Concrete, comprehensive counsel for business leaders.
The co-founders of a global consulting practice propose an approach to scaling small- and medium-size businesses.
The title of this debut guide is also the name of the authors’ business, so it will come as no surprise that McGurgan and Colvin highlight a scaling methodology designed and implemented by their company. The obvious sales pitch aside, there is considerable value in the thorough scaling framework freely shared by the authors. They make it clear from the outset that their approach is not for startups; rather, they address established SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) ready to grow exponentially with a focus on “establishing, refining, and standardizing the processes, which enable repeatable, scalable, and profitable business.” According to their research, “Almost 98 percent of SMEs fail to scale.” The book aims to help change that statistic; it describes a highly structured framework of 10 principles, each of which is explained in richly detailed chapters. The principles are neatly divided into three sections. A handsome, if somewhat complex, circular graphic ties it all together. “Inspire” covers mindset, vision, and employees; “Orientate” describes planning, process, and performance; and “Accelerate” concentrates on value proposition, geographic coverage, and collaborations with partners. The 10th principle, “Positive Growth Culture,” is embedded in the “Inspire” section to make the framework come full circle. This work displays both breadth and depth; McGurgan and Colvin offer a start-to-finish scaling process as well as nuts-and-bolts descriptions for each of the principles. The authors provide specific, well-founded guidance supported by citations from other sources. Numerous relevant examples appear throughout, and a substantial case study related to each principle is included at the close of every chapter. At times, the writing may feel a bit gimmicky. For example, there seems to be an overabundance of alliteration, acronyms, cleverly constructed phrases, and the like—but it is not at the expense of generally solid and highly actionable content. In all, this book delivers a serious, pragmatic approach to scaling a business.
Concrete, comprehensive counsel for business leaders.Pub Date: March 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5445-2590-7
Page Count: 388
Publisher: Houndstooth Press
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
Highly instructive for would-be tycoons, with plenty of entertaining interludes.
Well-crafted memoir by the noted media mogul.
Diller’s home life as a youngster was anything but happy; as he writes early on, “The household I grew up in was perfectly dysfunctional.” His mother lived in her own world, his father was knee-deep in business deals, his brother was a heroin addict, and he tried to play by all the rules in order to allay “my fear of the consequences from my incipient homosexuality.” Somehow he fell into the orbit of show business figures like Lew Wasserman (“I was once arrested for joy-riding in Mrs. Wasserman’s Bentley”) and decided that Hollywood offered the right kind of escape. Starting in the proverbial mailroom, he worked his way up to be a junior talent agent, then scrambled up the ladder to become a high-up executive at ABC, head of Paramount and Fox, and an internet pioneer who invested in Match.com and took over a revitalized Ticketmaster. None of that ascent was easy, and Diller documents several key failures along the way, including boardroom betrayals (“What a monumental dope I’d been. They’d taken over the company—in a merger I’d created—with venality and duplicity”) and strategic missteps. It’s no news that the corporate world is rife with misbehavior, but the better part of Diller’s book is his dish on the players: He meets Jack Nicholson at the William Morris Agency, “wandering through the halls, looking for anyone who’d pay attention to him”; hangs out with Warren Beatty, ever on the make; mispronounces Barbra Streisand’s name (“her glare at me as she walked out would have fried a fish”); learns a remedy for prostatitis from Katharine Hepburn (“My father was an expert urological surgeon, and I know what I’m doing”); and much more in one of the better show-biz memoirs to appear in recent years.
Highly instructive for would-be tycoons, with plenty of entertaining interludes.Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9780593317877
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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