An accessible guide to facing business fears.
In this business guide, Parker warns that poor leadership can bring out the monster in us all.
From unstable environments to combative teams, the terrors of business ownership can be plentiful. Even great employees can turn villainous under duress, but, as the author asserts, the biggest bugaboo in one’s business is often oneself (“Your company’s first monster may show up as destructive behavior within your life”). Lacking vision for a company’s direction or the self-awareness to face its deficiencies, owners may drive employees to quit or bring bad behaviors home from work. Parker, a strategic business consultant, uses the analogy of Dr. Jekyll, the conscientious physician whose chaotic impulses—represented by Mr. Hyde—overtake his life. An insightful overview of business best practices, this practical guide will help leaders re-energize their companies, reduce chaos, and improve the quality of their own lives. To help overwhelmed leaders achieve these outcomes, the author introduces readers to time-tested tools for identifying the “monsters” in their businesses and potential areas of growth within themselves. Parker details the creation of mission and vision statements, describes measurements of company culture, examines the development of SMART goals and DISC assessments, and discusses Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Parker also simplifies daily logistical tasks, such as cash flow management, for readers. But what about the monsters we cannot see? Drawing on personal experience, the author shares key indicators of business distress, including examples of the feedback that leaders receive when teams start to suffer. Tightly written and easy to follow, this primer offers a perfect road map for leaders trying to get (or keep) their businesses on track. Parker demystifies common business concerns in a way that will be especially helpful for those seeking assistance with issue identification and resolution. Part educational guide and part workbook, the book provides readers with exercises and activities to apply its teachings to their specific needs. The book includes recommended reading suggestions to provide a deeper understanding of the material, and Tucker’s cartoon illustrations throughout lend the work an agreeably playful, lively tone.
An accessible guide to facing business fears.Pub Date: March 15, 2023
ISBN: 9798887593739
Page Count: 238
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2024
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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