For some readers, there won’t be much news here, but for others—particularly those down the chain from Dempsey—there’s much...
Pop psych meets pop business in Brafman’s (co-author: Click: The Forces Behind How We Fully Engage with People, Work, and Everything We Do, 2011, etc.) latest outing in the land of counterintuition, written with the assistance of leadership expert Pollack.
Business types live and breathe for data, analysis and endless planning. Yet, as Joseph Schumpeter observed, there’s something irresistibly compelling about cleaning house, resetting priorities and otherwise changing course by means of what he called “creative destruction.” Brafman doesn’t quite counsel burning down the house, but he isn’t shy of introducing a little bubonic plague into the equation, either. Drawing on the results of a three-year consultancy with Martin Dempsey, now chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Brafman urges that we consider the bright side of chaos and calamity: The Black Death may have brought about all manner of death and destruction, but “it was actually instrumental in bringing about Europe’s ascent to greatness.” Post–James Gleick, the word “chaos” has been applied and misapplied in all sorts of half-baked, Gladwell-ian ways, and Brafman plays it a little loose at times. Nonetheless, this book has value in encouraging a rethinking of how things get done, particularly in heavily institutionalized cultures. For instance, in the military, there’s a manual for everything, including one on the proper way to change a tire on a tuck. But why read a manual when a YouTube video would do? Such useful ideas come from what the author calls “casual downtime,” the thinking time that institutions too often don’t budget for. And what situation wouldn’t benefit from more thinking about it, as long as it’s not perfectly unbroken?
For some readers, there won’t be much news here, but for others—particularly those down the chain from Dempsey—there’s much good food for thought in Brafman’s sometimes-brash assertions.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-307-88667-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Crown Business
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2013
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
A readable, persuasive argument that our ways of doing business will have to change if we are to prosper—or even survive.
A well-constructed critique of an economic system that, by the author’s account, is a driver of the world’s destruction.
Harvard Business School professor Henderson vigorously questions the bromide that “management’s only duty is to maximize shareholder value,” a notion advanced by Milton Friedman and accepted uncritically in business schools ever since. By that logic, writes the author, there is no reason why corporations should not fish out the oceans, raise drug prices, militate against public education (since it costs tax money), and otherwise behave ruinously and anti-socially. Many do, even though an alternative theory of business organization argues that corporations and society should enjoy a symbiotic relationship of mutual benefit, which includes corporate investment in what economists call public goods. Given that the history of humankind is “the story of our increasing ability to cooperate at larger and larger scales,” one would hope that in the face of environmental degradation and other threats, we might adopt the symbiotic model rather than the winner-take-all one. Problems abound, of course, including that of the “free rider,” the corporation that takes the benefits from collaborative agreements but does none of the work. Henderson examines case studies such as a large food company that emphasized environmentally responsible production and in turn built “purpose-led, sustainable living brands” and otherwise led the way in increasing shareholder value by reducing risk while building demand. The author argues that the “short-termism” that dominates corporate thinking needs to be adjusted to a longer view even though the larger problem might be better characterized as “failure of information.” Henderson closes with a set of prescriptions for bringing a more equitable economics to the personal level, one that, among other things, asks us to step outside routine—eat less meat, drive less—and become active in forcing corporations (and politicians) to be better citizens.
A readable, persuasive argument that our ways of doing business will have to change if we are to prosper—or even survive.Pub Date: May 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5417-3015-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
© 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