Nothing world-shaking, but a good thing to stuff into the briefcase for the next train or plane ride.
Pop science meets a business pep talk in a useful primer on building better organizations.
What’s the difference between a kindergarten class and a gaggle of business students? For one thing, writes talent-development guru Coyle (The Little Book of Talent: 52 Tips for Improving Your Skill, 2012, etc.), although the business students have been filled with case studies and mantras on institution-building and teamwork, “in fact they are engaged in a process psychologists call status management.” While the grown-ups jockey for position, the children actually make things happen. They huddle closely in groups, grab things excitedly, quickly discard things that don’t work, and don’t invest much ego into the enterprise. From basketball teams to Navy SEAL teams and businesses, all of which provide case studies for Coyle’s consideration, the overriding takeaway might be the simple but nonetheless meaningful truism, “we are all in this together.” One aspect of any collaborative venture, whether a corporate marketing project or a startup coffee shop, is that the people in it must feel connected, well-led, and safe—i.e., treated respectfully and authentically. Coyle’s mantras (“Avoid Giving Sandwich Feedback,” “Listen Like a Trampoline”) are decidedly not your grandpa’s business school notes and may sometimes come off a little nonsensically, but they seem useful throughout, especially if working with younger people who aren’t accustomed to the usual brutalities of the workaday world. “Overcommunicate expectations,” urges the author, adding that in the most successful groups, leaders are persistent in articulating their goals and what each person needs to do to move along. Tough, cigar-chewing types may decry the implied hand-holding and trophy-for-showing-up implications, but there’s something to Coyle’s insistence that people do better when they’re treated well and managed thoughtfully; as one Pixar chief puts it, “it’s more important to invest in good people than in good ideas.”
Nothing world-shaking, but a good thing to stuff into the briefcase for the next train or plane ride.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8041-7698-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
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
SEEN & HEARD
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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