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
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
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“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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