I think De Bono's idea's are great. His writing is frustrating, repetitive, and irritating. ( )

Think! Before it’s too late, I’m afraid left me thinking ‘Get an editor, even though it’s too late.

I have respect for De Bono and he has a knack of capturing some interesting ideas, but I’ afraid his writing style seems dedicated to either burying them or fending off readers to the point that they give up trying to identify them.

As a result I feel compelled to speak more of the failings of the book than the ideas it may contain.
The book is undoubtedly far too long. A properly edited book of 20% the length would make a much better read. Let me suggest some improvements

The current book is terminally repetitive. Sometimes De Bono acknowledges the repetition and it is used mistakenly to reinforce a point, but often the repetition seems totally unplanned. It’s as if De Bono spilled a briefcase full of draft copies on the way to the publisher, haphazardly scoped them up and this became the book. I genuinely found myself checking that page numbers had not been duplicated.

There’s a sense of De Bono’s frustration that pervades the book. There are endless references to the successes, often repeated of course, with claims of real change achieved, and yet a constant sense that he feels the ideas have not been fully appreciated and adopted.

There are interminable references to his other books, and if you’ve read those then the regurgitation of those books here must multiply the sense of repetition many fold. Indeed it’s not until page 175 that there’s the bold claim that an idea is being described here for the first time! The idea, ‘Septines’ spans just over three pages and is unremarkable, but for it then leading directly to an assault on the British Awards and Honours System which it seems has seen fit to award sports personalities, but not Mr De Bono.

Along with a sense of De Bono selling his other wares, both books and training courses, the result is far from satisfying.

This is a great shame. The final chapters do feel like a cry of help from someone who feels they have been carrying the torch of change alone for too long, despite numerous examples in the book where people appear to have adopted the ideas.

Amongst all of this I did find myself scribbling notes, particularly of some of the examples of results achieved when the described tools have been put to use. There is some good stuff in here.

If only someone could have wrested the manuscript from De Bono’s hand to wield a red pen and carve out from the draft the key points in a coherent structure, I’m sure this would be a better book and one that might be much more effective at soliciting the support that De Bono seems to be in search of.

It’s a book to get from the library rather than one worth adding to your reference collection. ( )