An enthusiastic and actionable, if somewhat loosely organized, leadership guide.
Forbes Books CEO Witty and Zilker Media founder Shelton offer a results-oriented method for becoming an authority figure.
It will come as no surprise to entrepreneurs and business leaders that they need to be viewed as a person in authority. But as the authors assert, building the right kind of authority is a methodical process, resulting in a “Master Authority Plan.” The straightforward book’s first part defines what they call the “Authority Advantage”; it covers some key shifts in the branding, media, and sales spheres and suggests that there are four basic types of leaders—the most desirable of which is “The Mission-Driven Thought Leader,” or, more simply, “the authority.” In Part 2, Witty and Shelton offer a thorough discussion of the various aspects of building a personal brand and then offer useful detail about content development. Citing several examples, the authors demonstrate how to become “more discoverable” in search engines and distinguish between the “preengagement” and “postengagement” phases of branding. They also share some fresh ideas regarding the concept of “authority by association” and referral marketing. The material about creating content will likely be valuable to corporate marketing and C-level executives; it addresses such contemporary concepts as “evergreen content,” “newsjacking,” and “relationship-driven content” and presents clear examples of each. Part 3 begins with an intriguing, informed conversation around “the new media landscape and virtual real estate,” with special emphasis on the LinkedIn social media network because of its business-related use. Other aspects of building authority, such as speaking engagements, authoring a book, and podcasting, are discussed as well. Witty and Shelton end by making a passionate case for the idea that becoming an authority may contribute to one’s overall happiness. They suggest at the end of the book that they’ve given readers “a MAP to build and market your authority,” but not all readers may agree; the content seems more like a loose collection of potential strategies than a clear, step-by-step plan. Still, many readers will find real value from its exploration of the essence of authority.
An enthusiastic and actionable, if somewhat loosely organized, leadership guide.Pub Date: May 16, 2023
ISBN: 9781955884860
Page Count: 245
Publisher: ForbesBooks
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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