Next Play
How to Focus on What Matters Most and Improve Performance, Productivity, and Fulfillment
Encouraging people to focus on what matters most to get the best possible results, Next Play is a ranging career guide.
Alan Stein Jr.’s aspirational business book Next Play proposes that businesspeople liberate themselves from their pasts in order to achieve more.
Forwarding strategies for improving one’s performance and productivity, the book stresses the importance of simplicity. It draws heavily upon Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski’s philosophy that the next play is the crucial one and that what someone has accomplished is not as critical as what they will do next. The result is an empowering guide for living and working toward the future.
Its arguments built on examples from sports, the book includes lesson-infused stories about how basketball stars including Kobe Bryant and Kevin Durant mastered the fundamentals of the sport during their extensive practices. Elsewhere, it compares positive business and basketball approaches, including collaboration, quick decision-making, momentum shifts, and continuous situational awareness. But it relies on its sports analogies too heavily, and some are strained.
In addition to the wisdom it draws from Stein’s work in sports, the book makes references to his work as a performance coach, assisting corporate giants including Pepsi, Spotify, and Starbucks. The latter, it notes, turned it around after CEO Howard Schultz returned, and such examples are used to illustrate points like the importance of finding a “north star.” An anecdote about the Campbell Soup CEO writing twenty handwritten notes a day is also illustrative.
Its prose marked by candor and humanized by admissions of “numerous poor decisions, paralyzing insecurities, failed relationships, and boneheaded mistakes,” the book is sympathetic if aphoristic in declaring that everyone is a work in progress and that people are always under construction. Organized according to subject matter, it covers broad topics like self-awareness, mindset, vision, and taking action. Its chapters outline actions to take, such as setting standards, aligning priorities, and seeking improvement instead of advancement. Its work is geared toward its being a useful reference text, and it spells out thirty-four different strategies and includes thirty-five practical exercises in total. Some keen observations arise in the course of such ranging work, as with the idea that the contents of one’s bookshelves, refrigerator, and credit card bill reveal one’s priorities. There’s also advice on subjects like using disappointment as fuel, communicating effectively by tailoring messages to individual audiences, and finding individual balance between surging ahead and stopping.
A motivational career guide, Next Play includes a variety of advice for attaining professional success.
Reviewed by
Joseph S. Pete
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
