A lean, sharp, and readable leadership enhancement program.
A well-organized business book designed to help managers become leaders.
In his latest book, Timms draws on his own long experience of counseling businesses to distill the fundamentals of good leadership and differentiate them from various types of poor management. At the heart of his treatment is what he calls a “superpower”: systems thinking, which management theorist Peter Senge defined in the 1990s as “seeing patterns where others see only events and forces to react to,” and which the author describes as “simply a more enlightened way of looking at problems to discover insights that would otherwise remain undetected.” Developing the superpower of systems thinking will, he contends, allows one to take a wider view, and step back and see unhelpful processes; taking ownership of such behaviors and working to improve them increases personal accountability, he asserts. Timms returns often to this latter concept, discussing how to hold others accountable in an organization, and how to create organizations that are accountable to the wider community. It’s clear from his fast-paced chapters that he views this idea as the crucial difference between being simply a manager and being a leader. Managers might be problem-solvers, but, as Timms puts it, “you are only a leader when others willingly follow you because they trust and respect you, not because they fear the consequences of not doing so.” The author also distills three main habits that readers can develop in order to build this trust and respect: First, don’t rely on blaming others; second, acknowledge one’s own part in any problem; and third, fix processes to get the desired result. In clear, confident prose, Timms outlines a leadership blueprint that has many basic elements in common with other books in the genre, but he presents them energetically, along with useful charts and illustrations. Overall, the author asks readers to ask themselves a daunting but simple question: “Would anybody willingly follow me if they weren’t being paid to do so?” His strategies will help readers find answers.
A lean, sharp, and readable leadership enhancement program.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-03-910229-3
Page Count: -
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A declaration worth hearing out in a time of growing inequality—and indignity.
Noted number cruncher Sperling delivers an economist’s rejoinder to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Former director of the National Economic Council in the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, the author has long taken a view of the dismal science that takes economic justice fully into account. Alongside all the metrics and estimates and reckonings of GDP, inflation, and the supply curve, he holds the great goal of economic policy to be the advancement of human dignity, a concept intangible enough to chase the econometricians away. Growth, the sacred mantra of most economic policy, “should never be considered an appropriate ultimate end goal” for it, he counsels. Though 4% is the magic number for annual growth to be considered healthy, it is healthy only if everyone is getting the benefits and not just the ultrawealthy who are making away with the spoils today. Defining dignity, admits Sperling, can be a kind of “I know it when I see it” problem, but it does not exist where people are a paycheck away from homelessness; the fact, however, that people widely share a view of indignity suggests the “intuitive universality” of its opposite. That said, the author identifies three qualifications, one of them the “ability to meaningfully participate in the economy with respect, not domination and humiliation.” Though these latter terms are also essentially unquantifiable, Sperling holds that this respect—lack of abuse, in another phrasing—can be obtained through a tight labor market and monetary and fiscal policy that pushes for full employment. In other words, where management needs to come looking for workers, workers are likely to be better treated than when the opposite holds. In still other words, writes the author, dignity is in part a function of “ ‘take this job and shove it’ power,” which is a power worth fighting for.
A declaration worth hearing out in a time of growing inequality—and indignity.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-7987-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
A satisfyingly heartfelt tribute to a thoroughly remarkable man.
Investigative reporter Franklin recounts the life of the free-spirited millionaire entrepreneur who used his fabulous wealth in the fight to save nature.
One constant in the epic life of North Face founder Doug Tompkins (1943-2015) was his enduring love of the outdoors. The son of a successful antiques dealer, he grew up in the countryside of Millbrook, New York (Timothy Leary was a neighbor), where he cultivated his love of the natural world. His contrarian ways eventually led to his expulsion from high school just weeks before graduation. Tompkins headed West, where he baled hay in Montana, raced Olympic skiers in the Rockies, and took up rock climbing in California. He also “hitchhiked by airplane throughout South America.” Tompkins ended up in San Francisco, where, by the mid-1960s, the skiing and climbing supplies business he started with the help of Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard suddenly began to boom. He was a charismatic businessman, and every one of his ventures after that—from his wife’s Plain Jane dress company to his own Esprit clothing brand—was successful. But his Midas touch never changed his passion for travel and adventure—e.g., flying his Cessna, sometimes with his family, but often, to the detriment of his marriage, solo. In the early 1990s, Tompkins bought property in southern Chile and fell in love with its pristine beauty. His outrage over the resource extraction–based nature of the Chilean government’s policies fueled his desire to protect the land. In the years that followed, he became an outspoken, sometimes reviled conservationist dedicated to using his fortune to transform thousands of acres of Patagonia into national parks. The great strengths of this timely, well-researched book lie not just in the author’s detailed characterization of Tompkins’ complex personality, but also in the celebration of his singularly dynamic crusade to save the environment.
A satisfyingly heartfelt tribute to a thoroughly remarkable man.Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-296412-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
© Copyright 2025 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.
