By the end, readers may feel they are suffocating in lint, but Bing would advise them to never let their lips—or their...
Rules and tools for the business road, sold amusingly but on a depressing foundation of inanity, by novelist (You Look Nice Today, p. 869, etc.) and CBS executive Bing, a.k.a. Gil Schwartz in his everyday corporate pajamas.
This collection of pieces, originally published in Fortune and Esquire, graze wittily upon the workplace’s human dimensions, with all their annoying, grand, and bizarre displays. Bing is the kind of guy it would be fun to run into at the water fountain, always ready with a barbed insight. About toadyism: “After laughing at four or five unfunny jokes, you do feel kind of alienated from yourself. . . . But yearly raises and promotions compensate for the existential problem.” On bullshit: “When people want bullshit, give it to them. . . . Conversely, even the highest quality bullshit won't do when the real goods are called for.” Analysts are whores, consultants are after your job, wine aids the bonhomie factor, but don’t take bonhomie too far: “Scream at people, if you can. At the same time you’re asserting your human rights, strip others of theirs.” Blame stress. There is enough fresh, unvarnished, cruel wisdom in these pages to set business students agog and trembling: the pecking order that never goes away (“The idea that a person can be my age and still get into trouble makes me feel a little sick”), the way toxic gases always rise to the top, the conceptual totems of status and pretension that melt into air. Do these pieces gel into a philosophy? Only if you can juggle a sense of humor, a sense of paranoia, and a sense of venality, all the while keeping your nose alert to the atmospheric conditions. But, sadly, maybe the best advice is to learn to pull your own leg.
By the end, readers may feel they are suffocating in lint, but Bing would advise them to never let their lips—or their smile—drop below the ever-roiling surface.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-06-052955-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2003
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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