I feel like readers of this book suffered from not understanding the limitations of sociological studies. Trying to connect hard data to soft skills has always been a challenge. If readers didn’t take the limited dataset into account, they certainly would have been misled.

My personal experience is that G2G continues to have merit. It’s certainly not the only book out there extolling company virtues, but in the two companies I’ve worked for since its publication, I’ve seen its principles play out.

Perhaps the biggest problem is when people try to copy the actions to produce the same results. That never works, without changing the emotional underpinnings people use to form their opinions and relationships. They becone disillusioned and call it bogus, when they didn’t actually understand the emotional intelligence effort required to make it work.

I read in this review a call to consider that this book should be taken off of its pedestal. I agree, to the extent that nobody should blindly follow anything.

But it’s not irrelevant, even today. Not all successful companies have all of these traits. But if you end up at one where you can recognize these traits in its culture, it might be worthwhile to stick around.