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PEOPLE DO CHANGE

HOW TO TURN RELUCTANCE INTO CONFIDENCE USING HUMAN-CENTRIC CHANGE MANAGEMENT

An optimistic and often involving set of change-management proposals.

White, the CEO and co-founder of management consultancy Cornerstone Agility, presents a guidebook for managing change in the workplace.

The author offers thoughts and strategies for improving change management, and she stresses throughout that if one’s game plan isn’t firmly grounded in the thoughts and reactions of individual workers, it can lead to severe consequences, including increased employee burnout, greater turnover, and, consequently, decreased workplace results. Traditional change management tends to focus on “the rational and logistical elements of transformation,” notes the author, and this tendency can overlook emotional challenges, such as fear or uncertainty. This, in turn, can lead to a work environment that’s not only unhappy but brittle, and unlikely to adapt to future changes. As a solution, White proposes “Human-Centric Change Management,” a process that places people at the heart of change and “addresses the psychological and emotional aspects of transformation that are often overlooked.” White has developed her theories over many years with the help of well-known contributors, including Chip Heath and Dan Heath, the authors of Switch (2010) and Made to Stick (2007); and Jonathan Haidt, the author of The Coddling of the American Mind (2018). In a series of short, accessible chapters, White discusses the various strategies of her approach, including the transparent management style known as Kanban, which draws on “the idea that by making work, processes, and progress visible, teams can gain clarity, promote collaboration, and quickly identify and address bottlenecks.” Like many business and management books, White’s vision of the workplace can sometimes feel idealized, and it shares some questionable presuppositions, such as that all workers require comforting during times of change. However, the book’s enthusiasm for simple but effective ideas, such as fellowship and clear communication, is infectious.

An optimistic and often involving set of change-management proposals.

Pub Date: June 3, 2025

ISBN: 9798891385191

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Amplify Publishing

Review Posted Online: March 25, 2025

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ABUNDANCE

Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.

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  • New York Times Bestseller

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

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THINKING, FAST AND SLOW

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

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