I have a soft spot for business books that are really stories. Some people roll their eyes at them. I get it. But when they’re well written, I find them incredibly compelling, and Pig Wrestling by Pete Lindsay and Mark Bawden is one of the best.
It’s a fable, but come on, it’s brilliant. I read it at the start of 2025 and gave it five stars. It’s short, too, so it won’t take you long.
What’s pig wrestling?
The story follows a young manager who’s stuck. He has a problem at work that won’t go away and two groups of people who can’t get on. He’s got a growing feeling that it’s all down to everyone else. The harder he pushes, the worse it gets.
Then he meets an unlikely coach, who helps him look at the whole thing differently. There’s no big speech. Just a run of simple questions that slowly untangle what’s really going on.
The pig is the problem you keep wrestling with. You get muddy, you get tired and you get nowhere, and the pig seems to be enjoying itself. The line from the book that’s in my guide nails the feeling. “They just keep hammering away, assuming that everyone and everything else is wrong. That the world has gone mad.”
I’d bet most of us have been that person at some point. Doing the same thing harder, and getting cross that it isn’t working.
Cleaning up your thinking
The book’s answer is to clean up how you’re thinking about the problem before you try to fix it. A lot of the stuckness comes from how we describe it to ourselves. Change the description and the problem often changes with it.
One idea I love is looking for the times when the problem isn’t happening. If two people clash most of the time, when don’t they? What’s different about those days? It’s the same thinking the Heath brothers talk about in Switch, finding the bright spots and doing more of what already works. Very often the way out is hiding in the exceptions.
Another is getting really specific. “The team doesn’t communicate” is a fog. “Sales and delivery never talk before a job starts” is something you can actually do something about.
It sounds obvious written down. In the middle of a row, when you’re tired and fed up, it’s anything but. That’s where the story helps. You watch the manager go through it, getting it wrong first, and you can see yourself in him without feeling lectured.
It’s the kind of book you finish and want to try straight away. Think of the problem that’s been bugging you longest. When isn’t it happening? How would you describe it if you had to be really precise? Those two questions alone can shift something that’s been stuck for months.
There’s also a nudge to look at your own part in it. Not in a blaming way. Just honestly. If the same problem keeps turning up around you, it’s worth asking what you might be doing that keeps it going. That’s an uncomfortable question, and the fable asks it gently, which is part of why it lands.
Pig Wrestling reminds me of The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey, another great book. That one gives you the monkey: the problem someone hands over to you on their way out of your office. This one gives you the pig. Both tell a story and give you a metaphor.
That’s why they work. Once you’ve read Pig Wrestling, you’ll start asking whether you’re wrestling pigs. You might catch yourself in a meeting, going round in circles, and think, hang on, this is a pig. That moment of noticing is the whole point.
Fables might not be for everyone. If you like your business books full of charts and case studies, this one may feel a bit light. But a story stays with you in a way a list of principles rarely does. You can pass it on over a coffee in two minutes.
I’d hand this one to anyone managing a team that’s stuck in a rut, or anyone who’s been chewing on the same problem for months. It’ll help you see the problem differently, and that’s usually where the solving starts.
If you like your lessons with a story attached, my free guide 50 Books That Shaped Me has plenty more, from fables to memoirs.
Stop wrestling your pig. It’ll only get you muddy.
