Simple yet powerful advice; a worthwhile addition to a CEO’s bookshelf.
Straightforward counsel examines what a CEO should view as top priorities.
In this spirited debut, Taylor, a former CEO who now coaches C-suite executives, distills the responsibilities of the typical CEO into just three areas: “Culture,” “People,” and “Numbers.” While some readers may consider this an understated oversimplification, it is a valid notion when the critical importance of those key areas is considered. “These three pillars serve to center your focus on work that must be done,” writes the author. “Focusing on them exclusively will clarify and inform your work at a level you’ve never reached before.” Taylor begins to make his case with an introductory section that briefly but authoritatively discusses the CEO mindset, including “the power of intent,” self-awareness, the need to understand how people think, the importance of authenticity, and the ability to make good decisions. From there, the author delves into the three topics in considerable detail. The “Culture” section offers a high-level overview of the cultural nature of organizations and the leadership role a CEO plays in shaping the corporate ethos. Taylor employs solid examples from his own organization and others, such as the Ritz-Carlton, to illustrate what he terms a “cultural operating system.” Of particular interest in this section are the author’s salient observations about corporate values and rituals. The next part, “People,” provides insight into the relationship between culture and employees. Taylor cites an intriguing formula to dramatize it: “Company = People x Culture x Focus.” In this section, the author supplies valuable ideas about how to recruit and retain talent, not just hire people. He also shares a smart “4Cs” process—“Culture, Capabilities, Compensation, and Commitment”—for talent acquisition. Finally, in the “Numbers” section, Taylor suggests that it is the CEO’s primary responsibility to define the company’s key performance indicators: “If not properly monitored and managed, it can cause you to miss important opportunities, or worse, lead to financial ruin.” Here, the author strongly urges CEOs to instill in their employees “ownership thinking.” Throughout, Taylor uses pertinent examples and writes at an appropriate level for executive consumption.
Simple yet powerful advice; a worthwhile addition to a CEO’s bookshelf.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5445-1725-4
Page Count: 222
Publisher: Board of Advisors Book
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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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