A Review of Sacred Cows

Way back a few months ago, my mom suggested I borrow a book she had purchased. Its taken me a while to read and finish mostly because I didnt really pick it from a shelf myself. I used to have this wonderful routine of layovers that included a visit to Starbucks and bookstores but thats in the past lol. May I add of course, that I usually have tons of things to do in one day which never leaves me much time to just sit and focus on an actual book. So just this weekend I was done with it and I felt the need to share… as I have been reading throughout these past months/weeks, I learned so much about business and even myself that there are some really valuable lessons that I wanted to get out there.

The title of this book is ”Sacred cows make the best burgers - developing change-ready people and organizations”; yes, you read right, sacred cows. Funny enough, I had heard this term sometime before without realizing the whole meaning and thought behind those two funny words.

So what is a sacred cow?

Sacred cow \´kau\n, plural sacred cows
1. A plodding, bovine mammal of numerous stomachs and dubious intelligence regarded in some climes as holy in origin and therefore immune from ordinary treatment.
2. Business: a. An outmoded belief, assumption, practice, policy, system or strategy, generally invisible, that inhibits change and prevents responsiveness to new opportunities.

So basically, according to David Brandt, author of this book, in our business world, sacred cows are those people who are grazing on our profits and chocking off our productivity. They are those who sit next to us or work for us who have old and obsolete ideas that no longer work in todays changing world. They are far from being cutting-edge, imaginative and creative. Do you know any of those? I bet you do! Take a look back at your job three years ago, things have changed huh! Customers are becoming more and more sophisticated by the day and we wont even begin to mention all the technological changes. Read the rest of this entry »