The Ministry of Common Sense

A humorous yet practical five-step guide to ridding ourselves-and our companies-of the bureaucratic bottlenecks and red tape that plague every office

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Where's the common sense? 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 PowerPoint presentation that everyone claims they've read - no one has - 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 beset by reams of invisible red tape (and frozen screens) that they've lost sight of their purpose and culture. Inevitably, we pay the price.

New York Times 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 who need it most. A must-read for today's executives, managers, and office workers, The Ministry of Common Sense is funny, entertaining, and immensely practical.

'Essential reading for all of us who feel bogged down in workplace bureaucracy and wish to improve our quality of life at work.' - Arianna Huffington, Founder & CEO, Thrive Global

'Anyone who has ever worked in a big corporate structure will be nodding along and underlining every page in this book...Martin Lindstrom...offers a plan for eradicating internal nonsense - the sorts of risk-averse protocols and admin tasks that show a company has lost all sight of common sense. There are lots of good examples and farcical anecdotes here.' - Financial Times Business Book of the Month