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
A readable, persuasive argument that our ways of doing business will have to change if we are to prosper—or even survive.
A well-constructed critique of an economic system that, by the author’s account, is a driver of the world’s destruction.
Harvard Business School professor Henderson vigorously questions the bromide that “management’s only duty is to maximize shareholder value,” a notion advanced by Milton Friedman and accepted uncritically in business schools ever since. By that logic, writes the author, there is no reason why corporations should not fish out the oceans, raise drug prices, militate against public education (since it costs tax money), and otherwise behave ruinously and anti-socially. Many do, even though an alternative theory of business organization argues that corporations and society should enjoy a symbiotic relationship of mutual benefit, which includes corporate investment in what economists call public goods. Given that the history of humankind is “the story of our increasing ability to cooperate at larger and larger scales,” one would hope that in the face of environmental degradation and other threats, we might adopt the symbiotic model rather than the winner-take-all one. Problems abound, of course, including that of the “free rider,” the corporation that takes the benefits from collaborative agreements but does none of the work. Henderson examines case studies such as a large food company that emphasized environmentally responsible production and in turn built “purpose-led, sustainable living brands” and otherwise led the way in increasing shareholder value by reducing risk while building demand. The author argues that the “short-termism” that dominates corporate thinking needs to be adjusted to a longer view even though the larger problem might be better characterized as “failure of information.” Henderson closes with a set of prescriptions for bringing a more equitable economics to the personal level, one that, among other things, asks us to step outside routine—eat less meat, drive less—and become active in forcing corporations (and politicians) to be better citizens.
A readable, persuasive argument that our ways of doing business will have to change if we are to prosper—or even survive.Pub Date: May 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5417-3015-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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