Management-Business – Page 17 – Scott J. Pearson’s Book Review

A Woman’s Education: The Road from Coorain Leads to Smith College

By Scott J. Pearson | December 19, 2019September 24, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

Jill Ker Conway has left us with quite a trilogy of autobiographies. In so doing, she has divided her life into thirds – growing up on the Australian outback, coming of age in North-American academe, and gaining a feminist voice as president of the elite Smith College. This work examines her experiences at Smith College. She poured her soul into learning to articulate an authentically feminine institutional voice in a world of coeducation. Instead of…

Management-Business

The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization

By Scott J. Pearson | November 9, 2019November 9, 2019 by Scott J. Pearson

This book is the seminal statement of systems thinking – the philosophic idea that knowledge is increasingly aligned in groups of thought. And the goal of systems thinking is to produce an organization of human endeavors that – wait for it – learns. The learning organization trumps not only individual learners but also established organizations that have ceased to learn/grow/adapt effectively. While this might seem obvious to those (like myself) in research, much of this…

Management-Business Writing-Communication

Crucial Conversations

By Scott J. Pearson | October 11, 2019April 1, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

Do conversations ever catch you off-guard? Do you ever feel unprepared for conversations that pop up spontaneously yet seem to matter a lot and to affect dramatically the course of our lives? These situations often occur in families and in businesses, and this book attempts to prepare us better for handling those weighty situations. This book came recommended to me as a part of a book club at my workplace. I can see why. It…

Leadership Management-Business Psychology Writing-Communication

The Skilled Facilitator

By Scott J. Pearson | October 6, 2019September 24, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

Successfully resolving conflict is one of the most important tasks in management and leadership. Schwarz, a Harvard-educated organizational psychologist, teaches us how to do just this in this well-received book. Its success can be demonstrated by the fact that it now resides in its third edition. (This review only applies to the second edition.) Schwarz tells us how to be not just a facilitator but a skilled facilitator of discussion within organization. He consults with…

Management-Business Software-Technology

The DevOps Paradox

By Scott J. Pearson | September 28, 2019October 11, 2019 by Scott J. Pearson

For those in the software industry, DevOps is a word we have encountered in the past few years without knowing precisely what it means. It’s generally a movement to break down silos in between Development teams and Operations teams within organizations – all with an eye to enhance the business. In this work, Viktor Farcic interviews a bunch of people with the primary question, “What is DevOps?” They all center around this same definition. To…

Management-Business Writing-Communication

Contagious: Why Things Catch On

By Scott J. Pearson | September 17, 2019April 1, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

How does marketing work in an era where things go viral on the Internet and social media dominates our national discourse? Jonah Berger, a professor at the Wharton School of Business, has an understanding of how it can work and a philosophy of how you can use it to promote your work. Using terms like “social currency” and established concepts like social status, he describes how online marketing can work in a way that is…

Management-Business Writing-Communication

The Art of Focused Conversation

By Scott J. Pearson | September 16, 2019April 1, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

Have you ever not had the right words to approach a situation at work? This work, from the Canadian Institute of Cultural Affairs, explains open-ended ways to approach conversations at work. It does so in a way such that the inquirer acknowledges her/his ignorance with a situation. This essentially post-industrial and postmodern approach allows teams of knowledge workers to appreciate everyone’s wisdom as they come to a consensus. This book is divided into two parts:…

Management-Business

Gemba Kaizen: A Commonsense Approach to a Continuous Improvement Strategy

By Scott J. Pearson | September 14, 2019October 11, 2019 by Scott J. Pearson

This book’s interesting title spawns from the Japanese language, which serves as the nomenclature for the essential concepts conveyed in this text. This book communicates the concept of management which grew out of Japan, was popularized in the 1980s, and served as the philosophy for companies like Toyota. Management texts like this and Deming’s famous fourteen points taught and continue to teach the international business community about running better businesses. The philosophy of this work…

Management-Business Software-Technology

Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great

By Scott J. Pearson | September 14, 2019October 11, 2019 by Scott J. Pearson

Techniques called “agile” comprise a more iterative approach to developing software. In many ways, it treats software as an open text instead of a fixed product. Agile development is used in most leading software shops around the world. This book treats a specific element of agile development – the retrospective. After each iteration or release, the team is gathered to discuss the last period of time and to seek improvement for the next time. This…

Fiction-Stories Leadership Management-Business

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

By Scott J. Pearson | September 9, 2019September 24, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

This work straddles the fence between a short novel and a book on business. It covers a helpful topic of five common dysfunctions of a team. Through reading it, I helped identify pits that teams I have participated in have fallen prey to. The story itself is relatively easygoing, if a bit short and superficial. A new CEO faces the scenario where her new form has more cash and more talented leaders, but is underperforming.…