A valuable and accessible guide to the types of people in the workforce.
An illustrated manual focuses on the various employees readers will encounter at work.
What readers will find in the pages of her sequel, Baum is quick to tell them, is not exactly “rocket science.” The author offers common-sense tips gleaned from her long, personal experience in the world of business motivation. Nonetheless, the advice is crucially important since her readers must interact with a wide array of individuals in the workplace. “People make subconscious decisions about who we are and our credibility the instant they see us,” she writes. “With that fact in mind, what can you do to have your perception equal your reality?” In this guide, Baum parades before her readers an entire cast of characters they’ll be facing in their business world dealings as well as the small mistakes that are associated with each type. Each of these character types is given a funny, full-color illustration by Giandomenico and a quick, entertaining, astute description. Readers meet “the Spin Doctor,” for instance, who “alters the truth to fit the situation.” According to Baum, “The Spin Doctor carefully chooses her words to communicate only as much of the truth as she deems necessary to succeed.” Readers of course encounter “the Gossip,” who “rarely shares her criticism with the target of her gossip.” Each of these pithy profiles is accompanied by the author’s always clear and perceptive assessments of some key points, like the “Big Consequence” of each character type, as well as the solutions. Baum tells her audience how to manage and work with the type and, most importantly, how to sidestep becoming that figure. In order to avoid turning into “the eRanter,” for instance, readers are advised: “Have courage and communicate. If you have an issue with someone, speak to him face-to-face.” This mix of insights and compassion makes an irresistible combination, ideal for readers in any area of business.
A valuable and accessible guide to the types of people in the workforce.Pub Date: March 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73230-162-7
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Momosa Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 24, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Smart, engaging sportswriting—good reading for organization builders as well as Pats fans.
Prolific writer Benedict has long blended two interests—sports and business—and the Patriots are emblematic of both. Founded in 1959 as the Boston Patriots, the team built a strategic home field between that city and Providence. When original owner Billy Sullivan sold the flailing team in 1988, it was $126 million in the hole, a condition so dire that “Sullivan had to beg the NFL to release emergency funds so he could pay his players.” Victor Kiam, the razor magnate, bought the long since renamed New England Patriots, but rival Robert Kraft bought first the parking lots and then the stadium—and “it rankled Kiam that he bore all the risk as the owner of the team but virtually all of the revenue that the team generated went to Kraft.” Check and mate. Kraft finally took over the team in 1994. Kraft inherited coach Bill Parcells, who in turn brought in star quarterback Drew Bledsoe, “the Patriots’ most prized player.” However, as the book’s nimbly constructed opening recounts, in 2001, Bledsoe got smeared in a hit “so violent that players along the Patriots sideline compared the sound of the collision to a car crash.” After that, it was backup Tom Brady’s team. Gridiron nerds will debate whether Brady is the greatest QB and Bill Belichick the greatest coach the game has ever known, but certainly they’ve had their share of controversy. The infamous “Deflategate” incident of 2015 takes up plenty of space in the late pages of the narrative, and depending on how you read between the lines, Brady was either an accomplice or an unwitting beneficiary. Still, as the author writes, by that point Brady “had started in 223 straight regular-season games,” an enviable record on a team that itself has racked up impressive stats.
Smart, engaging sportswriting—good reading for organization builders as well as Pats fans.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982134-10-5
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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