A practical and well-considered road map to success through innovation.
A guide to transforming a business (and possibly entire industries) via disruption.
Keegan, a successful capital fundraiser, author, and podcast host who has sold a number of his own businesses, here teaches readers how to disrupt an industry or transform a business; the prerequisite, per the author, is learning to be a fearless leader. “To truly disrupt, you must channel your courageous self and instill that same level of courage in others,” Keegan writes. “And to do that, you must have true faith in yourself and your team, and they in turn must have that same faith in you.” Keegan takes readers through a thorough and engaging breakdown of his “eight pillars for transformational growth,” which include leadership, culture, people, systems, intelligence, emotional intelligence, flexibility, and fearlessness. The book begins with a concise description of what constitutes disruption (think of Amazon changing the way we shop or Google Maps changing the way we get driving directions) and proceeds to explore successful examples—and even some failures, such as Bed Bath & Beyond. A look at Lego and how it has evolved and changed over the years is particularly compelling, as is a discussion of Keegan’s own Merchants Fleet, which he led through transformations as chairman, CEO, and president. The bulk of the book takes deep dives into the author’s eight pillars, which aren’t anything new; plenty of books have been built around these concepts. What distinguishes this work is how engagingly and practically the author presents these ideas. It’s a near-perfect mix of Keegan’s considerable real-life experience (relevant and entertaining anecdotes are sprinkled throughout) and business theories that should work for anyone aspiring to become a stronger leader. The text is nicely paced and progresses logically, ending with four lessons the author learned while leading Merchants’ transformation: Use the author’s pillars framework, value your employees, expect short-term pain for long-term gain, and be daring. Here, Keegan serves up guidelines to do all of this successfully.
A practical and well-considered road map to success through innovation.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2024
ISBN: 9798887501666
Page Count: 256
Publisher: ForbesBooks
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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