A businesslike and savvy outline of how to cut through the confusion of present circumstances to forge a better future.
A debut guidebook offers advice on making fundamental life changes.
In their work, the Polczynskis explore a concept everyone knows but few ever achieve: the “ideal future,” which is not only a collection of hopes and aspirations, but also a mind frame of “living without regret and maximizing all the days of our lives.” A refreshingly direct nuts-and-bolts approach is adopted, a model aimed at helping readers to change—with the first step being to assess their lives, the “life elements” that make up their day-to-day reality: finances, relationships, education, ethics, career fundamentals, and the like. The authors are attentive coaches at looking at all these separate factors clearly, without letting wishful thinking cloud the picture. And once that portrait is clarified, the most important element of the book kicks in: “change agents,” the moving factors, the aspects that a person can alter to achieve more. The authors use a variety of organizational aids—charts, worksheets, entrepreneurial tips—to help readers balance the variables in their personal equations, consistently laying the responsibility for doing this squarely on the individual rather than on any program or guru. “Only when you accept responsibility for your own changes,” they write, “will you be empowered to reach your ideal future.” The practical advice about, for instance, finances—stressing the difference between wants and needs, always a vital reminder to chronic overspenders—is uniformly on target and concisely presented. But the book’s real strength lies in the clear force of its personal advice surrounding “change agents,” counsel often expressed with a startling simplicity. “Say no to vengeance,” the authors write, “and don't allow yourself to be helpless with self-pity.” These insights combine very smoothly with tips on how to embrace your inner entrepreneur, regardless of how that creativity is expressed.
A businesslike and savvy outline of how to cut through the confusion of present circumstances to forge a better future.Pub Date: Dec. 31, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5320-1122-1
Page Count: 176
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
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
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