An accessible introduction to the challenges that modern business leaders face.
A concise book that asserts that the concept of leadership must change for it to flourish in an increasingly complex environment.
Mutizwa (The Arc of Awareness, 2014, etc.) isn’t a newcomer to business-leadership literature, as this is his fourth book on the subject. The crux of his argument is that a new style of leading will be necessary to meet the demands generated by the world’s “phenomenal increase in complexity.” There have been paradigm shifts in the way that wealth is created, he writes, as well as the sea change of social media and the Internet; he also notes the increasing interdependence of various elements of the global economic order and the changing metrics for business success. He uses the term “VUCA” to describe this new world—an acronym that’s more instructive than it is catchy and which stands for “volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.” In this new milieu, he says, traditional, top-down leadership must give way to something more nuanced, which includes increased employee participation in companies’ overall missions. The book’s first section looks at the nature of “humane leadership” and includes a basic definition that’s relevant to the current business climate. The second part is more mechanical and describes the “strategic levers” of leadership, detailing its applications. Finally, the third, most psychological section analyzes the behaviors and mindsets that typify successful leaders. Overall, this work doesn’t break much new ground, with its emphasis on adaptability, self-accountability, strategic clarity, and social justice. However, it’s still a very clear, practical synopsis of the ways that business conditions have changed. Also, for all of the author’s emphasis on inclusiveness, he never loses sight of leaders’ indispensability: “They tend to see more and they tend to see far….They can see which units and which individuals are collaborating and which are not. They have sight of where expertise is in oversupply and where it is sorely needed. They can see how resources are deployed and have a sense of how they are being utilized.”
An accessible introduction to the challenges that modern business leaders face.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 12, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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