A highly readable business book addressing key aspects of cultural change.
A business fable reveals the importance of leadership in a developing corporate culture.
In this book, McGoff (The Primes, 2011, etc.) tells the story of Carolyn Qualey, opening with the first day of work for the newly appointed CEO of Phossium Enterprises. Carolyn quickly learns that Phossium’s apathetic culture of buck-passing and stagnation is the reason the company is rapidly shedding customers. She understands that she will have to rebuild the employees’ way of thinking about work if the firm is going to succeed (“First, she had to follow the symptoms of Phossium’s default culture back to its roots, discover the cause, and destroy it at the source so the problems would go away for good”). Carolyn encounters resistance from the start, but she slowly discovers thoughtful and idealistic staffers willing to join her in taking responsibility for their actions and moving the company in a positive direction. She encourages some of the more disgruntled workers, especially on the leadership team, to depart. Carolyn also learns to temper her zeal for change with humility and empathy, motivating employees instead of issuing orders, and ultimately inspires a public display of loyalty from her staff. After Carolyn’s tale concludes, the final quarter of the book is a more straightforward presentation of the central message, highlighting the crucial lessons presented in the fictional account (“In a peak performance culture, the people and the organization, as a whole, maintain a posture of clear, shared intention, enabling the universe to assist in surprising ways”). The volume also presents helpful action items for executives looking to transform corporate cultures (“Think of this as getting a shared perspective on the underlying physics of the organization”). McGoff’s prose is measured and straightforward, presenting realistic solutions and avoiding hyperbole. The combination of fictional narrative and more traditional business book is an effective one, with the story engaging enough to serve as a canvas for the guide’s lessons. The line drawings by Nuttle (I Wonder, 2007) add a touch of whimsy to the work, reinforcing the allegorical facets of Carolyn’s tale. Although it is less concise than genre classics like Who Moved My Cheese? the manual is a useful tool for executives in search of inspiration.
A highly readable business book addressing key aspects of cultural change.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-946633-12-5
Page Count: 400
Publisher: ForbesBooks
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
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
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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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