Meadow Hill

Review: Killing Cockroaches

Killing Cockroaches
And Other Scattered Musings on Leadership
By Tony Morgan, foreword by Andy Stanley
Publisher: B&H Books (March 1, 2009)
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

There’s an old expression that goes something like, “if they don’t get it, you can never explain it, and if they get it, you don’t have to explain it.” I think that’s the best way to explain Tony Morgan’s book. Killing Cockroaches is a book more about leadership than anything else, written in a style of collected works and interviews.

Critique

The main premise of the book is to help leaders get past the urgent and get to the important. The proposed way of doing that is by refocusing your efforts from doing the small tasks in front of us (with the insect–murder allegory), to get to the larger tasks. Upon first reading, it may be difficult for the casual reader to get this at first, mainly because of how the book is structured.

This is a collection of reformatted blog posts from TonyMorganLive.com, along with some additional interviews and acknowledgments. Thus, it has that sort of unsteady tone you would expect when reading things written at vastly different times. The chapters are set in alphabetical order, so it also makes it difficult to read front–to–back.

In addition, there’s…well…cockroaches all through this thing. If you don’t like even the thought that you’ll be looking at vermin while reading a book, then this may not be the book on leadership for you. If you can stand to look at 142 roach–laden passages on how to do things better, then this is a great tool for your toolkit.

Though it takes a little time to start to understand, once you get the hang of it the stories start to make sense. This isn’t a book to be read and consumed all at once. It’s more of a Christian apologetics version of Seth Godin. I view it as something that is to sit on your desk, waiting to inspire you when your creativity wanes.

That isn’t to say that you can’t find something topical related to what you’re doing. This Art of War approach to problem solving means that you can have a problem in your head, then read a section on something similar, then use what you already know with what someone else has written. It’s the way you increase your problem–solving options that makes this such a usable book.

Simple Conclusion

Pros: Buy this book if you are in need of a creative kick in the pants. I can already see this going into every youth minister’s box of books, just because of the style and presentation. Randomly flipping through to different chapters will provide some sort of creative jolt regardless of what you’re trying to accomplish.

Cons: If you don’t care about doing things differently (and more effectively), then this book is not for you. There are also no real answers on how to do things (other than kill bugs and start a car). So if you’re looking for a magic bullet, this book is not for you.

Neither is any other book, as there is no magic bullet that solves every problem.

Bonus niftiness

It’s a flip book! One of the benefits of owning your own copy of this book will be that you’ll have the chance to watch a couple of bugs traipsing across the pages. Sure to inspire creativity. Or the heebie–jeebies. Or both.

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