The Ministry Of Common Sense

How to Eliminate Bureaucratic Red Tape, Bad Excuses, and Corporate BS

By: Martin Lindstrom

Narrated by: Robert Fass

WALL STREET JOURNAL Bestseller

A humorous yet practical five-step guide to ridding ourselves—and our companies—of bureaucratic bottlenecks and red tape

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the TSA is allowing passengers to board planes with unlimited amounts of hand sanitizer, while maintaining its 3.4-ounce limit on all other liquids. You need a chainsaw to pry open your new pair of headphones from their package. Your eighth Zoom meeting of the day keeps freezing, and if you hear “No, wait; no, you go first” again, you will implode. But first you have to sit through an endless Power Point presentation that everyone claims they’ve read, no one has, and that could have been summarized in one page.

What has happened to common sense? And how can we get it back? Companies, it seems, have become so entangled in their own internal issues, and further beset by reams of invisible red tape, that they’ve lost sight of their core purpose. Inevitably, they pay the price.

Best-selling author Martin Lindstrom combines numerous real‑life examples of corporate common sense gone wrong with his own ingenious plan for restoring logic—and sanity—to the companies and people that need it most. A must-read for today’s executives, managers, and employees, The Ministry of Common Sense is funny, entertaining, and immensely practical.

Good

Good listening. I enjoyed the authors explanation about different organizations. I learned to remind myself of common sense!

Spot on!

This book is spot on! Such a good read, highly recommended. I could see my company in every paragraph!

90% frustrated whining 10% useful content

After hearing the author on the Harvard Business Review IdeaCast I was excited to download his book and learn some of his techniques for decreasing red tape and bureaucracy. I am very disappointed to find this is a sarcastic book contains mostly with whining stories and examples of what not to do and only 10% suggestions of what to do.

I think the only way to glean benefit from this book, if you are not someone who enjoys hearing someone else complain, would be to buy the physical book and flip forward through 90% of the pages to the actual suggestions.

A long winded useless book

The author seems to think they're a genius because they have the mystical power of "common sense", where the majority of business executives don't. While there is a core of a valid critique here, the author spends most of his time trying to be a comedian instead of actually breaking down what common sense is and how to apply it. Besides "listen to your customer", there's very little in this book.