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
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
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 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.
bookshelf
