Straightforward, play-it-smart advice for business owners as they cross the minefield laid by their own flaws and foibles.
A cheeky collection of thou-shalt-nots for aspiring business owners.
Most books on small-business management offer tips on what to do to increase the likelihood of success. In his debut work, Gous, a South African serial entrepreneur and consultant, takes the opposite approach. He compiles a quirky yet instructive list of don’ts to help owners avoid mistakes that have doomed uncountable fledgling businesses. But don’t expect to find technical advice on budgeting, incorporation or supply-chain management. Instead, Gous believes the life or death of a company is determined more by the owner’s interpersonal relationships than by business acumen. Uncouth behavior by a boss among family, colleagues and customers can lead to disaster if left unchecked, he says. Divided into short, humorous chapters that can be read between staff meetings, the book forces readers to examine their own character. Not surprisingly, the first topic is society’s attitude toward money. “Money makes you ‘free,’ but at a cost,” Gous writes. “Never allow it to control you, because you will become its slave.” Most of the author’s proscriptions amount to common-sense warnings about work-life balance, self-control and dealing with difficult people. A few, however, address emotional issues often overlooked in business literature but painfully familiar to entrepreneurs, such as loneliness and worry. Gous also tackles one of the ultimate workplace taboos: sex. His admonition against office romance is summarized in a prudent, though crude, aphorism: “Don’t dip your pen in the company’s ink pot.” The author admits he wrote from a male perspective, and chapters entitled “High-Maintenance Wives” and “Busybody Wives” may make female readers cringe. While the book encourages ethical behavior, Gous seems equally concerned with the practical implications of an owner’s actions. Ultimately, he advances a philosophy akin to the golden rule yet mixed with a dose of entrepreneurial pragmatism. Tax evasion, underpaying employees and mistreating suppliers should be avoided not just because they are morally wrong, but also because they threaten what the owner has built.
Straightforward, play-it-smart advice for business owners as they cross the minefield laid by their own flaws and foibles.Pub Date: April 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-1481796736
Page Count: 150
Publisher: AuthorHouseUK
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An informative and creatively multilayered Google guidebook from the businessman’s perspective.
Two distinguished technology executives share the methodology behind what made Google a global business leader.
Former Google CEO Schmidt (co-author: The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business, 2013) and former senior vice president of products Rosenberg share accumulated wisdom and business acumen from their early careers in technology, then later as management at the Internet search giant. Though little is particularly revelatory or unexpected, the companywide processes that have made Google a household name remain timely and relevant within today’s digitized culture. After several months at Google, the authors found it necessary to retool their management strategies by emphasizing employee culture, codifying company values, and rethinking the way staff is internally positioned in order to best compliment their efforts and potential. Their text places “Googlers” front and center as they adopted the business systems first implemented by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who stressed the importance of company-wide open communication. Schmidt and Rosenberg discuss the value of technological insights, Google’s effective “growth mindset” hiring practices, staff meeting maximization, email tips, and the company’s effective solutions to branding competition and product development complications. They also offer a condensed, two-page strategy checklist that serves as an apt blueprint for managers. At times, statements leak into self-congratulatory territory, as when Schmidt and Rosenberg insinuate that a majority of business plans are flawed and that the Google model is superior. Analogies focused on corporate retention and methods of maximizing Google’s historically impressive culture of “smart creatives” reflect the firm’s legacy of spinning intellect and creativity into Internet gold. The authors also demarcate legendary application missteps like “Wave” and “Buzz” while applauding the independent thinkers responsible for catapulting the company into the upper echelons of technological innovation.
An informative and creatively multilayered Google guidebook from the businessman’s perspective.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-1455582341
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Business Plus/Grand Central
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
A declaration worth hearing out in a time of growing inequality—and indignity.
Noted number cruncher Sperling delivers an economist’s rejoinder to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Former director of the National Economic Council in the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, the author has long taken a view of the dismal science that takes economic justice fully into account. Alongside all the metrics and estimates and reckonings of GDP, inflation, and the supply curve, he holds the great goal of economic policy to be the advancement of human dignity, a concept intangible enough to chase the econometricians away. Growth, the sacred mantra of most economic policy, “should never be considered an appropriate ultimate end goal” for it, he counsels. Though 4% is the magic number for annual growth to be considered healthy, it is healthy only if everyone is getting the benefits and not just the ultrawealthy who are making away with the spoils today. Defining dignity, admits Sperling, can be a kind of “I know it when I see it” problem, but it does not exist where people are a paycheck away from homelessness; the fact, however, that people widely share a view of indignity suggests the “intuitive universality” of its opposite. That said, the author identifies three qualifications, one of them the “ability to meaningfully participate in the economy with respect, not domination and humiliation.” Though these latter terms are also essentially unquantifiable, Sperling holds that this respect—lack of abuse, in another phrasing—can be obtained through a tight labor market and monetary and fiscal policy that pushes for full employment. In other words, where management needs to come looking for workers, workers are likely to be better treated than when the opposite holds. In still other words, writes the author, dignity is in part a function of “ ‘take this job and shove it’ power,” which is a power worth fighting for.
A declaration worth hearing out in a time of growing inequality—and indignity.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-7987-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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