For the business executive in desperate need of organizational guidance, this quick primer could be helpful.
A brief instructional manual designed to teach business leaders how to more efficiently identify and solve problems.
Petermann’s first book is an exercise in concision: In about 50 pages, he lays out an intricate, rational process for finding and trimming business waste. The central concept is that of the “kaizen”—a “small group of employees voluntarily working together to solve problems or make improvement in their work area.” In other words, it’s a team specifically selected to address a problem and search for solutions, drawing upon the “collective knowledge of the people closest to the problem and those most impacted by the results.” Based on a combination of Toyota’s LEAN managing process and the Six Sigma improvement process, the main thrust of the book is devoted to parsing the entire metho of problem-solving using such a kaizen. Starting from the selection of the team, Petermann covers the discovery of waste, the collection and analysis of data, the testing of solutions and the implementation of the one finally agreed upon. The approach focuses on the role of the leader; three separate chapters address the characteristics and responsibilities required of the leader, including some additional tips delivered in bullet-point style. The advice is always lucidly dispatched, often in the form of enumerated lists and short, accessible paragraphs. About a quarter of the work comprises visual aids packaged in a “Toolkit” section meant to illustratively clarify concepts such as brainstorming, replete with ready-made checklists and mnemonic formulas for various business processes. This section, however, is the least useful of the work, as it needlessly muddies simple notions that don’t call for simplification. The central defect of the book is that it goes to great pains to systematize what should largely count as common sense. For example, the business executive who needs to be reminded to bring paper and pencils to a meeting might need more than this book can provide.
For the business executive in desperate need of organizational guidance, this quick primer could be helpful.Pub Date: April 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-1493582723
Page Count: 60
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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