Valuable insights into the psychology of CEOs.
A debut memoir offers personal reflections from 50 years of management consulting.
Retired psychological consultant Armatas worked with scores of CEOs at companies in a wide variety of industries. This book features recollections of many of these experiences with a primary focus on the management practices of CEOs. The memoir provides intimate portraits of several CEOs as well as observations about the companies and industries in which they worked. One striking aspect of this volume is that it gives readers the rare chance of getting a glimpse into five decades of business management from a psychologist’s perspective. Although recalling key interactions with individuals is remarkable, Armatas digs beneath the superficialities to examine the way CEOs think and operate. In a tribute to three dead CEOs in particular, the first chapter concentrates on Del Dunmire (Growth Industries), Garry Drummond (the Drummond Company), and Dave Noble (American Equity Investment Life). While their names and companies may not be widely recognized, their stories are no less important, for according to Armatas, “as successful entrepreneurs, they had similar management styles and practices.” The author impressively relates the CEOs’ tales, highlighting their challenges and their personal attributes and demonstrating how they developed their own approaches to management, citing commonalities along the way. Armatas points out that, while each was in a different business, they shared notable similarities: “They were dominating leaders…They had a clear picture of areas of accountability…They thoroughly understood their markets…They all valued the contributions of outside consultants, including suggestions for change.” Subsequent chapters are anchored by organization type, including conglomerates, multidivisional companies, legal monopolies, service companies, restaurants, and manufacturing firms. In each of these chapters, the author covers specific business leaders and supplies salient commentary about their companies and industries. Armatas concludes the book by suggesting that “successful companies can be modeled,” and that the CEOs in these pages were largely “intelligent, conceptual, competitive, management-type individuals” who also demonstrated “flexible, adaptable personalities.” Readers seeking a look into the minds of a diverse group of CEOs should find this well-organized, candid memoir revealing and pertinent.
Valuable insights into the psychology of CEOs. (appendix)Pub Date: March 12, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73464-142-4
Page Count: 284
Publisher: Desert Haven Publishing Company
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2020
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
IN THE NEWS
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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