A cogent presentation of a somewhat narrow aspect of business.
This debut guide details how a simple business technique can improve employee communication.
At first glance, business leaders might dismiss the idea of a “daily huddle” as trivial or even inconsequential. But business owner/consultant Hemmer makes a compelling case for how a 12- minute-a-day employee meeting can substantively impact a company’s bottom line. The author learned the daily huddle technique at a workshop for new beauty salon owners, later recognizing it could apply more broadly to most any business. Her book is a justification for using daily huddles as well as a step-by-step action plan. The volume also supercharges the idea by turning the daily huddle into an “Intelligent Huddle,” a term trademarked by Hemmer. The author first presents the problems businesses face, such as employee turnover, a weak company culture, and poor communication. Then Hemmer diligently provides a detailed overview of neuroscience basics and how to apply them, supporting the argument that there is real depth behind an Intelligent Huddle. For some readers, it may seem unrealistic that something as simple as a daily huddle can offer such key benefits as saving time, reducing stress, creating a problem-solving team, and increasing productivity. Hemmer makes a valiant effort to plead her case with well-written, convincing prose. But except for the author’s personal experiences, case studies and specific examples depicting the daily huddle in use are lacking; they would have been helpful in swaying skeptics. Still, Hemmer does lay out a very thorough implementation plan, right down to the number of minutes that should be spent on specific huddle elements. She also covers how to introduce the idea of daily huddles, enumerates “rules of engagement,” and suggests ways to deal with push back from employees. Perhaps the most critical part of the book is a chapter on measuring the effectiveness of daily huddles. Here, the author discusses common mistakes and suggests ways to track success. Hemmer’s acronym CONNECT (“Conversational Flow,” “Opportunity,” “Neuroscience,” “Needs,” “Engagement,” “Commitment,” “Trust”), referenced in the final chapter, is a handy way to “remember the key principles of the Intelligent Huddle.” The real question is whether business leaders will embrace the idea.
A cogent presentation of a somewhat narrow aspect of business.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 979-8985190205
Page Count: 148
Publisher: Innovator Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2022
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
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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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