The key to a brighter future for social service organizations, Wenger says, is seeing employees as the main drivers of success.
The nonprofit sector has a reputation for being a troublesome place to work. Long hours, low pay and high employee turnover are common, as scarce resources are deployed to serve clients. But a revolution is brewing in social services, writes Wenger, a social worker and founder of Workforce Performance Group, a leadership-training provider. He believes a new approach is needed to meet the expectations of the next generation of workers. Simply put, social service agencies must take better care of their employees. A happier, more engaged workforce will result in better services for clients, whether at a youth outreach center or, say, a community food bank. Drawing on management practices widely used by for-profit businesses, Wenger offers 20 strategies he says need to be implemented for social service agencies to succeed. The strategies are based on the ideas that employees add value to an organization and that value can be maximized. Concise, methodical and supported by the latest research, the strategies tend to fall into two broad categories: cultural and practical. Wenger contends that organizations can boost employee satisfaction and motivation by building a culture founded on trust, respect, accountability and work-life balance. An imaginative chapter on making “fun” an “organizational value” challenges the stodgy, command-and-control philosophy that dominated the 20th-century workplace. The main payoff, Wenger says, is an energized staff that enjoys coming to work. On the practical side, he offers concrete advice on hiring, delegation and making staff meetings more productive. A daunting amount of information is packed into less than 160 pages. The author makes implementing the strategies easier by breaking down his recommendations into user-friendly lists. Old-school managers may find the book too touchy-feely, particularly the chapter “Give ’Em a Hug.” Still, while not a magic formula, Wenger’s strategies offer a cost-effective way to invigorate a nonprofit group by caring as much for the people behind the counter as for those in front of it.
Instructive and transformative; what savvy business leaders discovered a decade ago now promises to create more vibrant social service agencies.
Pub Date: April 25, 2014
ISBN: 978-1493623723
Page Count: 178
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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