A debut guide delivers insights into what it takes to move into the much-coveted corner office in the business world.
In this compact book, Frangos focuses on the holy grail of the C-suite, which sits at the pinnacle of every professional career, and lays out not only a variety of reasons why people might want to achieve that goal, but also an assortment of methods for attaining it. The author has coached businesspeople for years, and in that time she’s noticed a comparative lack of literature on the philosophy and strategy of climbing to the executive level (as opposed to becoming a boss, about which there’s abundant reading matter available). In this volume’s clearly written, fast-paced chapters, she breaks down the characteristics of the four “core paths” to the C-suite: the Tenured Executive, who rises steadily through the corporate ranks in the traditional way; the Free Agent, who’s recruited from outside the firm but otherwise fulfills most of the same expectations; the Leapfrog Leader, an “internal or external candidate” who possesses an unconventional mindset or approach to the business; and the Founder, who succeeds by creating a company or vision, bypassing the establishment entirely. Frangos examines each of these paths in detail, providing examples from the business world, citing other motivational books and authors frequently, and listing accelerating and derailing factors endemic to each track. In all cases, the author demands of her readers a fairly high degree of brutal self-awareness; anyone looking primarily for feel-good motivational pep talks will find very little of such material here. Instead, the key idea running through all of the C-suite breakdowns in these pages is one of managed sacrifice: Reaching the peaks of their professional careers requires readers to know who they are and what they are willing to do. Do they have the managerial elements that are needed? Frangos summarizes it all with a disarmingly simple question: “Is this the right plan for you?”
A lean and bracingly straightforward look at the core paths to the executive suite.Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-61363-084-6
Page Count: 134
Publisher: Wharton Digital Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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SEEN & HEARD
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
Categories: BUSINESS | LEADERSHIP, MANAGEMENT & COMMUNICATION | PSYCHOLOGY
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