My best bad review

When you publish a book, you quickly learn that not everyone will love what you’ve made — and that’s exactly as it should be.

When Scrum Mastery came out, Mike Cohn told me something I’ve never forgotten:

He was right.

My least successful book is Team Mastery, but it’s still one of my favourites — partly because self-managing, diverse teams are still the best hope we have in complex environments, and partly because of the beautiful milestone cards that Ole designed for me.

And yes, the reviews were… mixed.

One began:

“A few tidbits of good advice wrapped in a nauseating package.”

The reviewer went on to describe my fictional team as the “Famous Five of Agile.”

While it’s never nice to read something negative about your work, if you look through a different lens it can be equally powerful. Just like trying to build a product that attempts to appeal to everyone will lead to something that delights nobody, any book about change is destined to not please everyone.

So was it a failure?

I don’t think so because, every so often, something else happens.

Someone wrote to tell me they’d been feeling guilty about a delayed release — wondering what they could have done differently — and then they stumbled across a page in Team Mastery titled “Today we delayed a release.”

They said it was reassuring. That it made them feel less alone and gave them some comfort in the difficult decision they took to maintain their quality levels while giving them tools and resources to help them in this area in the future.

That one message brought to mind the Starfish story — the little boy walking along a beach, throwing stranded starfish back into the sea one by one.

Someone says, “There are thousands! You can’t possibly make a difference.”

And they reply, “I made a difference to that one.”

If Team Mastery only helped that one team, it was worth writing.

And now, as the first reviews for Calm REBEL Leadership start to appear, I’m reminding myself of the same thing.

Not everything we make has to please everyone.

It just has to reach the people who need it — when they need it.

That’s enough.

Stay calm…Stay rebellious

P.S. The first review at least is positive