Deftly written, thought-provoking, and pointed; a refreshing challenge to conventional business thinking.
Applying his experience in business as an “unconventional leader,” debut author Wallace offers his insightful personal perspective in a book that is as much about a life philosophy as leadership.
Wallace begins with a discussion of typical business leadership, suggesting that leaders tend to follow convention largely because things have always been done the same way: “Today many of us just accept that the leadership pathway is not only unchallengeable but also unchangeable.” Wallace’s view is that great leaders need to challenge convention. As examples, he uses two polar explorers, Roald Amundsen and Ernest Shackleton, who “were both, in their own ways, rebels with a strategic cause.” Wallace explains how these explorers exhibited unconventional leadership and succeeded as a result, contrasting them with a more traditional explorer, Robert Scott, whose conventional thinking spelled doom for his polar expedition. “Like the Antarctic,” Wallace writes, “the business environment has its freakish weather, uncertain conditions and hidden dangers.” Just the fact that Wallace references polar explorers in a business leadership book demonstrates his own lack of convention—and it’s a welcome breath of fresh air. In short, easily readable chapters, Wallace informally lays out a strategy for breaking convention, acknowledging that fear of something new and unfamiliar may be the biggest barrier to success. He urges readers to follow their inspirations and embrace change. He also offers some specific advice for being a more effective leader, including tips for keeping employees engaged, acting fairly, being a real team player when the going gets tough, listening to what team members have to say, caring for people’s health, and instilling a sense of personal belief in your colleagues. Wallace closes with a “Revolution Plan” that is also unconventional. Though it lists action items in bullet form, “there are no action-completed boxes because outside of completing perhaps the self-assessment, none of these actions really will be completed.” After all, challenging convention is a continuous process.
Deftly written, thought-provoking, and pointed; a refreshing challenge to conventional business thinking.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2014
ISBN: 978-1480810228
Page Count: 124
Publisher: Archway Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
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
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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
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