A thoughtful and detailed approach to a particular niche of business management.
Herres offers a business management strategy guide that’s designed specifically for mental health therapists.
In this work, the author takes the established Profit First system for managing business accounts, created by author and lecturer Mike Michalowicz (who provides a foreword), and tailors it to the needs of therapists—from solo practitioners to owners of large, multiclinician practices. The book first explains Profit First, which is similar to the envelope method of personal finance with income divided among accounts dedicated to specific areas of a business. The system requires business owners to determine the percentage of income needed for operations, payroll, and other areas, and then to make gradual changes, as needed, to maintain a healthy, self-sustaining business while delivering an adequate return. Herres takes readers through the big-picture aspects and the minutiae of setting up the system, addresses common challenges and mistakes, and explains how Profit First can be adapted to businesses at all stages of growth and maturity. The book’s approach (“Profit happens on purpose, with every session and every clinician in your practice”) is sensible and clearly explained, and Herres is an empathetic adviser, reminding therapists that they’re not doing their clients or employees any kind of disservice by running a successful business. The book ably covers everything from the mundane, such as how to switch to a multiple-account system without throwing off existing insurance payments or automatic bill payments, to the aspirational, such as using the system to understand when a business is ready to expand. Readers without an accounting background will have no trouble following the book’s more technical aspects, which are laid out in a straightforward manner with plenty of examples. The author’s advice is also effectively tailored to the specific needs of therapy practices, addressing differences between insurance and private pay, standard methods of paying contractors and employees, and the relationship between electronic health records and accounting software. A plethora of anecdotes from Herres’ clients makes it easy to bridge the gap between theory and practice and to see the Profit First concepts in action.
A thoughtful and detailed approach to a particular niche of business management.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9798987216309
Page Count: 318
Publisher: Greenoak Press
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
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
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A passionate and accessible guide to humanizing the workplace.
Helbig and Norman present a game plan for making leadership more responsively human.
In this expanded update to The Psychological Safety Playbook: Lead More Powerfully by Being More Human (2023), the authors provide “practical strategies for responding to resistance, sparking change, embodying the change we want to see, and moving forward deliberately,” specifically in a business setting. They suggest ways to encourage what they call “changemakers” through the use of five key “plays” from their playbook: Communicate Courageously, Master the Art of Listening, Manage Your Reactions (“shift from automatic reaction to conscious response to stay better connected to yourself and others”), Embrace Risk and Failure, and Design Inclusive Rituals. The goal is to ensure that organizational cultures promote psychological safety, guided by leaders who “walk the talk” by emphasizing their own humanity at every turn. (“We must be the first to share our own failures with our teams, which will start to make it possible for others to do the same.”) This call for example-setting is sounded throughout the book as Helbig and Norman urge their target audience (leaders and would-be leaders) to go beyond mere instruction and instead embody the qualities they want to see in their subordinates, such as continuous learning, active curiosity, and self-reflection. Each chapter includes a detailed “Recommended Reading” section and text with extensive numbered and bulleted points formatted to make the core concepts more immediately digestible. The authors effectively employ clear and empathetic prose to assure readers that psychological safety is slow to build and quick to break, observing that such safety requires steady attention and delivers outsize payoffs as a result. They refreshingly ground a great deal of the material in psychology and neuroscience, pointing out, for instance, that research has demonstrated that the parasympathetic nervous system responds to honest appreciation, which improves creative thinking. Some wistful readers might consider some of the authors’ suggestions beyond the reach of their own organizations, as when group facilitators are advised to “gently intervene when someone dominates the conversation,” but hope springs eternal.
A passionate and accessible guide to humanizing the workplace.Pub Date: May 19, 2026
ISBN: 9798993550503
Page Count: 170
Publisher: Crazy Idea Press
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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