This is, unfortunately, a timeless book. I say unfortunately because there shouldn’t be a need for Joan Kuhl’s Dig Your Heels In: Navigate Corporate BS and Build the Company You Deserve in these presumably enlightened times. You would think that our modern age and society would have long since put out to pasture the workplace/professional inequality that has bedeviled women since time immemorial, but you would be wrong to believe so. Kuhl’s book and the personal experiences she shares between its covers makes clear how many of these issues are systemic and remain prevalent, though perhaps less overt than half a century ago thanks to an increased willingness from women to speak up and some laws and regulations in place to discourage such conduct. Kuhl’s book confronts these problems head on and offers solid advice for women on how to contend with these problems when they arise.
AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/Dig-Your-Heels-Navigate-Corporate/dp/152309835X
She writes with startling clarity and doesn’t mince or waste words when addressing the multiple ways workplace bias and inequality manifest themselves. Dig Your Heels In isn’t an extended work bloated with repetition or filler material and Kuhl’s presentation emphasizes an easily digestible format for her readers. This is the hallmark of an experienced writer – Kuhl has other publications to her credit and her authorial savvy is evident on each page. Despite the assertive title, the book doesn’t beat drums and call on women to storm boardrooms and offices across the land. Kuhl is never so crass. The book, essentially, promotes a simple message implied by the title – stand your ground and don’t be afraid of negative perception because dignity and professional respect is worth more than the opinion of those who do not value your efforts through no fault of your own.
As mentioned earlier, Kuhl relates her personal experiences dealing with this issue and the vulnerability of such a move further endeared me to the book. It also gives an added air of authority to her thoughts and instruction for readers – she has “been there” rather than offering a work based off research and others experiences alone. There is definitely a “how to” element defining this work, but it never undercuts its inherent quality. Instead, the instructional aspects of this book provides readers, particularly women, with an essentially step by step structure for approaching these problems in their own workplace while still exploring all of the potential pitfalls and misgivings they may experience and feel along the way.
ABOUT JOAN KUHL: http://joankuhl.com/
Perhaps one day future readers or societal observers may look back on a work like this as a relic from a more complicated and less open-minded era. I definitely would like to believe that day will come. Dig Your Heels In, for now however, is intensely relevant to challenges women continue to face in their careers and professional lives, but Kuhl never talks down to the reader, holds us above those experiences, and doesn’t allow her ideas and writing to turn into a broadside against the male gender. She has, instead, produced a work any intelligent and thoughtful reader will respond to.
Scottie Carlito