name is GLINDA, not Glenda.

Now for the good. The lessons were all pretty easy to understand and using the backdrop of the well-known story helped illustrate them in a fairly easy manner. There is also a lot of great lessons to be learned from this book as well. It had me either reflecting on ways to incorporate lessons into my leadership style now or it helped affirm some of the ideas and approaches that I currently take. For me, the epilogue and discussion sections at the end were really what saved this book from the lower rating I was debating (mostly because of my ire over story and "Glenda" haha). These two areas were very straightforward with the information they had to share and this info was worthwhile and beneficial. The author spoke with such genuine passion that it really fired me up to put some of these ideas into practice in what I do and made me think about how I could share and teach these ideas to others.

All in all, I wanted to like this book more than I did, but given that it did contain great information and ideas and was a relatively quick read, it was still worthwhile.

If you are looking for a resource on leadership, this is a good start. If you are an Oz purist, you may want to pass or go in being far warned. ...more

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