A brisk and engaging series of proposals for improving corporate team performance.
Entrepreneur and consultant Sonnenberg offers a comprehensive plan for increasing workplace proficiency.
“Most teams are drowning in work because they’re using yesterday’s methods in today’s fast-paced environment,” writes the author at the start of this book. “Either they’re unaware of modern tools or they lack knowledge around when and how to best use them, which holds them back from streamlining the way they work.” Addressing this problem is the core concern of Sonnenberg’s book, in which he lays out the tenets of a tool kit he proposes to fix it: the CPR (“Communication, Planning, and Resources”) Business Efficiency Framework. Sonnenberg, a self-described “numbers guy,” is familiar with the importance of seemingly small factors in meeting larger goals; as a trader, he used algorithms and math to trade billions of stocks a day, which he says taught him the value of time: “Shaving even a few seconds off a process that’s done many times per day could provide huge time savings in the end,” he notes, and in these chapters, he uses eye-catching graphs, bullet points, and discussion questions, such as “What are your current business needs?” and “What problem are you trying to solve?” to break down many different strategies for improving team efficiency. Along the way, he touches on everything from team size to the finesse required in planning realistic projects, with a point of view that takes in the grand design as well as the smallest tasks—the latter of which Sonnenberg calls “the bread and butter of any work management platform.”
This book is clearly aimed at corporate managers and their team members, so its initial demand of readers—that they believe the notion that such teams are “drowning in work”—won’t necessarily be a problem. Once that demand is met, Sonnenberg’s book offers many sharply written and richly insightful observations about all aspects of office life. He’s particularly engaging when it comes to broader considerations, as when he asks his readers if they’d rather bring more people into a broken system and fix it later or fix the system first. His answer: “Fix the overflowing sink, don’t mop faster!” The clarity of these and other conclusions is always bracing; readers who may feel mired in their corporate teams’ messes are sure to find some of them to be invaluable. This is also true when he advocates for better internal dialogue, in which “communicating is fun, and conversations are focused and flow just as naturally as they would in person.” His more granular and practical points are equally engaging, as when he discusses the notorious “Inbox Zero” movement in the corporate world. It’s important to note, he writes, that “Inbox Zero” is very different from “Unread Zero,” in which the emails’ tasks remain uncompleted: “Even if you’ve read every email in your inbox, they’re still occupying your attention and using your brainpower.” Sonnenberg’s skill at alternating between high-concept and granular content makes his book highly readable, and the well-designed visuals are also helpful.
Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781400236725
Page Count: 320
Publisher: HarperCollins Leadership
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
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
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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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