cover image Unstuck: A Tool for Yourself, Your Team, and Your World

Unstuck: A Tool for Yourself, Your Team, and Your World

Keith Yamashita, Sandra Spataro. Portfolio, $19.95 (179pp) ISBN 978-1-59184-037-4

This graphically modern and interactive volume demands that readers get themselves--and their businesses--out of whatever rut they're in. By first encouraging the acknowledgment of being stuck, Yamashita and Spataro, a consultant and business school professor, respectively, pave the way for escape. They describe the seven emotional manifestations of being stuck (feeling alone, overwhelmed, directionless, battle-torn, worthless, hopeless, exhausted) and provide guidance for moving past them, through case studies (from the U.S. Postal Service to Apollo 13), exercises, charts and mantras such as""find the quiet rock star"" and""write the headline from the future."" It's alternately funny and thought provoking; and with rarely more than 200 words per page, it doesn't resemble a typical dense business tome. Yet somehow, in its succinctness (and despite its overuse of catchphrases), this book renders specific and practical points as well as enough inspiration to help all kinds of individuals and teams break through mental walls.