'Who Moved my Blackberry?' - Lucy Kellaway

I have a job. A busy job. The kind of job that  makes me wonder if my life has got bored waiting for me to be free and simply buggered off down the pub. So, in an attempt to reassure myself that I am in fact a vaguely interesting person I've made a resolution to find some hobbies.
Now, I'm the kind of person who gets up, goes to work, flurries around, comes home, moans at the husband a bit, strokes the cat and goes to bed. But there is one thing I love to do and its something I always find time for. Reading.
I love books. I love the smooth, slightly musty pages, the neat way they fit on a shelf.  Books don't complain when you pick them up and put them down like some teen romance. For me, a book is an emotional blanket, ready to wrap me up in a world of my choosing.

So that's why I'm here and becoming a 'blogger'. If, like me, you associate blogging with something unpleasant that a child might do with loo paper on Halloween, don't worry. My blog is cosy and non-technical. Promise.

The first book to get 'the treatment' is a recent find and already a firm favourite.

'Who Moved my Blackberry?' by Martin Lukes and Lucy Kellaway. (2005, Penguin)


This satirical novel is based around a year in the life of the very fictional Martin Lukes. Martin is a top-level businessman who not only has a 'can-do headset' but who really 'pushes the envelope' on a daily basis.
Lukes, the brainchild of financial journalist Lucy Kellaway, started life as a columnist in the Financial Times. The column, featuring emails and commentary on the heady world of big business, charts the ups and downs of Martin's career.

'Who moved my Blackberry?' is what's known by cleverer people than me as an 'epistolary' novel basically meaning that it's written as a series of documents. Featuring emails and text messages between Lukes and his life coach, colleagues and family, we very quickly begin to understand that despite his desperate desire to succeed Martin's career is littered with more 'key learnings' (cock-ups) than 'major wins'.
At the start of the book we are introduced to Pandora, Martin's life coach. Having been denied the 'Platinum Executive Coaching Programme' Martin is forced to accept the Bronze Programme featuring increasingly baffling monthly emails from Pandora who encourages him to 'Thrive and Strive!'. Engaging in such coaching activities as 'mind-mapping' and identifying 'holes in your energy colander', Martin will seemingly buy into anything that might propel him into the upper echelons of 'a-b global' and the corporate arms of Barry S. Mallone, CEO.
Always keen to indulge in a bit of 'Green Sky Thinking', Martin is the father of Creovation (TM) a unique concept that blends creativity and innovation. Desperate to ensure the concept makes it into the global rebranding of a-b global, Martin will do anything to boost his profile including being almost lynched at a homeless shelter.
We are also treated to Martin's nicely illustrated inferiority over wife Jenny's flourishing career at a-b global. Jenny, an obviously capable and intelligent woman, curries favour with Keith, Martin's boss. Martin continually congratulates Jenny on her 'excellent memos' but likes to remind her that she is 'rather junior'. At the same time we see Jake Lukes, Martin and Jenny's 15-year-old son going steadily of the rails, culminating the in the theft of Martin's Blackberry with some very unfortunate and utterly hilarious text massages to some 'key players' at a-b global.
Throughout the book we never really find out what Martin does and somehow this doesn't matter. He's silly, oblivious, embarrassing and painfully unaware of how unpopular he is. He wants to be the best and is bewildered that others are not buying into his Creovative (TM) ethos. But the fact is that he's just a bit of a prat, a corporate Alan Partridge if you will.
But you can't dislike Martin Lukes because what occurs to me is that there's a little bit of Martin in all of us.

22.5% better than my bestest,

Sarah

You can buy this book!