Extremely timely and highly actionable advice on remote leadership.
A debut guide offers a levelheaded strategy for leading in the remote workplace.
One disruptive result of the Covid-19 pandemic was the rapid acceleration of work from home, leaving senior executives legitimately concerned about how to manage and lead remote employees. Pachter, founder and co-founder of several businesses, has personally navigated the ups and downs of remote leadership and shares both his experiences and his insights in this outstanding book. Primarily targeting the small company owner/CEO, the author makes a strong case for transformational change. He effectively suggests that it is time to jettison the traditional “command-and-control authority” of the CEO and instead adopt “leadership-based sharing” because “in your remote enterprise, each employee is in his or her own world, a single-serving CEO of themselves.” Pachter lays out a specific plan for making this transition, basing it on “the Three Pillars of great remote organizations”: “Reflective Leadership,” “Coaching Mindset and Culture,” and “Peer Learning.” An overview of the new workplace provides an unsparing look at how far-flung employees’ various locations affects not just the way they collaborate, but also the manner in which they need to be managed. Leaders, writes the author, must move out of their comfort zones, learning such potentially unsettling techniques as adopting “radical candor,” “giving up being the problem solver,” and embracing “skip-level management.” Ultimately, the most important measurement criterion for WFH success is “Accountability.” Pachter explores the Three Pillars in detail, thoroughly explains their importance, and illustrates each with superb examples drawn from his own experiences and other sources. The content surrounding Reflective Leadership is filled with wisdom that is sure to spark introspection. Here, the author talks about practicing “servant leadership,” “distinguishing between empathy and accountability,” and learning how to “slow down your reactions.” In Coaching, Pachter cites pertinent examples, makes salient observations, and provides perceptive counsel. Peer Learning is a captivating view into how the author’s own organization used “Circl.es,” a digital methodology designed to encourage participation with the objective of “reflecting the group’s shared purpose.” Pachter is a polished communicator; his writing is clear, fluid, and engaging.
Extremely timely and highly actionable advice on remote leadership.Pub Date: Sept. 28, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64543-539-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Amplify Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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
BOOK REVIEW
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