Metaskills: Five Talents for the Robotic Age 1st Edition

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 read this book at least twice before, both underlining in black and highlighting in yellow! I'm now reading it again, finding passages I overlooked before, true gems. I also find myself reaching for the yellow highlighter - again! This time I am also benefitting from The 46 Rules of Genius, which summarizes most of the key points Marty Neumeier has been making.

This is Marty's magnum opus. METASKILLS is required reading for anyone who want to thrive in today's world. After thousands of years of living in a "man-made" world the time has come to reclaim the 5 skills that most define us as human beings. What I like most is that his latest book is less about design and more about how we ought to be living in this day and age.Megan Stephens, my business partner and I are speaking at a Marketing to Women conference in May and we will be sure to recommend Marty's book, METASKILLS to the audience.