Extensive, engaging, and highly actionable business advice.
A CEO examines the importance of organizational core values.
This book tackles a topic that arguably addresses the most vital issue facing CEOs: how to inculcate their organizations with meaningful core values. In a firsthand account, Mirshahzadeh, a CEO who started several successful, high-growth companies, exhibits considerable mea culpa at the outset of his journey, asserting in the introduction: “I hate this company. I can’t believe I created this.” This sobering admission in 2007 led the author to pursue the art and science of creating and implementing worthwhile corporate core values. The book is organized in two parts, the first of which tears down mistaken notions about core values in order to build them up again in Part 2. In Part 1, Mirshahzadeh explores his own failure to develop appropriate core values for his company, his recognition that these values consist of critical elements, and his realization that they “must be authentic from top to bottom in the organization.” He introduces an equation that anchors the remainder of the volume: “CORE VALUES = DECISIONS = ACTIONS = RESULTS.” He also puts forth an intriguing notion—that if the equation is properly followed, core values effectively function as “the most powerful invisible manager in the world.” Part 2 is a comprehensive manual for how to build, refine, and fully implement core values in a company. The author first painstakingly dissects the steps involved in designing core values, citing examples from his own experience. He then discusses “The Art of the Rollout,” a remarkably thorough step-by-step plan for introducing core values to an organization. Next is a refreshingly creative chapter concerning how to make core values “sticky,” in which he reveals, through text and numerous uncredited black-and-white photographs, exactly how these values were brought to life in one of his companies. Finally, Mirshahzadeh explains in detail how to measure and assess results. There is much of value here at a level of detail necessary to do justice to the subject, even if the specifics may seem overwhelming to some. Visionary CEOs will surely embrace the author’s message and take it to heart.
Extensive, engaging, and highly actionable business advice. (appendix)Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 205
Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
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
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
