Customer Reviews

A Peacock in the Land of Penguins

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I am an attorney practicing labor and employment law and have used this book in diversity training. It is the best I have read, and believe it conveys the benefits of diversity in a simple and easy to understand way. All levels of employees, from rank and file to top executives, can (and in my experience do)relate to its message.

The best thing about a fable is that they can be used to deliver harsh messages in soft tones. In this story the penguins are bureaucratic bound managers that are unwilling to tolerate any change, even if it is the mere mention of change. The peacock is a hotshot (in the good sense) new hire that is full of energy, new ideas, creativity and purpose. Similar dynamic individuals added to the organizations are an eagle, hawk, mockingbird, and a swan. All started jobs in an organization run by penguins where the penguins professed a desire to execute some changes. At first the penguins were happy to see the infusion of "new blood."
However, over time the penguins grew insecure over the prospects of change and together they forced out all of the "unusual" birds. Although the nonconformists suffered a bit, they managed to gather together and form a dynamic and creative group that they called the "Land of Opportunity."
As the material in the afterword demonstrates, this is an excellent book for diversity and creativity training. In the modern business world, every employee needs to be operating on all creative cylinders and must be heard. For it is impossible to predict where the next great idea will arise so it could very well be suicidal to discount or suppress any new idea that is raised.

I was asked to read this book for work and since reading it I have shared it with many others including my 8 year old daughter. Its an easy read and really gets the point across.

I did not buy this book. It was given to me by an associate as an `idea' for a corporate-wide human resources conference.

As a corporate director, I was flabbergasted by the simpleton tone of this book. Some pages only contained 6 to 10 words while others may contain more words but made little sense. The theory behind this book is that people are different and we should allow diversity to flourish in order to make the company and the employee happy. This is an idea that any thinking manager caught up with a couple of generations ago.

It is no wonder that our creativity and abilities to sustain long term profitability - not to mention our adaptability and flexibility - is going down the drain. It is not only this book but others I have seen that are very similar. They start by developing a catchy theme and then building a one-trick pony system around the theme. It is a cartoonish way to manage but I suppose in this twitter world anything with heft is dealt out of the deck. It is so sad to see people traveling down this path.

I did find value in the book by giving it to my grandchildren to read. They enjoyed it.

If you wish to really explore this topic, I would highly recommend Don't Bring It to Work: Breaking the Family Patterns That Limit Success.

I hope you find this review helpful.

Michael L. Gooch, SPHR

very fast service, great price. could not ask for better service with this retail merchant. would recommend to anyone looking for this type of merchant.

This book helped me greatly to determine what was happening in my life at a particular time in my office and its personnel structure. It takes you trhought the characters on a journey of office environments and the typical personalities found therein. I do not have anything but praise for this title. A great read, jovial, and humorous it is a definite buy.

This text so oversimplifies identity issues that it is at once insipid and offensive. The "solution" at the end? We should all just accept that everybody does things differently. Or, in other words: Can't we all just get along? If this insight really requires several dozen pages of poor writing and saccharine pseudo-innocence, we're in worse trouble than I thought.

As I grow up to involve with more complex problems, a mean to solve or just demonstrate the problem becomes simpler -fables or parables. Many parables came out. Mostly are "change-and-corporate" and "animal-related". Ranged from monkey (The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey, 0688103804), mouse (Who Moved My Cheese?, 0399144463), Fish! (0786866020), frog (Eat That Frog! 1583762027), and now it is the time for bird, peacock and penguins.
This book is about corporate culture (Penguins) and how to deal with the culture (by exotic birds, including a peacock). It is quite boring at the beginning and I found it's interesting about 1/3 of the book. After 1/3 of the book I keep debating myself if I should follow the penguin's rules or be an exotic bird. The author did good job to keep reader figure out what the story should go to.
The weak point of this book comes into 3 issues, book organization (after first half), the application parts (tip and trick), and theory behind story. After those exotic birds found Land of Opportunity, I feel like the author couldn't figure out how to end a story nicely. The author adding the tip &trick parts, which I found it's too mundane to add to this kind of elegant book, can also support this statement. Unlike other animal-parable story, this book has no principle to deal with the situation. Although it's not wrong, but if the author just rewrites the book with philosophy focused on other exotic birds' theory, it would make this book billion copies sold.
I recommend this book to the new comers who join century-found corporate. However, please read with warning and find other support books, such as Fish!. Otherwise, you will end up with another frustration experience as you're facing now.

As I grow up to involve with more complex problems, a mean to solve or just demonstrate the problem becomes simpler -fables or parables. Many parables came out. Mostly are "change-and-corporate" and "animal-related". Ranged from monkey (The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey, 0688103804), mouse (Who Moved My Cheese?, 0399144463), Fish! (0786866020), frog (Eat That Frog! 1583762027), and now it is the time for bird, peacock and penguins.
This book is about corporate culture (Penguins) and how to deal with the culture (by exotic birds, including a peacock). It is quite boring at the beginning and I found it's interesting about 1/3 of the book. After 1/3 of the book I keep debating myself if I should follow the penguin's rules or be an exotic bird. The author did good job to keep reader figure out what the story should go to.
The weak point of this book comes into 3 issues, book organization (after first half), the application parts (tip and trick), and theory behind story. After those exotic birds found Land of Opportunity, I feel like the author couldn't figure out how to end a story nicely. The author adding the tip &trick parts, which I found it's too mundane to add to this kind of elegant book, can also support this statement. Unlike other animal-parable story, this book has no principle to deal with the situation. Although it's not wrong, but if the author just rewrites the book with philosophy focused on other exotic birds' theory, it would make this book billion copies sold.
I recommend this book to the new comers who join century-found corporate. However, please read with warning and find other support books, such as Fish!. Otherwise, you will end up with another frustration experience as you're facing now.