Book Review — Winning Nice by Dawna Stone

Winning Nice by Dawna Stone I received a review copy of Dawna Stone’s new book Winning Nice — how to succeed in business and life without waging war. I was looking forward to reading it as there has simply been too much out there about winning at any cost, nailing the competition in any way, and Wall Street whipping the competition through aggressive questions and answers on the latest financial news show.

Dawna has cred: she went on Martha Stewart’s The Apprentice and won using the principles in the book. And while the book is NOT about how she won the “reality” show, the principles in the book are the ones she lives by and used in the show.

There are two major sections to the book:

Build Your Foundation. It all starts with principles that you must have in order to be successful in your work and your life.
Build your future. These are the activities you must be working now that will help ensure success in the future.

My readers here need to know that I have a bias towards books: I’m looking for concrete, discrete action items that people can use to move toward a goal. The more solid the actions and how they pertain to building the skills of a Cubicle Warrior, the more I will like the book.

Winning Nice has some of the solid areas that need to be done:

Learning to communicate
Giving recognition
Be part of the team
etc.

While most sections had good suggestions for how to put some of this into action, I was left short too many times with examples of successful people who had done the principle — but not how it was actually done. Not enough of the specific struggles that were faced by these people that could be relevant to a person working in a corporate cube.

While the principles in the book are spot on, the specifics were left wanting by this reader.

Rating: 2 of 5 Cubes, based upon needing more specifics in how to reach the great principles outlined in the book

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