A fun, innovative management guide, based on the story of the world’s most popular band.
Absher offers a leadership philosophy based on what the Beatles did right—and what they did wrong.
“Together, teams can create a level of excellence that is beyond the grasp of any individual,” writes the author, a longtime CEO who led Absher Construction for more than three decades. “The Beatles showed us how to do it with a universal message of peace and love.” Drawing on his own childhood preoccupation with and adult research into the legendary band, he seeks to distill the musicians’ enormous success into a “blueprint for excellence” in corporate worldbuilding. This blueprint has four pillars: “The Train” (finding the right people for the right jobs), “Catalytic Vision” (establishing a compelling main goal with concrete, achievable goals along the way), “Esprit de Corps” (elevating work with humor and fun), and finally something Absher calls “the Magical Mystery” (leveraging “synergy and serendipity to create something unique that [is] greater than the sum of its parts”)—a clear reference to the Beatles’ 1967 album Magical Mystery Tour. Absher views each pillar through the lens of the band’s history, while working in leadership lessons from popular business-book authors, such as Stephen R. Covey or Thomas Peters, and offering Beatles playlists along the way. For instance, as evidence of the group’s catalytic vision, he points to the “grueling years” that they spent playing seven nights a week in Hamburg, West Germany, in support of their dream of becoming the biggest band in the world: “the British Elvis Presley.” This grind, the author argues, necessitated building a functioning team, since the band “didn’t have the luxury to experiment with their established formula.” The book offers an excellent balance of knowledge and fan enthusiasm; Absher smartly draws lessons even from the Beatles’ famously dramatic collapse—he essentially blames John Lennon’s and Paul McCartney’s egos for the band’s demise—noting that “adaptive organizations build flexibility into their structures, allowing roles to evolve as the people within them grow.” This tone of optimistic diplomacy carries the day.
A fun, innovative management guide, based on the story of the world’s most popular band.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2026
ISBN: 9798886454383
Page Count: 344
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
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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