Nick Pateras | The Icarus Deception
BOOK REVIEW
The Icarus Deception – Seth Godin
Godin’s intrepid and galvanizing tone provokes personal introspection
Anyone remotely familiar with Godin’s work can pay homage to his remarkable understanding of the impact of different workplace behaviors and attitudes. The theme of The Icarus Deception revolves around the concept of ‘making art’, which Godin qualifies as any work that is meaningful, disruptive and impacts people. Although I’ve heard the criticism that his books and blog posts are more relevant to the free-spirited entrepreneur than the process-burdened corporate employee, I thought he did well to avoid pigeonholing himself throughout this effort. I was constantly thinking back to my own working style and projects – both professional and personal – as Godin underscored the importance of standing up and taking risks, even if the outcome was uncertain.
One shortcoming of the book is that the insights Godin shares are very theoretical: I would have appreciated if he had sprinkled some more practical examples throughout. (He does have an appendix in which he donates a couple paragraphs to the work of fourteen different ‘artists’, but it feels like an afterthought and frankly, some of their stories are severely underwhelming.)
"The artist says, 'Here, I made this'. The working man is asked to follow instructions."
Despite this, I appreciated the read and would recommend to anyone inside or outside the corporate world for two main reasons. The first is that I feel stimulated to reconsider my approach to all the work I do, which stems from a newfound outlook on its potential impact. Even Godin’s constant labelling of important work as ‘art’ in itself caused me to rethink how I perceive some of my projects. Secondly, I learned a great deal from Godin’s worldview, which comes through in the book’s early chapters. He condemns the industrial age as illustrative of humans’ desire to seek conservative jobs, avoiding anything that threatens the steady, traditional trajectory glorified by the times. Thankfully, we now find ourselves in the opportunity-filled age of connection and as Godin points out, “freedom isn’t the ability to do whatever you want – it’s the willingness to do whatever you want”.
-NP, April 2014