A visionary road map offering insights, design concepts, and guidance to leaders implementing change.
A manual outlines an approach to executing change, highlighting how design principles can help develop an inclusive and dynamic process that is essential in the modern era.
The future needs assistance; a new approach to change is emerging; and design—in its broadest sense—is a key component, assert Guidice and Ireland. The authors have run design firms and consulted in the tech and consumer goods industries. In this book, they posit the need to move away from “outdated approaches” that are “traditional, siloed, hierarchical, and linear” and “anticipate that the next approach to change will be design-driven, and its leaders—at all levels and in a wide range of circumstances—will be changemakers.” These changemakers will be leaders who can view the future of communities, companies, and even countries as a design problem: “An opportunity space that can be clearly defined, intentionally studied, and reliably addressed.” Following an introductory chapter setting out this thesis, the volume outlines how to become this kind of changemaker, including clarifying your values to “guide your behavior, attract like-minded people, and steer group decision-making.” The work then proceeds to “Co-Creating Change” and engaging in activities to “Discover What’s Possible.” The manual encourages readers to learn from what works and what doesn’t and to keep “Evolving by Design.” The authors mention an assortment of useful design tools and practices, including the Double Diamond process (which emphasizes customer and stakeholder input in “Discover, Define, Develop, and Deliver” stages) and the use of “comps” (which involves tweaks and/or a rejection of various options). Each chapter concludes with a “Takeaways” summary and a “Take it Further” reading list. The authors make a compelling argument that a social, design-driven approach is especially critical in a world where “unquestioning support has disappeared, along with the assumption of a positive trajectory.” While the theoretical and process details can be overwhelming at times, important help is found, unsurprisingly, in the book’s design, which includes graphics of the volume’s ideas and bold highlighting of its major statements and points.
A visionary road map offering insights, design concepts, and guidance to leaders implementing change.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9781959029144
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Two Waves Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2022
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
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