Know in 10 minutes what it takes others hours, and keep up with the latest trends in your industry.
In this summary you will learn:
- Why highly significant yet unpredictable events, called “black swans,” are underappreciated
- Why people continually see misleading patterns in data
- How to embrace randomness and come to terms with black swans
Why you should read The Black Swan. According to critic Harold Bloom, Hamlet’s predicament is not “that he thinks too much” but rather that “he thinks too well,” being ultimately “unable to rest in illusions of any kind.” The same could be said for philosopher, essayist and trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who finds something rotten in misguided yet supremely confident investment gurus, traders, hedge fund managers, Wall Street bankers, M.B.A.s, CEOs, Nobel-winning economists and others who claim that they can predict the future and explain the past. Like everyone else, says Taleb, these so-called “experts” fail to appreciate “black swans”: highly consequential but unlikely events that render predictions and standard explanations worse than worthless. Taleb’s style is personal and literary, but his heterodox insights are rigorous (if sometimes jolted by authorial filigree). This combination makes for a thrilling, disturbing, contentious and unforgettable book on chance and randomness. While Taleb offers strong medicine some readers may find too bitter at times, getAbstract prescribes it to anyone who wants a powerful inoculation against gullibility.
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Know in 10 minutes what it takes others hours, and keep up with the latest trends in your industry.
In this summary you will learn:
- How to use the eight steps of successful organizational change
- How leading companies have implemented these steps
- What not to do
Why you should read The Heart of Change
By interviewing 400 individuals from 130 businesses to get their change sagas, authors John P. Kotter and Dan S. Cohen further anchor the fresh approach to organizational change that Kotter presented in Leading Change (1996). Their main insight: organizations change when their people change. And, people change for emotional reasons. Some readers may think that the emphasis on feelings is “soft” or even “distracting,” but the authors warn against relying on spreadsheets or reports to promote transformation. They insist that the best way to engage the emotions is not to “tell” but to “show” - in videos, displays or even office design. The visual sense, they point out, processes enormous amounts of complex information instantly. At the end of each chapter, the authors include useful, modestly titled, “Exercises That Might Help.” With appreciation for that level of detail, getAbstract.com recommends this illuminating book. Kotter has presented his eight-step change model before, but this practical, compact work demonstrates - with plainspoken stories of real-life managers and companies - how it functions. Thus the form of the book - “showing” - exactly replicates its main point.
About the Authors
John P. Kotter has taught at the Harvard Business School since 1972 and has written numerous articles and books including the award-winning Leading Change (1996). Dan S. Cohen, a principal with Deloitte Consulting, heads the firm’s Global Energy Change Leadership practice and developed its Global Change Leadership Methodology. He lectures widely about organizational behavior.
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