Evan Tyler

CPD 410

Professor Garett Shelton

December 7 2025

Book review of “Beyond the Hammer”

By : Brian Gottleib

The book starts with the Author Brian Gottleib relating to leaders, managers, and entrepreneurs by saying “you know the frustration of running a business or leading a team when things aren’t going as planned” noting it can be aggravating and exhausting. He wants us to know that this is a common occurrence across all fields when it comes to leadership. This was his inspiration for creating this book, attempting to build readers and listeners alike a blueprint for success. Gottleib lays out a few initial problems that bring down productivity. These issues include: employees that don’t take ownership and responsibility for their work, friction between departments, varying results, shrinking margins and high employee turnover. These are problems that occur everywhere in the world of business and leadership are not unique to one business structure. What makes it more frustrating is half of the issues that have been listed are to no fault of the managers in position, yet they still face a large amount of the blame and criticism. These problems will never go away on their own which requires a planned out process to remedy these issues and more. The author quotes Mark Hurd, one of the masterminds behind Oracle, says “without execution vision is just another word for hallucination”. This quote drives home the point of making a well thought out plan to repair broken segments in a business or organization. Gottleib talks about how he started his first business being a home improvement business with three thousand dollars in cash. The results of his business were solely based on his performance just to keep the business in operation. He said he wanted to build a team, but didn’t want to just hire people for a job. He wanted to create an environment that individuals to realize their full potential. He also wanted to train them to be able to perform consistently at a high level even when he wasn’t around and as a real team. He didn’t want to just build a team but to build people. He eventually was voted best place to work in his state. He sold his companies for over 150 million dollars proving to the readers and listeners that he knows what he’s doing. This book report will go through the details of his own blueprints he used to build successful companies and aims to teach readers and listeners his implementation strategies and management advice.

In chapter one, we go into parable style storytelling and learn the main character’s name George. He is a remodeler who is dealing with a remodeling issue. He is dealing with an angry client named Chuck. Chuck questions if George is qualified for this job because of a mistake Chuck finds during the remodeling process. The drawers in the kitchen are set back a full half inch while the other side is correct according to the blueprints. There are other problems that the client finds and he demands that the entire island be ripped out and redone. He does the math for redoing the kitchen island which totals to about 35 thousand dollars while Chuck hops on the phone and demands that the group that did the work incorrectly never does work in this house again. Another man that accompanied Clack asked George “why did the ball get dropped” . George says “they didn’t take ownership of their work. Lately I can’t seem to change that” .

Clark comes back in demanding a timeline and an action plan as to when the problems will be remedied. The other man with no name says he remembers a time where he dealt with something similar to George’s situation and hands him a business card. On this card it reads “True North Improvements, Marty Gold, President”. Marty then asks George if he would like to spend the day with his team and offers assistance. Marty replies “Sometimes people just want to extend a hand” . Marty has a lot of valuable information he would like to share with George in the world of remodeling but George declines due to a lack of time. Before they both depart Marty leaves George with a final quote saying “There are only a few reasons people don’t take ownership of their work. The good news is that you can fix it”. This is the end of their dialogue as Marty drives away to head to a wedding. The first chapter of this book sets the stage as how George will learn new ways to take hold of his remodeling company. Marty is the prescient of True North Improvements and seems to have a great grasp of how this business model works. 

Chapter two starts with a little bit of George’s background stating that he started sweeping up job sites for Warren construction at nine years old. His grandfather owned the company which he eventually sold to George’s father. His father rebranded the company to market to higher end clients. Revenue grew ten times over the next five years. After a decade of tumultuous adult years, George came back to the company after quitting for college and his father made him a project manager where he kept that role for the next eight years. He quotes a saying about family businesses saying “ The first generation starts it, The second generation builds it, The third generation breaks it”. Then Georges gives us a statistic saying that 13% of family businesses make it down to a grandchild. This clearly adds to his stress as his tone of voice can be interpreted that way. His father died six months prior to this story to a heart attack at the age of 61 which further adds on the pressure of success and trying to break the tradition of the family business quote he gave us earlier. It is clear that he is trying to the best of his ability to keep the business running at the pace his father did but the efforts are currently in vain. 

Chapter two displays an issue that I noticed with the company. George hired his daughter Amelia as an intern under the marketing director but “doesn’t believe in marketing, directors, or corporations”. This gives me the impression that he hires from emotion and not the needs of the company. He is awaiting an update from his project manager while he is playing cards with his daughter. He knows that the crew that did the kitchen job screwed up royally and is wondering why jobs go south on tougher jobs. His production manager recently quit to work for a competitor which has caused internal productivity issues within his company. His daughter suggests selling as the holes in the company seem to be becoming bigger and bigger. His project manager finally responds to his frantic texts messages and phone calls. He asks what happened with the island job and the manager responds with “I don’t know”. After interrogating the project manager he says “We need to talk”. He proceeds to quit and take another job from a competitor, the same competitor that took his production manager. At this point he is searching for any help he can get. He soon remembers that Marty Gold gave him his card and decides to take up on his advice in order to salvage his company and dial his number.

At the beginning of chapter four, he has a long talk with Marty, the president of True North Improvements. He lays all of his problems at the feet of Marty including the fact that he’s “not a born leader”. Marty replies saying “Nobody is. It’s learned, practiced, developed, and honed. And to be clear, leadership isn’t just about you either. It’s about the impact you make on your team and how they perform both in your presence and in your absence.” This is a great note for leadership because it builds the expectation for George to understand that leadership is a diverse responsibility. Every business has a culture and culture is “the accumulation of goals and shared values, goals, attitudes, and behaviors.” Marty then says “when people don’t take accountability for their work, there is a culture problem.” Fixing culture takes leadership Marty says and George plans a visit to visit the true North. Him and his daughter take a four hour trip to see how everything works at True North. They are greeted by Marty when they arrive eager to see them. True North has 264 teammates(workers).  Inside there are a lot of motivational postures including one that shows the 10 practices of a manager. George sees the organization of the office and is in awe to the point where he takes pictures of the building.

The mission of the company is “Do well and do good”. Marty then explains that this is what keeps the company going and focused. Marty comes across an employee and thanks him for all of his hard work. This gesture shows that Marty is a great leader that instills confidence into those employed at the company. He then gives moral support to the kid that True North has hired, further proving the point that with proper training and positive reinforcement, someone with little to no experience can thrive in a professional environment. Marty alludes to the fact that every house has a foundation, and our foundation is culture. When you build a culture in a workplace, the building becomes more than a place of work, but a lifestyle, which makes it easier for employees to feel comfortable in the environment, boosting morale and productivity. 

These are one of the many lessons Marty explains to George and the audience reading and listening to the book. Another lesson George learns is ‘They believe because you believe” The quote is simple but effective. He is learning these lessons just from the pictures on the wall in the main office. If he is learning this much as a business owner, I can only imagine that the employees of true north gained the same knowledge when they stepped foot into the building.

Chapter five of the book starts off at lunch with Marty and George. Marty wants to talk about Warren construction George’s family business. George brings up the fact that two of his managers left. Marty then replies and asks “why was he working for you in the first place? Was he aligned with your mission and vision?” George didn’t know to respond because he doesn’t have a clear mission and vision. He is focused on filling the positions more than the mission statement. He asked the server how long he had been working there?  Mike, the server, responds “a year and a half”. He also adds that he is surprised the manager hired a knuckle head like him fresh out of jail. The manager took a chance on him because her mission is to give people a second chance at life. She creates a positive environment by believing in people who have a hard time finding employment or believing in themselves. This action shows how powerful leadership can be. The manager believes in each person she hires, applies the proper structure and training, and each employee flourishes in this environment. Marty taking George to eat at this restaurant was very strategic. He wanted George to have a secondary example of not only what great leadership looks like, but what a mission and vision can do for employees. In order to have a successful business you must have a sense of direction, especially when including other managers and employees in a business. Leaders shaping culture through purpose and direction is one of the core lessons George and the audience learn in this book. This is the reason the server will be hard to be pulled away or recruited to a different job. The server believes in the mission statement and feels the belief the owner has for fellow employees. This is the reason George has a problem with high turnover in crucial positions. George is completely mission, purpose and direction in his company. This is finally understood thanks to lunch with Marty. 

Chapter six lets us know he is due for another meeting with Marty. He gets a call from Jesse the sales manager. Jesse lets him know that the Spicer project was cancelled. They kept saying they wanted to go in another direction which won’t allow George to give a year end bonus. He tries to give a positive message to Jesse but has no response for him at first. Then he remembers a message from Marty saying “confidence is transferable”. He motivates Jesse trying to get Spicer to reconsider with a great message of confidence getting Spicer to attempt to set up a zoom call to salvage the deal. He runs out of things to say and that’s when George’s daughter hands him an ipad full of outlines,notes, and drawings which inspires George a tremendous amount. This inspires George in the next chapter. 

Chapter seven starts with Marty, George, and his daughter in a meeting. George finally has a sense of accomplishment due to the lessons he learned from Marty and how he applied them in real time. He wanted to try to salvage the Spicer product and believed he could due to the motivational talk George gave his manager. “Leaders drive change in how people think,” Marty says. This is another example of how leadership can propel a business forward just with a simple conversation. The next example of great leadership started off by Marty asking George “can you speak latin?” . George responds and says no. The point of Marty asking this question shows the audience that giving confidence to a worker does not always ensure success. The effort is two-fold. In order to enhance positive encouragement you must also be able to train employees to do their job. Marty then suggests promoting someone who is already on the team into the role of project manager. George says he doesn’t think anyone on the team is a true fit for the position. Marty replies saying his message implies your good work will not advance you no matter what you do. Marty then says your messages can both imply to your team that your words can imply both good and bad messages no matter the intent. George then questions himself and says ‘what would have my dad done”. The weight of this decision affects George’s mentality during the conversation between Marty, him ,and his daughter. Due to him only George looking outside of his company, Marty asks how that could potentially affect your company’s culture. Marty says “people leave jobs, but they commit to career paths”.  Marty says he sees two challenges. Point A is that he needs a production manager. Point B is that he hasn’t trained anyone to complete that role. Marty once again shows George the problem with his process but ensures him that he can be a great leader. 

Chapter eight starts off back at the job sight  where the island fiasco occurred. He tells Chuck the timeline is fourteen days until completion. George contemplates doing the job himself to ensure the job is done correctly. His daughter tells him to focus on the big picture as he remembers that reminds him that “leaders build culture through purpose and direction. We move onto chapter nice where George avoids starting any new fires. The Spicers ended signing with a new contractor which prompted George to tell an employee to write a response to Chuck’s review. He also hired a recruiter to fill any position holes within the company. An employee comes to George with a message they do not want repeated. She says “ I saw Jesse having brunch with Bernard Green.” Bernard Green owns Green mountain construction, who has taken two essential employees from George and his family business. George becomes overwhelmed with emotion as the pressure sets in with another potential employee leaving for a competitor. A few hours later he calls Marty for advice. Marty asks George ”what is his leadership style”. George tells Marty while he was a project manager he used to lead by example. Marty then asks ”How do you lead today” to which George implies it is way different than during his prior role. Marty asks why and George responds “I have become more stressed out and unsure of himself” . Marty replies and says “Leaders are aware of the echoes of their voice” . This means Leaders determine what type of day their staff have from the day that they are having. When leaders are unaware of their own echos, people stop sharing their concerns. This problem would continue to plague George’s business if he was still unaware of the power in his own voice. 

Chapter ten starts off with his daughter barging into his office saying someone took her Facebook post down. George admits he took the post down even though she is the social media manager. He chose his words carefully and said he took the post down because he noticed there were unsafe work practices within the pictures that would reflect badly on the company. He told his daughter that the writing with the post was great but the stock image she chose was not great for branding. He went about it constructively but positively without showing any stress. It seems that he has picked up a pillar of learning from Marty. 

Chapter eleven brings us to a sports bar where he shows Jessy, his longest tenured employee and other employees about his new mission and vision plan. Over sliders and beer they discuss and George’s hopes for positive feedback from Jesse. He also gives him multiple questions about the business and its status. He is looking for honest responses in which Jesse says a lot of workers feel lost in vision. He also notes that clients are unhappy and that George seemed stressed all the time. It’s not sustainable and we are understaffed on production Jesse says. He wants to show Jesse that he is capable of leading this company. He has a main reason for hosting the meeting. His secondary meaning for the meeting is to announce He is looking for a new production manager. He wants to announce to the team about the new mission and vision for the company. He failed to realize that he posted an ad for new positions before telling his team about it which usurps his main point. He starts to lose control of the meeting due to tensions rising between teams. He tries to lighten the mode with the mission and vision statement. The statement says “ At Warren construction we are dedicated to reimagining and revitalizing spaces one project at a time”. This mission statement does not land well in the meeting. He remembers that his voice as a leader carries. He asks employees of the meeting what the primary goal of the company should be in two or three words. One employee says ‘become more organized”. He asked again and someone said “remember we are on this journey together “. A few more people respond and George finally says we aren’t aligned as a company. George takes responsibility for this and says he wants to create a business that is aligned in goals together. After scanning the room he notices his team agrees with his words. He then asks for another meeting next week to create the mission and vision statement together as a team. 

The rest of the chapters in the book Continues to expound upon the lessons learned from Marty and his successful True North Company. This book tells us that leaders control the business through thoughtful words, actions, and vision. George started off as a person who came to his father’s company and didn’t exactly know what to do. He wasn’t a natural born leader which Marty, a president of a great business says  is a learned trait. Each chapter shows how true Marty’s words are because George eventually learns how to become a better leader through mistakes and guidance. George went from a third generation business owner falling short in multiple areas, to learning exactly how a successful business should be run. He was taught that mission statements and business vision are the foundations of any successful business venture and understood over time that a well organized plan is the easiest way to success. This is a great book for anyone that’s either taking over a business or entrepreneurs that are looking for a story where the main character needs to learn lessons through trial and error. Anyone who listens or reads his book can find valuable lessons that will only impact their business in a positive manner and will find knowledge as to how to transform their business for present and future success. 

Citations

Gottlieb, B. (2024). Beyond the Hammer: A fresh approach to leadership, culture, and building high performance teams. Forbes Books.