Genuinely useful advice and recognition for members of a sometimes-overlooked profession.
Seasoned event producer Miller, the founder and CEO of Entire Productions, distills 25 years of experience into a manual focusing on an often thankless job: organizing high-stakes events.
The book presents corporate event planners with a sophisticated framework for orchestrating corporate happenings that make an impact—from small internal meetings to global, multiday conferences. Each chapter methodically builds on the last, covering everything from proposal request processes and vendor negotiations to key performance indicators, return on investment, and the integration of artificial intelligence in an event’s planning stages. Miller’s core insight is that event professionals are often overworked, under-resourced, and misunderstood; her book effectively raises the profile of this career, and she backs up her recommendations with firsthand interviews with industry veterans, who speak on and off the record with authentic examples. Detailed case studies—including one that details a “Secret Experience” event, which the author co-produced with hospitality company Convene—bring abstract planning concepts vividly to life. Throughout, Miller emphasizes how to align events with corporate goals and demonstrates how planners can advocate for themselves by thinking strategically and proposing measurable outcomes. Chapters on sustainability, outsourcing, and emerging trends, such as the “transformation economy,” ensure the work remains timely: “Transformative events go beyond memorable experiences to create lasting change in attendees—whether it’s personal growth, professional development, or a sense of purpose.” Miller writes like a peer mentor: approachable and assertive, she balances motivational language with no-nonsense practicality. She’s encouraging but honest about the stress and systemic inefficiencies characteristic of the field. Summaries, toolkits, and downloadable templates make this manual a fine working reference. The subject matter sprawls a bit—topics range from AI to corporate social responsibility to immersive experience design—but Miller’s clear, grounded voice keeps the material cohesive. This guide is ideal for midcareer professionals looking to elevate their status within their organizations. It’s also an overdue validation of the indispensable role that event professionals play in shaping corporate culture.
Genuinely useful advice and recognition for members of a sometimes-overlooked profession.Pub Date: April 19, 2025
ISBN: 9798985600285
Page Count: 212
Publisher: Poignant Press
Review Posted Online: June 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
A passionate and accessible guide to humanizing the workplace.
Helbig and Norman present a game plan for making leadership more responsively human.
In this expanded update to The Psychological Safety Playbook: Lead More Powerfully by Being More Human (2023), the authors provide “practical strategies for responding to resistance, sparking change, embodying the change we want to see, and moving forward deliberately,” specifically in a business setting. They suggest ways to encourage what they call “changemakers” through the use of five key “plays” from their playbook: Communicate Courageously, Master the Art of Listening, Manage Your Reactions (“shift from automatic reaction to conscious response to stay better connected to yourself and others”), Embrace Risk and Failure, and Design Inclusive Rituals. The goal is to ensure that organizational cultures promote psychological safety, guided by leaders who “walk the talk” by emphasizing their own humanity at every turn. (“We must be the first to share our own failures with our teams, which will start to make it possible for others to do the same.”) This call for example-setting is sounded throughout the book as Helbig and Norman urge their target audience (leaders and would-be leaders) to go beyond mere instruction and instead embody the qualities they want to see in their subordinates, such as continuous learning, active curiosity, and self-reflection. Each chapter includes a detailed “Recommended Reading” section and text with extensive numbered and bulleted points formatted to make the core concepts more immediately digestible. The authors effectively employ clear and empathetic prose to assure readers that psychological safety is slow to build and quick to break, observing that such safety requires steady attention and delivers outsize payoffs as a result. They refreshingly ground a great deal of the material in psychology and neuroscience, pointing out, for instance, that research has demonstrated that the parasympathetic nervous system responds to honest appreciation, which improves creative thinking. Some wistful readers might consider some of the authors’ suggestions beyond the reach of their own organizations, as when group facilitators are advised to “gently intervene when someone dominates the conversation,” but hope springs eternal.
A passionate and accessible guide to humanizing the workplace.Pub Date: May 19, 2026
ISBN: 9798993550503
Page Count: 170
Publisher: Crazy Idea Press
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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