DARE TO BE NAIVE

Berry challenges would-be entrepreneurs to know less in this debut business manual.

Although naïveté is not normally seen as a virtue, going by its original meaning—to be genuine and authentic—it hardly seems like a bad thing. “Many of the successful leaders I interviewed for this book used the phrase ‘this might sound naive…’ and then proceeded to share an amazing idea, business practice, or truth,” writes the author, a consultant who advises companies on workplace culture, in his introduction. “Eventually, I learned that this fear of being naive was actually preventingme from having a greater impact in business and life.” Actively choosing to be naive can help people set aside their egos, admit what they don’t know, and open themselves to new possibilities. With this guide, Berry seeks to re-introduce naïveté into the business mindset, where it can help entrepreneurs and executives escape groupthink and outdated conventional wisdom. As he breaks down the various aspects of the concept, the author provides the reader with numerous stories of businesspeople—some famous, some not—whose embrace of naïveté has helped rocket them to success. There’s Yvon Chouinard, the rock climber who famously turned his passion for the outdoors into a revolutionary and sustainable recreational clothing brand; Chip Conley, the boutique hotelier whose desire to do good turned him into a maverick of the hospitality industry; and Jeff Cherry, whose commitment to conscious capitalism caused him to rethink the way that startups attract investors. Along the way, the book challenges the conventional assumptions people make about how companies operate: what goals they should strive for, what underlying values should inform their mission, and how they might achieve one without compromising the other. If that sounds overly idealistic—perhaps, even, a bit naive—well, that’s the point.

Berry’s prose style is calm and nonjudgmental. He offers anecdotes of business leaders as parables, presenting them for the reader to ponder. Appropriately, given the book’s topic, he models a kind of meandering inquisitiveness: “So what do you think?” he asks his reader frequently. “Is it foolish to put so much trust in workers, to unlock the tools and do away with time cards? How much control are you willing to give up as a leader in order to give that control to the employees? What do your practices today say about your beliefs in other humans?” Each chapter ends with a reflective exercise that prompts readers to consider their own long-held beliefs. For all the skepticism that readers may have at the outset, the author’s argument proves disarming. By framing a certain school of outside-the-box thinking as naïveté, he makes it appear accessible to everyone, even if the execs he chooses to profile are not precisely representative of the population at large. In doing so, Berry imagines a less predatory style of business, one motivated more by a concern for the well-being of people than by the need to endlessly increase profitability—a vision that should carry particular resonance in our current economic moment.

An unexpectedly thoughtful guide to rethinking one’s business strategies.