Book review: Stephane Garelli,Are You a Tiger,a Cat or a Dinosaur? 100 Questions: How Competitiveness Influences Your Life!

The preface of the book starts with a quotation by Jean Cocteau, ‘A good book is one that raises a multitude of questions’. The book lives up to the quotation by raising 100 questions around competitiveness in the context of multiple disciplines and unit of analysis. And it ends with another interesting quote by Paul Valery ‘A serious man has few ideas; a man of ideas is never serious’. The book lives up to this quotation by using a non-technical style of writing. I find both these quotations and the approach of the author very interesting and relevant because I am following the same approach with my last five books on strategy.

The book divides working individuals into three categories of tigers, dogs and dinosaurs. We start as a tiger with a hunger for success and devoting ourselves to the work and organization. With time, we realize the importance of work–life balance and move to the category of cats. This is followed by the last stage namely dinosaurs, where the focus remains mainly on life and family. Organizations need to realize this to nurture and maintain a good talent pool.

Following are some of the interesting questions raised and answered.

Are you as competitive as Usain Bolt?; Did Darwin defend only the fittest?; Is boring competitive?; Have women been victims of the plow?; Is tourism a false friend?; What is the longest word?; Should managers receive honorary title?; Is failure the price of success?; Is thinking dangerous?; Can politicians decide quickly?; Why is English so successful?; Is math dangerous?; How about parachuting a laptop?; Should we eat our dog?; How many friends you need?; Should we get up at 5 am?; Is there a future for handwriting?; Why not?; and, Are you happy?

The book stands out by explaining a serious and technical subject of competitiveness in an easy to understand and engaging ways by raising and answering questions around five broad themes of competitiveness, the world, leadership, society and the individual, that is, the reader. Given a choice, I would have used the word ‘democratizing or demystifying’ somewhere in the title as the book is quite successful in making the subject simple and easy to relate. Though it is author’s prerogative to choose the questions and answers, I would have loved to see some more interesting questions such as, just to name three, ‘How can one live 100 years?’, ‘How Hindi can be successful?’ and ‘Why not imagination now?’ Again, the book ending or format is the prerogative of the author, the book would have become a bit more engaging if there was a list of unanswered questions left at the end for the readers to ponder.