The Apology Impulse. How the Business World Ruined Sorry and Why We Can’t Stop Saying It, October 2019, reviewed

By @SimonCocking review of The Apology Impulse How the Business World Ruined Sorry and Why We Can’t Stop Saying It, October 2019,. Available from KoganPage here.

By Cary Cooper and Sean O’Meara
Discover how we became addicted to apologies without really saying sorry, understand when and how to make meaningful amends and why respectfully holding your ground makes you better at being sorry.

Published: 3rd October 2019 Format: 215×138 360 pages

Saying sorry is in crisis. On one hand there are anxious PR aficionados and social media teams dishing out apologies with alarming frequency. On the other there are people and organizations who have done truly terrible things issuing much-delayed statements of mild regret.

We have become addicted to apologies but immune from saying sorry.

In January 2018 there were 35 public apologies from high-profile organizations and individuals. That’s more than one per day. Between them, in 2017, the likes of Facebook, Mercedes Benz and United Airlines issued over 2,000 words of apologies for their transgressions. Alarmingly, the word ‘sorry’ didn’t appear once.

The Apology Impulse, reviewed

You could say this book is a bit of a rant. However it is quite a funny, and a well articulated one. In example after example they deliver accurate analysis of lame lame apologies, so poor that the word sorry is never used, and it really seems to be everyone else’s fault but their own – and yes Mark Zuckerberg does figure in several of these examples. In this context it does mean that Cooper and O’Meara are performing a valuable service in outlining where we are being poorly serviced by mealy mouthed weasily delivered non-apologies.

Sometimes a book is written when an article would have been enough. In many ways you might feel that you get the basic idea from the title of this book alone. However the more they dig into the range and variety of different types of woeful and lamentable apologies, the more it does empower us to demand more from those around us, particularly those in positions of power.

Borris Johnson and Trump for example, with their truly mind bending twistings of the truth surely need to be help to account more and more. Trump’s  best defense for his impeachable actions over the Ukraine and Joseph Biden seems to be to declare, that ‘well surely you can see that I am right’. Similarly with Borris Johson and Jennifer Arcuri, his approach seems to be to dismiss, deny and ignore in the hope that we will also.

In this context a book like this is actually coming out at a good time. To encourage, inspire and motivate us to declare dissatisfaction with lamentable and insufficient apologies when we are delivered them. You may not feel you need to read this book, but you may well get a lot out of doing so.

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