Chris Mettler: Spark [2023] paperback

Spark provides an unhurried, thought-provoking experience about what drives individuals, teams and organizations to thrive, and how readers can use that knowledge to ignite and direct their own careers.

Spark is an unconventional business book. It has been built on the idea that coming from a perspective of 'getting' something is a severely self-limiting position. Instead, a career should be seen as an opportunity to give - to your funders, your team, your customers and the world at large. Doing so, the authors argue, can lead to expansive possibilities. At the same time, however, people should be averse to bloat, bureaucracy, and everything that comes with achieving a certain level of inert mass. So, how can these two positions be reconciled? How can we complain about companies getting too big while presenting a book to help entrepreneurs and leaders think and act more effectively? This is why, unlike most business books, Spark doesn't use the authors' business backgrounds or personal stories as a launchpad for their views on best practices. It's not a step-by-step guide to building an empire, and it doesn't pretend to have all the answers to creating the world's best businesses.

Instead, Spark aims to deliver an unhurried, thought-provoking experience about what drives individuals, teams and organizations to thrive. The 24 concepts in the book are commonplace inside venture capital firms and high-performing private equity firms, but they haven't yet made their way to the broader marketplace. The authors believe that these ideas should be more accessible to professionals in all industries, at all stages of their careers. And instead of giving overly-prescriptive advice, readers will be encouraged to think about broader concepts in the context of their own experiences, careers and goals.

The book is organized into three sections, each containing eight chapters:

- Tier One: Ideas you work on within yourself (individual)
- Tier Two: Ideas you work on with someone else (interpersonal)
- Tier Three: Ideas you work on within groups (organizational).

Each chapter introduces a term; gives a specialized definition that challenges the reader to think differently about the term; and offers thoughts and guidance on how to put the idea into practice.

Part manifesto, part self-help guide, Spark is for anyone who has to be resilient and tap into the fire (or inferno!) inside of them to overcome a challenge. It's for those who simply aren't finding purpose in bloated organizations, who don't like to hold meetings for meetings' sake, and who want to live each day as their last, instead of just getting through. The goal of this book is to help you overcome whatever obstacles stand between you and the life you want to live.