A vigorously written, ultimately encouraging method for rescuing a messed-up situation.
A program for turning around downward-spiraling businesses and projects.
Drawing on three decades of helping organizations solve seemingly intractable problems, Gable presents the tenets and principles of her method for turning around situations when things go south and all hope seems lost. “The organization is hobbled by competition,” she posits, or “a revolving door of project leads, managers, consultants, and leaders” try without success to fix the problem. She begins by breaking down some of the most common reasons why things go wrong—founders stick around long after their original dreams and motivations have become outdated, bosses indulge in company-damaging hubris, the raw economics of the project make its ultimate results impossible, and, perhaps most importantly, managers become stuck in one “cookie-cutter” model and resist trying new things. Gable writes, “Today we recognize that to solve problems creatively, you need as many diverse voices working on them as possible.” Gable claims that her method has been “battle-tested” out in the real world, and it’s based on four basic steps: visualizing the future, analyzing the past, creating a plan to move from the present to the future, and then executing that plan with “speed, confidence, and heart.” Gable fleshes out these general principles with specific examples from her own past and case studies where her ideas have been executed properly.
Her own anecdotes, all smoothly and invitingly told, are all teamwork stories (when she’s hired as CEO of a food allergy research company, for instance, the changes she describes are all community-based, as are so many descriptions throughout the book). A crucial current running through the various “turnaround” principles is an implicit rejection of the savior complex that tends to rule the roost in the business world. As Gable’s recollections make clear over and over, salvaging an impossibly tangled situation requires an all-hands-on-deck approach. “You want to incentivize everyone involved in your turnaround to invest, work with you, and execute in a matter that supports the new future.” That “new future” is another key feature of Gable’s outlook: Although the temptation in any debacle is to obsess over the mess, Gable emphasizes the importance of having a clear plan for the future as the ultimate counterbalance to finger-pointing. She refreshingly ranges her advice regarding where a problem might reside, from a flawed corporate vision to poor management of assets. And although some readers may find her personal business-world anecdotes a bit too excessive (they very much outweigh the book’s more theoretical portions), those stories serve an important cumulative purpose: They show her principles in action, demonstrating how they work in real situations with real people. “Change brings anxiety,” she writes. “People feel bounced around as their reality shifts, and uncertainty grows.” Those “bounced around” people—Gable’s readers who’ve found themselves caught up in some horribly dysfunctional problem—will find a good deal of hard-won wisdom in these pages.
A vigorously written, ultimately encouraging method for rescuing a messed-up situation.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64687-058-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Ideapress Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
IN THE NEWS
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 2024 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.
