A thorough and friendly guide to why group decisions matter.
A book aimed at leaders, managers, board members, politicians, activists, or anyone in a group who feels frustrated with its decision-making processes.
According to professional meeting facilitator, speaker, and author Freshley, “Big problems are never—and never have been—solved by individuals.” Yet collective decision-making often fails, which, the author asserts, could even put humankind’s future existence in jeopardy, as in the case of climate change. The good news, he asserts, is that facilitating useful group decisions is a skill that can be learned, and this book aims to teach it. It’s packed with a wealth of inspiring ideas and practical information, taking readers step by step through methods to create good decisions, including five critical attitudes, specific practices and procedures, and ways to surmount disagreements. Relatable real-world examples from the author’s own experiences as a group member and facilitator enhance the discussion, including successes and stumbles in employee-management conflict, bridging political differences, and building a cohousing community. Freshley makes a strong case for the value of inclusivity and provides specific actions aimed at fostering a culture in which every group member feels welcome and heard. To that end, he advocates collaboration, consensus-building, and establishing clear and transparent procedures, among other strategies. On the other hand, he contends that competition-based decision-making is a bad way to handle disputes and causes “a lot of collateral damage.” The book’s tone is direct and personal, with clear explanations and apt metaphors. Throughout, the author examines group dynamics thoughtfully and considers key ideas from different angles. Charts, sidebars, and boxed “Insight” sections help clarify and amplify core concepts. This book provides know-how that organizations, businesses, and communities may find empowering and offers hope that people can successfully address major challenges of the era by working together: “It’s not us versus them, it’s just us.”
A thorough and friendly guide to why group decisions matter.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-62634-950-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
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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