Creatively written, cleverly packaged advice for organizational leaders.
A fictional work highlights leadership principles.
In the tradition of the blockbuster book Who Moved My Cheese? (1998) by Spencer Johnson, corporate veterans Desiderio and Frino have crafted a business fable that metaphorically compares beekeeping with leading a business. The story centers on Catherine, now a successful organizational consultant, who narrates a flashback story of how she evolved from her role as owner of a rapidly growing essential-oils business. While vacationing with her family on a tourist farm, she crosses paths with the place’s owner and beekeeper, Henry Ives, the former CEO of a marketing firm. Her chance meeting with Henry and subsequent conversations with him about how bees function inspire her to send motivational emails to her managers while she is away. For example, when Henry explains the nature of the honeybees’ hive, Catherine sends her leadership team an email that reads: “The hive is at the core of learning and growth and bees provide the nourishment for all things to grow. Bees work together and are focused on the same mission.” As the story unfolds, a number of leadership principles derived from what Catherine learns about bees are revealed. Of course, all these principles begin with the word Be—“Be Transformational,” “Be Curious,” “Be Growth-Minded,” and so on. The authors keep readers engaged by adding other characters and depicting various educational and sometimes amusing farm scenes, as when Catherine’s family feeds the pigs. Particularly enlightening is the last part of the book, which steps away from the farm narrative to expose how staffers back at the office are reacting to the emails sent by Catherine, who is not fully aware of the transformational impact she is having on her organization’s culture. The similarities of the beehive, worker bees, and even the queen bee to a well-oiled company run by humans are not only relevant, but at times startlingly accurate as well. The authors very effectively make the connection, although some readers may roll their eyes at the overabundance of bee-related puns. Still, as business fables go, this one largely succeeds.
Creatively written, cleverly packaged advice for organizational leaders.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781394165261
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Wiley
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.
A thoughtful program for eradicating poverty from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted.
“America’s poverty is not for lack of resources,” writes Desmond. “We lack something else.” That something else is compassion, in part, but it’s also the lack of a social system that insists that everyone pull their weight—and that includes the corporations and wealthy individuals who, the IRS estimates, get away without paying upward of $1 trillion per year. Desmond, who grew up in modest circumstances and suffered poverty in young adulthood, points to the deleterious effects of being poor—among countless others, the precarity of health care and housing (with no meaningful controls on rent), lack of transportation, the constant threat of losing one’s job due to illness, and the need to care for dependent children. It does not help, Desmond adds, that so few working people are represented by unions or that Black Americans, even those who have followed the “three rules” (graduate from high school, get a full-time job, wait until marriage to have children), are far likelier to be poor than their White compatriots. Furthermore, so many full-time jobs are being recast as contracted, fire-at-will gigs, “not a break from the norm as much as an extension of it, a continuation of corporations finding new ways to limit their obligations to workers.” By Desmond’s reckoning, besides amending these conditions, it would not take a miracle to eliminate poverty: about $177 billion, which would help end hunger and homelessness and “make immense headway in driving down the many agonizing correlates of poverty, like violence, sickness, and despair.” These are matters requiring systemic reform, which will in turn require Americans to elect officials who will enact that reform. And all of us, the author urges, must become “poverty abolitionists…refusing to live as unwitting enemies of the poor.” Fortune 500 CEOs won’t like Desmond’s message for rewriting the social contract—which is precisely the point.
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 9780593239919
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
