A colorful and conversational manual that should help readers—personally and professionally—to better assess themselves and...
An anecdotal guide delivers recipes for success in life and business.
Smith’s debut book focuses on self-realization, with the goal of creating for each reader an epiphany “about how your own individual advantages will affect the advantages of other individuals.” The author is the founder of Individual Advantages, “a company that helped other companies understand the correlation of people, process, and technology.” The bedrock of his approach is that every organization is made up of individuals, each one of whom brings unique strengths to the mix, whether they be physical, charismatic, personal, or a host of other things. These advantages have the ability to push people forward in life, but, as Smith points out, they can also pull individuals back if they’re not understood and handled well. The author has a long history as a professional consultant. He’s seen various staffs and managements in many different states of disarray and draws a series of lessons from all of them, here presented with clarity and fleshed out with ample tales from Smith’s own life and experiences. He talks about growing up poor, entering the military, and pursuing his gradually developed ambition to help people work better in teams, reminding his readers that “who you want to be is not about some physical job or position.” Throughout his book, the author puts forward some very simple concepts, like the virtues of slowing down and taking stock of things around you, honing individualism for personal strength, and determining what your real priorities are. Being self-aware, he asserts, is a basic key to forging your own individualism (and ultimately using it to enhance the individualism of others). When you can set aside your own ego and be honest about yourself, you construct a firmer foundation for becoming a leader. Smith uses clear, encouraging prose to elaborate on these basic underpinnings, and he overcomes the simplistic nature of his points by using a winningly self-deprecating tone. When talking about slowing down, for instance, Smith admonishes against immediate gratification, extols the virtues of living in the present, and uses himself both as a “before” and “after” example (“I was the stereotypical man who wouldn’t ask for directions,” he writes, before he changed his ways). The author’s truisms—sentiments like “If you really want to grow, then you need to face your own demons”—take on a greater degree of believability when he links them to his own story of self-improvement. He tells tales of the early days in his career when he let his emotions rule his reactions in tense business situations, usually to his detriment. These personal anecdotes make the resulting lessons (“There is no human on earth who has earned the right to treat another human being poorly,” for instance) feel far more meaningful.
A colorful and conversational manual that should help readers—personally and professionally—to better assess themselves and to build richer relationships with others.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5439-4634-5
Page Count: 194
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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IN THE NEWS
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
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