A smoothly readable argument for deeper and better thinking in a chaotic world.
Marouf sounds a motivational call for using the whole of your knowledge in this business guide.
In her nonfiction debut, the author, a professor and researcher, insists that her readers have more potential than they may realize, if only they would access what she refers to as the “totality” of their knowledge, which, she asserts, is multiplicative, not merely additive. Accessing this totality of knowledge, she writes, is “as transformative as knowing the meaning rather than just the sound of the words you use.” In both personal and professional life, she argues, “both rational and intuitive knowledge are vital.” All of this advice is in service of thriving in what she refers to (borrowing from military usage) as “the VUCA world,” one that is Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous. Citing such recent events as the Covid-19 pandemic, she notes that dealing with such disruptions is difficult enough for anyone and is even harder for organizational leaders. In a series of well-designed and well-illustrated chapters featuring plenty of insets and illustrations, Marouf expands on the elements of emotion and psychology that go into forging a more global consciousness optimized for dealing with a world full of uncertainty. As in so many books of this kind, readers should brace themselves for banalities like: “To chart a way forward as both leaders and individuals, we need to work first on understanding the world we are living in.” Likewise, the author makes contentions that aren’t supported by psychological research, as when Marouf asserts that the more a person uses their intuition, the stronger it becomes. But her calm, global vision of personal development is consistently reassuring, and her overriding goal, to help people (and especially corporate leaders) become “personally wiser,” compensates for the more predictable elements of her book. Readers seeking to break out of old, stale ways of thinking will find much food for thought in these pages.
A smoothly readable argument for deeper and better thinking in a chaotic world.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2023
ISBN: 9798887500249
Page Count: -
Publisher: ForbesBooks
Review Posted Online: Aug. 23, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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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