Metaskills: Five Talents for the Robotic Age

Bought as a gift, came in great condition

After becoming a belated (and avid) fan of The Brand Gap and ZIg, I believe this latest Marty Neumeier book is his most important yet. Zig and Brand Gap were smart, fast, pithy, wise and clear, designed to read and digest in the time it took to take off from Chicago and land in LA.Meta Skills requires more concentration and offers greater depth. It is more important, too. This book had depth and texture. Mr. Neumeier's skill lies in delivering complexity with a soupçon of simplicity. Few business "help" or "trend" books do this. Most simply repackage ideas appropriated from others and wrap them in their own bamboozle. What Neumeier's proclivity steals is the thunder of the FutureTrend shamans by deflating their language and watching it fall to earth where we can all get a good look at it.Straightforward is Neumeier's chief brand attribute. In Meta Skills he takes complex concepts and theories on skills and training and counts them out in five steps that will keep us ten steps ahead of the agile robot. The author draws from deep wells across a wide range of disciplines, experiences and philosophies and delivers them simply -- and enjoyably. He uses wit while tweaking his dentist's poor taste in painting and savagery when describing the horrors of the Ryan Air customer experience.I believe Neumeier's passion is reunification -- or at least the tearing down of barriers that serve to "Balkanize" us. We tend to believe certain skills, learning and people are rare experts when really most of the same skills, interests and instincts that we do. By proving emotional intelligence is as vital as rational knowledge, Neumeier offers us hope not doom. For those who create, build, design, and originate ---- this is great news. With Neumeier's encouragement we can postpone the outsourcing to Manilla (or Hal or Watson).Read this book. Then read it backwards. So long as you keep your opposable thumb (your humanity), you have a fighting chance to stay ten steps ahead of the the robots.

Over the last 5 years, I've read just over 100 business books. Out of all these works, I've found Marty Neumeier has proven to be one of only two 'cant miss' authors (The other is Roger L. Martin). With Metaskills, Marty has done it again. This is an exceptional book that I'd consider a must read for everyone in an organization that believes in learning as a competitive advantage.In comparison to The Brand Gap, ZAG and The Designful Company; Metaskills is a much larger book. Though there is a great deal of content, the information is presented in a similarly digestible way to Marty's previous books. Marty presents each of the five Metaskills as understandable and actionable skills that all entrepreneurs or individuals within a company can develop. This is precisely why I've suggested making this mandatory reading for all employees in a companies.The Five Metaskills (and their meaning) are as follows:1. Feeling (Empathy)2. Seeing (Systems Thinking)3. Dreaming (Applied Imagination)4. Making (Prototyping)5. Learning (the opposable thumb of all other Metaskills)Of course, making a book like this mandatory for all employees will have implications. To properly implement all five Metaskills, a company culture will need to build trust to bring out good ideas from anywhere within an organization. These early stage hunches will require experiments to gather data and debate to extract insight. Though these are the keys to continuous innovation and sustainable growth, they also challenge status quo and cause change.However, If you believe as I do that igniting the latent passion, insights and talent stored within your organization is critical long-term success, then you will love this book.PS - Interviews:Marty was kind enough to do 2 interviews with me about this book. The first was about the book as a whole. The second interview is specific to the Metaskill Dreaming. [...] [...]

In an earlier version of this review, I complained bitterly about the production quality of the book. Though the book sports a hard cover, the 287 page volume is inexpensively glue bound and I found that pages from the front matter of the book were falling loose after one week of reading. Disappointed that this serious work from an author I much admire would be falling out of its binding, I issued a bit of a rant.I must report that Marty Neumier, the author of Meta Skills, showed immediate concern for my unfortunate experience with the poorly bound copy of Meta Skills and took personal initiative to have the publisher send a replacement copy to me. A big thank you to Mr. Neumier for his concern and effort.Meta Skills is a must read. I would have preferred a durable stitched binding for the book, but rest assured that the author and the publisher are concerned with the production quality of the book and are responsive to any reports of faulty glue bindings.Now, don't delay. Go grab a copy of this terrific work.

I have been reading a lot of books about new business paradigms, some not-so-new approaches to personal and professional growth, and some books about just feeling good about yourself. This book takes much of what other authors have put forth and serves it up as a single, coherent feast of upbeat, progressive, and sometimes revolutionary ideas. I would recommend it as a starting point for anyone looking to reinvent their career, revitalize their outllok on life and get a sense of the potential that is out there. While much of the material is drawn from other sources, it's a great overview of some of the most important modern thought on business, education and personal achievement. Do not expect a detailed road map to your own personal success, but if you need an atlas that shows you the terrain upon which that map will be drawn, this is a good choice.

I bought Metaskills on the strength of reading Marty Neumeier's previous three brilliant and insightful business books but I was not expecting to be so entranced by the breadth and ambition of this book. Marty has a rare talent for explaining, linking and simplifying a huge range of ideas and concepts to provide a rich, holistic view of mankind's genuine potential.As I travelled through the book I felt increasingly optimistic that, with the metaskills described, there really are no challenges for the human race that are insurmountable.I was particularly inspired by the sections on Systems Thinking, Purpose, The Art of Simplexity and Mastery. I'm now on my second read, but this book is so rich it will deserve several more. His final chapter, a proposal for educational reform should be compulsory reading for every educationalist and politician in the country. We really can change the world, it's all in here.

I've been a keen consumer of all of Neumeier's books. Metaskills does not disappoint, and takes many of Neumeier's themes to a higher level. He tackles territory that is not only useful for business, brand, and design, but that indeed can help individuals (and, really, their posterity) think through better ways of learning, unlearning, relearning and growing in the unpredictable, dynamic, exciting years ahead. At times philosophical and inspiring, at times grounded and utterly pragmatic, I found the "middle half" of the book the most useful in terms of business, strategy, design, clear thinking and how to shift perspectives to get to a better result. But there will be a lot in here for all Neumeier fans. And, as you'd expect, it's accompanied by charmingly clear, communicative graphics.

Buy it. Simple and immediately applicable. I read first the brand gap followed by the the brand flip. Metaskills is the cherry on the top.

A good book to read if you want to grow as a person, grow a team, grow an organisation. Also a great source or references to other books that challenge the way society thinks about critical subjects.

I enjoyed it hugely - a very strong framework (the five skills), and hundreds of fascinating ideas and examples and stories along the way. I love the way you can get the gist just by flipping through the diagrams.