An unevenly executed but passionate and people-centered management approach.
Price, the founder of Florida-based marketing agency Vers Creative, presents a point-by-point overview of how to manage the creative side of a business.
The author structures his book around the tensions between conventional philosophies (which he asserts are lies) in the creative-management world and what he characterizes as realities, which are far more likely to lead to successful outcomes. Each chapter is oriented around a standard “lie,” such as “The path to success is the one that avoids failure” or “To get the most out of your team, push them as hard as you can,” and a corresponding “truth,” such as “Getting the most requires trust, respect, and balance,” or “Growth comes from doing the right things, not more things.” Price outlines his own past as a creative director and freelancer, and the shift he made from being a creative to being someone who tells creatives what to do: “Creative leaders must guide their teams through ambiguity, identify and remove obstacles,” Price writes, “and foster an environment that encourages innovation and resilience.” The book addresses some familiar business-school concepts, such as key performance indicators and return on investment, but Price is mostly interested in the personal elements of corporate leadership. The glimpses he gives into his own company will bring refreshing clarity to managers struggling with the ambiguity that exists between creatives and leadership. However, occasional recollections are awkward (“Our staff…is always ready for me to jump on the drums for a 10-minute jam session between meetings”), and readers may not share the book’s veneration of billionaire Elon Musk: “Musk’s unyielding drive and resilience have propelled his companies to unprecedented heights,” the author writes at one point, with no mention of the many documented setbacks these same companies have faced. Still, Price’s insistence on “a systematic approach that blends creativity with structure” will appeal to those facing that workplace conundrum.
An unevenly executed but passionate and people-centered management approach.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9798992074529
Page Count: 160
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2025
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
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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