An inspiring guide that conveys the passion and promise of the food business with pragmatic advice.
Guilbault, a food industry executive and consultant, shares her experiences (and a few recipes) while providing tips on how to pursue a rewarding career in her field.
This debut guide begins by teeing up the huge career potential of the lucrative food industry: “You can make a ton of money. You can have the life of creativity and freedom you want. You can make an impact on the lives of others. You can travel the world. You can even change the world.” The author then offers advice on how to develop this fulfilling career, drawing from and detailing her own journey from high school dropout who got fired from the California Pizza Kitchen as a teenager to Le Cordon Bleu–trained chef and, later, food-operations executive for the Pret a Manger and Le Pain Quotidien restaurant chains and Google, among others. Now a consultant, the author organizes her book in two parts: “Getting Started in the World of Food” and “Taking Your Place at the Managers’ Table.” Tips range from building your “resilience muscle” to keep “toughing out the ‘crumby’ jobs and seeing the trail they’re building” to creating a “Personal Board of Directors”—confidants who will “give you the perspective you need to shine through the tough moments.” The author’s “Management Big Five” mantra is that it’s important to balance the needs of the business, your bosses, your customers, your team, and, “finally, the needs of yourself.” This book dishes out its career advice, which often has a tough-love tone, in a humorous, food metaphor–filled narrative that effectively draws on accounts of the author’s own challenges. She also includes some of her favorite thematically appropriate recipes, such as “Leadership Lecithin” Mayonnaise and “Most Definitely a Neurosis” Rosemary Dark Chocolate Cake, as well as links to videos of other industry professionals offering career insights. Although other career development books may contain similar advice, this book’s lively tone and from-the-trenches perspective make it a welcome addition to the genre.
An inspiring guide that conveys the passion and promise of the food business with pragmatic advice.Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781774582473
Page Count: 252
Publisher: Page Two Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2023
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
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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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