Book Review: Get in Gear
Author Sean T. Ryan
A four-hour flight across country means something is going to go wrong. Somewhere your trip is going to go off cog, a piece of luggage you need won’t arrive, or something will go wrong. It’s guaranteed. Right? Well, it doesn’t have to… But it will.
That’s what they said.
I had “Get in Gear” in my bag to read on the trip and I was pretty sure I’d finish the book by the time I arrived at my destination. So, seated in the waiting area, mask hanging off my left ear, I pulled the book out of my bag for the first time. My tickets were tucked judiciously inside the front cover waiting for boarding. And my scarf was draped over one shoulder. My carryon bag had already been handed off to the airport staff at the gate, and here I sat wishing I’d bought a larger coffee. Then remembering I had a four-hour flight.
Cogs and gears fingered their way into action in my brain as I read through the book, talking about leadership, building teams, and making the effort necessary to move the first cog into place so the second cog would start moving and action would flow from one process to the next. In the first thirty pages of the book, Ryan had eliminated the need to ignite various sparks by connecting the cogs and allowing the centrifugal effects of one person’s effort flow to the next and the next, building momentum.
The realization that technology was as much a part of his journey as any other cog in his system had just snapped me to attention when they called me to the gate to board.
I dropped the book back in my bag and handed the gatekeeper my ticket before making my way down that long ramp to the plane. Inside I located my seat and settled in for the flight, sending a text to my daughter to let her know we’d boarded before I went on with reading the book.
Technology is another cog in that gear mechanism. Check.
When he hit on gravity, I might have skipped over that chapter — I was flying, after all — but something about gravity and cogs, motion, and momentum spoke to me. I kept reading and focused on the stories in the section and how they aligned with every other part of Ryan’s ideology. He had concepts on concepts and they worked to reconnect the processes of motivating and keeping it all actively moving.
Seated on the aisle made bathroom breaks easy, and first-class offered more space for me and my reading over the four-hour flight. Every part of my trip was working together like cogs should be working at that point. I felt good about the flight, and I’d enjoyed the extra space. Nobody was seated beside me — I could spread out. Which should have been a warning sign. Cogs don’t work if there’s too much space between them!
At the gate, my carryon wasn’t waiting. The gatekeeper suggested it would be at the carousel. Nope. Not there either. I’d dropped my tablet in the carryon about a millisecond before leaving it at the gate so I decided to check the location of the tablet — it was Ryan’s comment on “Technology being part of the gears” that reminded me to see if my technology was working.
My tablet was in St. Louis. I was in Seattle. I’m not sure how that works. We didn’t stop in St. Louis. But I showed that bit of information to the gatekeeper at the carrousel, and they were able to find my bag. Negating the slight lecture I got from the gatekeeper for leaving my tablet on (accidental), they were happy to find it and forward it to me on the next flight.
I have to say this is the most effective book I’ve read recently and I was able to put the concepts to work almost immediately as I read the book. I recommend it.
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5 Stars