A practical, useful guide for personal and organizational success.
Strategies for changing one’s mindset.
Social psychologist Murphy brings 10 years of research to her analysis of how best to foster growth and development. She contrasts Cultures of Genius, which pit individuals against one another for recognition and promotion, with Cultures of Growth, where teams collaborate to work through problems, innovate solutions, and allow themselves to take risks. In Cultures of Growth, Murphy explains, talent and ability are honed and enhanced “through good strategies, mentoring, and organizational supports.” In evaluating a job applicant, for example, or conducting a periodic review, growth can be encouraged by looking for evidence of collaborative work, innovative ideas, risk-taking to solve a problem, and resilience when facing obstacles. Cultures of Growth do well to prize “learn-it-alls” over “know-it-alls.” In a workplace, writes the author, “mindset culture has a ripple effect that impacts everything: collaboration and innovation; who is hired, fired, and promoted; ethical (or unethical) behavior; diversity and inclusion; and bottom-line economic success.” Cultures of Growth, moreover, do well to understand the mindset of core customers—how open they are to the prospect of change and growth—to find “the most effective messaging to connect with consumers’ goals.” Murphy cites various organizations, including Patagonia, Microsoft, and the Good Food Institute, to support her argument about the benefits of Cultures of Growth. Studies reveal that collaborative mindsets promote less cheating among college students and more innovation in research labs and medical teams. In medical teams, for example, Cultures of Growth create an atmosphere of psychological safety in which employees at any level feel comfortable sharing ideas. Murphy offers suggestions for assessing both the mindset of organizations and microcultures and the mindset of the reader regarding evaluative and high-effort situations, critical feedback, and dealing with other people’s success.
A practical, useful guide for personal and organizational success.Pub Date: March 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781982172749
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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