Noble and enriching leadership advice.
The founder of a humanitarian nonprofit organization offers a wide range of lessons in this debut memoir/leadership book.
Like many who devote their efforts to nonprofit service, Counts recognizes “the psychic toll that dedicating your life to a noble cause can sometimes take.” In this candid work, the author traces his early interest in advocacy up until he started and ran the anti-poverty and anti-hunger Grameen Foundation. Counts was inspired by his mentor, Bangladeshi social entrepreneur and Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus of Grameen Bank, about whom the author wrote the book Small Loans, Big Dreams (2008). Not surprisingly, Counts hopes his own story is an inspiration to other nonprofit leaders—which is very likely to be the case given the lessons he learned along the way and his ability to translate them into meaningful action. As a whole, this volume is a neatly organized lesson plan for both novice and more experienced nonprofit managers. Counts divides the book into three distinct parts—first, how he got started in his chosen field; next, his experiences as the leader of the Grameen Foundation; and, finally, the most personal section, “Caring for Yourself.” Even in his teen years, the author recognized “things can be improved, often simply by getting motivated, designing a plan, enlisting others, and following through,” but humility taught him that he could be “overconfident in my ability to right wrongs.” The most intriguing portion of Part 1 concerns the relationship Counts developed with Yunus and the influence the entrepreneur had on the author’s own leadership style. Counts learned, for example, how Yunus employed storytelling and why it was such a powerful method of personalizing a nonprofit’s mission. The author’s prose in this section is particularly descriptive as he details living conditions in Bangladesh and recounts the different means of communicating and interacting in another culture. Lessons came fast and furious to Counts as his career unfolded and he launched the Grameen Foundation.
In Part 2, the author recalls how his ultimate goal of running a nonprofit came to fruition. Here, Counts delivers a wealth of well-considered advice about the knotty subjects of fundraising (which he admits most nonprofit leaders detest), cultivating relationships with powerful patrons, managing staff during tough times, making effective decisions, building nonprofit boards, and more. Along the way, readers will learn about the somewhat perplexing yet intriguing world of microfinance. Many of the author’s observations in this part should be very beneficial to nonprofit leaders. Part 3 is as much a lesson in self-reflection as it is a blueprint for healthy living. Counts eloquently discusses the dangers of work-life imbalance, how to be a constant learner, the importance of gratitude, and the right time to leave a leadership position. The author’s keen insights demonstrate that he took the lessons he learned during his career to heart, accepting his failures while celebrating his successes. A thread of mea culpa runs throughout the invaluable book, attesting to the author’s sense of his own vulnerability. But that just adds to the humanity he displays.
Noble and enriching leadership advice.Pub Date: April 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73391-410-9
Page Count: 302
Publisher: Rivertowns Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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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