An upbeat, motivational view on shaping corporate social consciousness.
McGaw, a senior business adviser at the Aspen Institute, discusses the ways in which leaders can create positive change in their companies.
Much of this nonfiction book centers on the concept of “corporate social intrapreneurship,” which she defines as “using the platform of business to tackle urgent social problems and align business and societal value creation.” Corporate executives might set the general tone at a company, she assures her readers, but real change happens only when companies pursue the social vision of workers in all departments at all levels. Drawing on an array of sources, from interviews with CEOs to the writings of inspirational authors such as Neil Pasricha and Thich Nhat Hanh, McGaw outlines the principles of her First Movers program, designed to help workers blend their companies’ financial goals with a progressive social agenda; the aim is to create “values-based leadership” that advocates ethical decision-making at the corporate level. She stresses that these changes can be incremental: “Small wins are controllable and constrained, requiring a limited amount of time, effort, skill, and expense,” she writes. “But they can lead to results that reverberate.” As she describes this process, she emphasizes the importance of concentrating on small, effective ideas that chip away at seemingly enormous problems. McGaw’s vision is insistently optimistic; she spends relatively time on either how “intrapreneurship” strategies can be money-losers, at least initially (“Decision-making is often singularly focused on costs and benefits in the short term. Reframing a problem with an eye on the future opens new perspectives”) or how they can be unpopular, not only to risk-averse employees, but also to potential consumers. Thanks to her engaging writing style, though, her optimism tends to be infectious, helped by her consistent recourse to practical approaches: “Choose what works for you, but be precise and constrained,” she writes, regarding how to make time for reflection. “As an example, try setting a goal of taking 15 minutes twice a week for one month at noon on Wednesdays and Fridays.”
An upbeat, motivational view on shaping corporate social consciousness.Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9798218357344
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2024
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
PERSPECTIVES
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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