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ericatoelle's review
3.0
⭐ = did not finish. I really tried, and I couldn't do it.
⭐⭐ = did finish. Did not enjoy it.
⭐⭐⭐ = enjoy while reading but probably won't think about it again.
⭐⭐⭐⭐ = enjoyable, will stick with me. Will recommend it to other people.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ = resonates in my soul, changed my view on life.
⭐⭐ = did finish. Did not enjoy it.
⭐⭐⭐ = enjoy while reading but probably won't think about it again.
⭐⭐⭐⭐ = enjoyable, will stick with me. Will recommend it to other people.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ = resonates in my soul, changed my view on life.
erikars's review against another edition
3.0
I see this as a good consolidated reference for advice on how to create more just workspaces. Kim Scott strikes a good balance between speaking from her own experience while also acknowledging the limitations of her own experience. She doesn't pull in other individual voices as much as I might have liked. She does discuss challenges and experiences that go beyond her own. My main criticism of this book is that it felt a bit rushed. There were two key models, and it didn't quite feel like they were woven together. (More on the structures below.) That said, the book gathers together a bunch of advice that I have learned in a wide variety of contexts and puts them in one readable package, so it's a worthwhile read for those interested in creating more just workspaces where people are able to do their best work.
The heart of the book is the idea that a just workplace allows everyone to do their best work. This is better for everyone. It's better for the people traditionally harmed by workplace injustice because they do not have to deal with the personal and professional consequences of injustice. It's also better for the people who are not directly impacted by workplace injustice because they will have a workplace that is overall more effective, productive, higher trust, and more pleasant to work in.
The book has two main models for thinking about just work. The first is a matrix of types of workplace justice against different roles people can play in cultures or incidents of workplace injustice. The types of injustice discussed are bias, prejudice, bullying, harassment, discrimination, and physical violations. The book explores each of these from the perspectives of the people harmed, people doing harm, leaders, and upstanders (those who see the situation and ought to act as allies to the person harm). The bulk of the book explores, in a semi-structured manner, the matrix created from crossing the types of harm with the roles involved. It is something of a grab bag of ideas and techniques. There is a lot of good material. Much of it will likely be familiar if you've consumed other information in this space.
Kim Scott emphasizes that that people can — and often do — play more than one of these roles, sometimes even in the same situation. This can make figuring out an appropriate response more challenging. For example, Scott emphasizes throughout the book that the only obligation of the person harmed is to get themselves to safety. Anything beyond that is strictly optional. However, if the person harmed is also a leader, they also have an obligation to respond to incidents of workplace injustice. This can put leaders who are harmed in a challenging situation where they have to play both roles at once.
The second core model, which is highlighted on the cover of the book but really only discussed near the end, is a 2x2 which looks at workplace injustice through the lenses of two dynamics: Respecting Individuality vs Demanding Conformity and Collaboration vs Coercion. This distinction was really useful for me. The way they are defined in this book, conformity has to do with the belief that some difference — such as race or gender — should dictate the behavior of people. Conformity is about expectation. Coercion has to do with using various degrees of force to change people's behavior or hold them down. Coercion is about violence (not necessarily physical), whether that's violence in the present or raising the spectre of historical violence.
I think this distinction is incredibly useful. Both have negative consequences. However, the appropriate response differs depending on whether one is dealing with a culture of coercion, conformity, or both. Although it's not a focus of the book, I suspect that many discussions about racism, for example, go badly because when people are made aware of the ways that they create a culture of conformity, they feel like they are being told that they create a culture of coercion.
Using this model, the book discusses four different models of working and ways to respond to each: Brutally Ineffective workplaces are both coercive and demand conformity; these are the hardest cultures to fix. Cultures of Self-righteous Shaming are coercive even as they respect individuality; these cultures need to be shifted so that bullying is not a norm. Cultures of Oblivious Exclusion are collaborative yet demand conformity (often because they were historically homogeneous); these are the cultures where intentions are good but the numbers paint a clear picture of bias. In these cultures, it's important to make bias visible through bias interruption, quantification, and efforts to shift the overall experience and demographics of those in the minority.
The fourth quadrant, which is collaborative and respects individuality, is Just Work. In these environments people can be at their most effective because they are able to work without the constant frictions (or worse) which come from workplace injustice. Just Work environments are built on a simple and yet challenging-to-realize set of characteristics: kindness, trust, psychological safety feeling that it is safe to speak up, feeling that you'll be heard if you do speak up, curiosity, experimentation.
As I noted in the beginning, these two models are approached fairly separately. I think that is the main weakness of the book. It would have been much more powerful if the collaboration/coercion and respect individuality/conformity dynamics had been woven more effectively into the discussion of roles and harms. Still, it was a worthwhile read.
The heart of the book is the idea that a just workplace allows everyone to do their best work. This is better for everyone. It's better for the people traditionally harmed by workplace injustice because they do not have to deal with the personal and professional consequences of injustice. It's also better for the people who are not directly impacted by workplace injustice because they will have a workplace that is overall more effective, productive, higher trust, and more pleasant to work in.
The book has two main models for thinking about just work. The first is a matrix of types of workplace justice against different roles people can play in cultures or incidents of workplace injustice. The types of injustice discussed are bias, prejudice, bullying, harassment, discrimination, and physical violations. The book explores each of these from the perspectives of the people harmed, people doing harm, leaders, and upstanders (those who see the situation and ought to act as allies to the person harm). The bulk of the book explores, in a semi-structured manner, the matrix created from crossing the types of harm with the roles involved. It is something of a grab bag of ideas and techniques. There is a lot of good material. Much of it will likely be familiar if you've consumed other information in this space.
Kim Scott emphasizes that that people can — and often do — play more than one of these roles, sometimes even in the same situation. This can make figuring out an appropriate response more challenging. For example, Scott emphasizes throughout the book that the only obligation of the person harmed is to get themselves to safety. Anything beyond that is strictly optional. However, if the person harmed is also a leader, they also have an obligation to respond to incidents of workplace injustice. This can put leaders who are harmed in a challenging situation where they have to play both roles at once.
The second core model, which is highlighted on the cover of the book but really only discussed near the end, is a 2x2 which looks at workplace injustice through the lenses of two dynamics: Respecting Individuality vs Demanding Conformity and Collaboration vs Coercion. This distinction was really useful for me. The way they are defined in this book, conformity has to do with the belief that some difference — such as race or gender — should dictate the behavior of people. Conformity is about expectation. Coercion has to do with using various degrees of force to change people's behavior or hold them down. Coercion is about violence (not necessarily physical), whether that's violence in the present or raising the spectre of historical violence.
I think this distinction is incredibly useful. Both have negative consequences. However, the appropriate response differs depending on whether one is dealing with a culture of coercion, conformity, or both. Although it's not a focus of the book, I suspect that many discussions about racism, for example, go badly because when people are made aware of the ways that they create a culture of conformity, they feel like they are being told that they create a culture of coercion.
Using this model, the book discusses four different models of working and ways to respond to each: Brutally Ineffective workplaces are both coercive and demand conformity; these are the hardest cultures to fix. Cultures of Self-righteous Shaming are coercive even as they respect individuality; these cultures need to be shifted so that bullying is not a norm. Cultures of Oblivious Exclusion are collaborative yet demand conformity (often because they were historically homogeneous); these are the cultures where intentions are good but the numbers paint a clear picture of bias. In these cultures, it's important to make bias visible through bias interruption, quantification, and efforts to shift the overall experience and demographics of those in the minority.
The fourth quadrant, which is collaborative and respects individuality, is Just Work. In these environments people can be at their most effective because they are able to work without the constant frictions (or worse) which come from workplace injustice. Just Work environments are built on a simple and yet challenging-to-realize set of characteristics: kindness, trust, psychological safety feeling that it is safe to speak up, feeling that you'll be heard if you do speak up, curiosity, experimentation.
As I noted in the beginning, these two models are approached fairly separately. I think that is the main weakness of the book. It would have been much more powerful if the collaboration/coercion and respect individuality/conformity dynamics had been woven more effectively into the discussion of roles and harms. Still, it was a worthwhile read.
lakecake's review
3.0
I won a copy of this book from Goodreads Giveaways and am voluntarily leaving a review.
Just Work is a handbook of sorts about how to make a more equitable working environment, full of tips for (mostly) managers and (some) lower-level employees. There’s a lot of good in here and what is given as specifics is easy to follow and to implement, even on a small scale. There are problematic things in here, though—there’s a lot of white feminism in my opinion, a lot of “lean in to get this done and succeed in a man’s world” and that’s not everyone’s goal nor, frankly, should it be. And though the author is amazingly candid in giving some terrible examples of times when she did the exact wrong thing…she is much lighter in examples of doing the right thing and that’s concerning to me. How do I trust this person when she made a lot of really and decisions and can’t give me more concrete examples of when she did the right thing? And more importantly, when she did the right thing for the right reasons, not just because as a consultant it was her job to help the CEO make the business more profitable? So it’s a pretty good book on the topic but it is by no means the best one.
Just Work is a handbook of sorts about how to make a more equitable working environment, full of tips for (mostly) managers and (some) lower-level employees. There’s a lot of good in here and what is given as specifics is easy to follow and to implement, even on a small scale. There are problematic things in here, though—there’s a lot of white feminism in my opinion, a lot of “lean in to get this done and succeed in a man’s world” and that’s not everyone’s goal nor, frankly, should it be. And though the author is amazingly candid in giving some terrible examples of times when she did the exact wrong thing…she is much lighter in examples of doing the right thing and that’s concerning to me. How do I trust this person when she made a lot of really and decisions and can’t give me more concrete examples of when she did the right thing? And more importantly, when she did the right thing for the right reasons, not just because as a consultant it was her job to help the CEO make the business more profitable? So it’s a pretty good book on the topic but it is by no means the best one.
mariagarnett's review
4.0
This book is incredibly important and contains TONS of practical, actionable advice for people in all sorts of roles within organizations. I really appreciated that Kim Scott acknowledged her own privilege, owned up to her own mistakes, and consistently cited scholars and practitioners of color. The only reason I give it 4 stars instead of 5 is that there didn't seem to be any effort to adapt the examples and advice for non-profit or government organizations, or really any organizations in sectors other than tech.
nekomancer42's review
4.0
Plenty of practical advice. One of the more accessible, enjoyable books on the subject. My main criticism is that the flow and organization of the book is sometimes choppy, especially in the first third. I'd also like to see more extensive incorporation of research and examples other than those coming from the author's own experience. That said, there are some great ideas offered here and it's a worthwhile read.
cmfreeman2's review
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
tense
medium-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Bullying, Sexual harassment, and Sexual assault
Minor: Racism and Trafficking