Paid to Think by David Goldsmith with Lorrie Goldsmith - Book review

Paid to Think

A Leader's Toolkit for Redefining Your Future

By: David Goldsmith

Published: October 23, 2012
Format: Hardcover, 544 pages
ISBN-10: 1936661705
ISBN-13: 978-1936661701
Publisher: BenBella Books












"You can never underestimate the value of thinking before taking action, especially when you're about to invest labor, capital, time, and your reputation on an initiative", writes speaker, consultant, and President of Goldsmith Organization LLC, David Goldsmith, in his comprehensive and transformational book Paid to Think: A Leader's Toolkit for Redefining Your Future. The author describes how leaders are often given ideas about leadership, but are rarely offered the practical tools to put those leadership concepts into action.

David Goldsmith recognizes the necessity of leaders creating a fresh approach to the role and importance of leadership within organizations. The author demonstrates how leaders, in order to meet the many and varied challenges facing their organizations, must rethink the the very concept of leadership. David Goldsmith presents a completely integrated approach to leadership through his concept of Enterprise Thinking. At its core, this revolutionary idea transforms a leader's entire focus on what leadership really means, entails, and works on a daily basis. David Goldsmith offers a complete new way of considering leadership, and its fundamental concepts, and challenges leaders to rethink their own beliefs and practices to achieve superior personal and organizational performance.

David Goldsmith (photo left) understands the value of thinking for a leader to achieve success. With the concepts proposed in the book, the author shares the tools and practices for a leader to incorporate thinking, rethinking, and challenging of the traditional thinking into their regular management technique. David Goldsmith also guides leaders toward changing their way of thinking about themselves as leaders and their teams as followers. Instead of the conventional wisdom of doing more, the author challenges leaders and their teams to be more.

David Goldsmith shares the overall framework of Enterprise Thinking in four underlying foundations. The four pillars are as follows:

* Strategizing
* Learning
* Performing
* Forecasting

For me, the power of the book is how David Goldsmith combines a strong theoretical structure, in the form of Enterprise Thinking, with the practical tools and techniques for putting the concept into practice. The author takes a completely holistic approach to leadership, where all of the facets of leadership are fully integrated into a complete reexamination of the leadership role and importance. David Goldsmith integrates strategy, learning, performance, and forecasting into a comprehensive whole.

While many leaders consider these concepts to be separate functions, the author considers them all pieces of the overall management and leadership puzzle. David Goldsmith also bolsters his ideas through the inclusion of case studies, where real world leaders applied the principles of Enterprise Thinking to their own organizations. The results achieved through this fresh approach and challenge to conventional thinking were remarkable in their high rates of success and achievement.

I highly recommend the revolutionary and game changing book Paid to Think: A Leader's Toolkit for Redefining Your Future by David Goldsmith, to any leaders at any level of their organizations, who are seeking a proven and highly effective methodology for transforming an ordinary company into an extraordinary one. This book will transform your leadership skills, and of those across your entire organization, into Enterprise Thinkers who are truly paid to think.