The Loudest Duck

Moving Beyond Diversity while Embracing Differences to Achieve Success at Work

By: Laura A. Liswood

Narrated by: Lisa Rothe

Written in the accessible style of Seth Godin and Spencer Johnson, The Loudest Duck is a business fable which offers listeners an alternate view of diversity through the use of practical stories and cultural anecdotes.

It will explain, for instance, how a culture such as China teaches its children, "The loudest duck gets shot," a viewpoint that gets carried into adulthood, while many Americans are taught the opposite idiomatic lesson: "The squeaky wheel gets the grease."

What you find as a result are two distinct ways of doing business, neither one being necessarily the right way or even the better way. Yet by understanding the viewpoints from which others see the world, listeners can understand how better to work with them.

The Loudest Duck is a book for managers and executives faced with the productivity and leadership challenges of a heterogeneous, multicultural workplace. It's a book for anyone working his or her way up the ladder in this new corporate world order. It's a book for anyone who belongs to a non-dominant group, be it women, people of color, short people, or employees who don't play golf but whose bosses do.

©2009 Laura A. Liswood (P)2009 Gildan Media

One of the best on the topic

This is an awesome take on the topic of diversity and inclusion , loved it ! Would read it again.

loved it

I absolutely loved the content and the narration. concept of diversity and having a level field has been so well explained with realistic examples.

Hard to follow narration and repetitive points.

I had to speed the narration to 1.8x the entire time and it was still way to slow of speaking, but anymore and it wouldn’t be understandable speech. The points of almost every chapter are just repeated from the last and don’t offer any new information. It feels like the author took what should’ve just been an article and turned it into a novel.

Out of Touch

The author seems to have outdated views on where most workplaces stand when it comes to diversity. Perhaps, G&S is just behind the times here? Also, the references to 20 something year old millennials is a little off putting and out of touch considering most millennials are in their 30s and 40s. The theme of the book, as best I can tell, is that people from different cultures and backgrounds bring different perspectives and experiences to the workplace. This is not a new idea when it comes to diversity in the workplace.