Book review: The Little Red Book of Wisdom

Imagine a public relations firm whose philosophy is “tell the truth at all costs”. Not possible? Not for Mark Demoss, founder of PR firm the Demoss Group. He created exactly that.

His book The Little Red Book of Wisdom contains boulders of practical guidance packaged in interesting, nugget-sized chapters. Half of the book specifically addresses the business world and the second half covers personal matters a refreshing change from the typical success-manual mode.

Like The Demoss Group itself, The Little Red Book of Wisdom is atypical on every level: unapologetic-ally Christian, Demoss manages to frame his philosophies biblically without preaching or moralizing. Instead, he illustrates his points with personal experiences and current events in a conversational style that’s easy reading for harried executives.

But this isn’t a sappy read: with chapters like “Do Something So Difficult, You’ll Never Want to Do It Again”, and “The Best Defense is a Good Defense”, Demoss challenges readers with time-tested philosophies that he personally practices. Not one concept is overwritten: if Demoss can cover it in a couple of sentences, he does.

The Little Red Book of Wisdom deserves a place on every leader’s desk, for short bursts of inspiration on the long road of service.


Meredith Healey is a single mom, so she needs all the self-improvement she can get. She blogs about her progress at http://sinthesinglemom.blogspot.com/

Knowledge versus Understanding versus Wisdom

Knowledge.  Understanding.  Wisdom.

Which is best to have?  What is the difference between them, anyway?

Knowledge is simple.  It is about facts and information, just observing what they are.

Understanding is a little deeper – it is about realizing what the information (the knowledge) means.

Wisdom is deeper still.  It is like understanding the understanding – how you should react to or feel about the information, now that you understand it.

EXAMPLE:

Knowledge: The government is creating seven new programs this year.

Understanding: Either the government will dip into my pockets now to pay for these new programs, or it will add to the national debt so that many years from now it won’t bother dipping into my pockets – it will just take my pants away.

Wisdom: I should fight the new government programs.  Or, I should live it up while I can, while I still have my pants. Or, I should seek how I can milk these programs to get my money back and earn interest so that one day (when my pants are taken away) I can buy them back.

Which brings me to what inspired this blog post…a quote from Malcolm Gladwell.

Since my brain really only works in the morning, I try to keep that time free for writing and thinking and don’t read any media at all until lunchtime, when I treat myself to The New York Times–the paper edition. At this point, I realize, I am almost a full 24 hours behind the news cycle. Is this is a problem? I have no idea. My brother, who is a teacher, always says that we place too much emphasis on the speed of knowledge acquistion, and not the quality of knowledge acquistion: I guess that means that the fact that I am still on Monday, when everyone else is on Tuesday, is okay.

These days, people rush to get the latest information.  They grab the knowledge.  But do they take the time to understand?  Or even more time to gain wisdom from it?  No, they are on to the next piece of information.

Once upon a time we revered our elders for their wisdom.  Now we tend to mock them for being behind the times.  My parents can’t use computers or any of the new-fangled gadgets.  They don’t have the information-overload that so impresses us in today’s “whiz kids”.

But is knowledge alone worth very much?  I think most people will agree that there is a hierarchy where wisdom is at the top, then understanding and finally knowledge (OK, finally would be ignorance).  But how important is it to seek wisdom, or is knowledge “good enough”?

What do you think?