An excellent resource for anyone tasked with the professional management of others.
A blueprint for fostering a workplace environment that’s conducive to both success and moral development.
Debut author Turner has spent the last 30 years as the vice president of corporate talent at Chick-fil-A but prefers to describe herself as an “Opportunity Facilitator.” The underlying theme of her work is the creation and maintenance of what she calls a “compelling culture”—one that not only achieves profitability, but also keeps customers and employees fundamentally satisfied. She articulates what she considers “timeless principles”: ideas proven true by the arduous tests of history. These principles seem not only to be about efficient management, but also moral clarity; the four guiding ideas are excellence, integrity, generosity, and loyalty. In addition to a well-crafted business plan, she says, a company’s future success depends upon a well-defined sense of purpose and a list of core values. All of this is necessary, she asserts, to manage the single most important challenge any company faces: the recruitment and retention of talent. Turner goes even further, however, arguing that a company must sustain their employees by helping them find and maximize opportunities to advance. Her lessons draw heavily upon her own experiences at Chick-fil-A and are greatly indebted, as she often acknowledges, to the vision of the company’s founder, S. Truett Cathy. (The book’s foreword is written by Cathy’s son, Dan.) Turner provides specific, actionable advice on hiring and mentoring new personnel, starting with the initial review of applications. Her assertion that moral integrity and success are causally linked will be refreshing to readers who might be interested in a business iteration that doesn’t devolve into materialistic nihilism. Her invocation of biblical principles may not resonate with staunchly secular readers, but her overall position isn’t specifically sectarian. She offers her counsel in a breezy, anecdotal style that avoids business jargon or didactic proselytizing. Overall, this is a clearly written, sensible response to human resource issues that every company inevitably faces.
An excellent resource for anyone tasked with the professional management of others.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-937498-88-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Elevate
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2015
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
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
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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