New Books in Business, Management, and Marketing

What are best-practices for alleviating stress in the workplace?Today I talked to Cary Cooper about his new book The Apology Impulse: How the Business World Ruined Sorry and Why We Can’t Stop Saying It (Kogan Page, 2020). Cooper explains why managers should say “Sorry, I Wasn’t Feeling."Cooper is the author/editor of over 250 books, and the president of the British Academy of Management. An advisor to the World Health Organization and the EU, he’s received both a knighthood and the CBE award from the Queen of England for “extraordinary contributions” to society.Topics covered in this episode include: The difference between operational and cultural failures, and why CEOs find it easier to apologize for the latter by pretending the problem has to do with the former. The percentage of workers who feel bullied by a boss at work on a constant basis, and Cooper’s estimation of the percentage of bosses who won’t be able to benefit from EQ-training and, therefore, should be given roles that don’t involve managing people. What the implications and solutions for huge CEO pay amid what could now prove to be the single most significant economic downturn in our lives (due to Covid-19). Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of eight books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. (https://www.sensorylogic.com). To check out his “Faces of the Week” blog, visit https://emotionswizard.com.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why is the corporate fallback being “analytical” (as opposed to nurturing creativity)?Today I talked to Nir Bashan about his new book The Creator Mindset: 92 Tools to Unlock the Secrets to Innovation, Growth, and Sustainability (McGraw-Hill, 2020)Bashan is a creativity expert who has spent the past two decades devising a formula for sustained creativity. Besides his blue-chip corporate clients, Bashan has also worked on album, movies and advertisements for people like Rod Stewart and Woody Harrelson, won a Clio and been nominated for an Emmy. This is his first book.Topics covered in this episode include: Creativity’s three unlikely personal traits (hint: courage is one of them). Why self-doubt and complacency are both threats to successful innovation, and how to overcome each in turn. Design obstacles Bashan has witnessed, plus five more from my book Emotionomics. Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of eight books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. (https://www.sensorylogic.com). To check out his “Faces of the Week” blog, visit https://emotionswizard.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Integration has been a key theme across the general management, organizational behavior, supply chain management, strategy, information systems and the environmental management literature for decades. Sustainability continues to be, at the “top of the agenda” in the C-suite. Despite this, specialists in academia and organizations lack the peripheral vision to understand the power of a more integrated approach that will empower functional groups to become best-in-class without forcing trade-offs that pull down other groups connected to overall operations. Integrated Management is the key driver of innovation and profitability in progressive companies. It reduces risks while pursuing new opportunities, and the checks and balances for prudent management are baked in the strategy for modern go-to-market synergy and growth.What can be done, then, by individuals, functions, organizations, value chains, and even whole cities to integrate and align sustainability? In his book Integrated Management: How Sustainability Creates Value for Any Business (Emerald, 2018), Robert Sroufe answers this question. Sroufe considers the opportunity we have to enable an enterprise value proposition that includes environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance. Integrated management applies a proven strategic planning approach to uncover the tools and actions available for change management and performance measured with an Integrated Bottom Line (IBL). Using evidence based examples from best-in-practice enterprises, proven management tenets, models and tools alongside emerging technologies, we can develop integrated solutions aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).Tricia Keffer ASLA, MLA Landscape Architecture with a design practice in the Florida Keys PlantsPeopleLove.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How does avoidance of conflict ultimately create more conflict in the workplace?Today I talked to Caroline Stokes, author of Elephants Before Unicorns: Emotionally Intelligent HR Strategies to Save Your Company (Entrepreneur Press, 2019)Stokes is the CEO of FORWARD, and the podcast host of The Emotionally Intelligent Recruiter. She is an award-winning leadership coach and thinker, partnering with global leaders throughout their career and leadership cycle. Topics covered in this episode include:• The emotions that inadvertently inspire the behavior of both push-over and bully bosses, and the likely emotional responses of their direct reports.• How the risk of employee disengagement can get short-circuited before it happens.• What are steps that can ensure a better on-boarding experience for the new employee, including CEO’s (whose turn-over rate is 50% within the first 18 months on the job).Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of eight books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. To check out his “Faces of the Week” blog, visit https://emotionswizard.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What does it take for a company’s culture to enable ongoing growth?Today I talked to Charlene Li, author of The Disruption Mindset: Why Some Organizations Transform While Others Fail (IdeaPress, 2019).Li is the author of six books, including the New York Times bestseller, Open Leadership, and is also the co-author of Groundswell. She is the Founder and Senior Fellow at Altimeter, a research and consulting firm, as well as a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Business School.Topics covered in this episode include: Five kinds of employees, and how that that model feeds into the four archetypes of disruptive leaders: steadfast managers, realist optimists, worried skeptics, and agent provocateurs. How mid-size companies can avoid the “permafrost” layer that limits the flexibility of larger companies. How is the challenge of being a disruptive leader different if you’re female or a minority member versus being a white male? Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of eight books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. (https://www.sensorylogic.com). To check out his “Faces of the Week” blog, visit https://emotionswizard.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How can we improve our productivity by literally seeing the world differently than before?Today I talked to Emily Balcetis about her new book Clearer, Closer, Better: How Successful People See the World (Ballantine Books, 2020)Balcetis is an associate professor psychology at New York University. She received her PhD from Cornell University and has authored over 70 scientific publications in addition to being a TED speaker.Topics covered in this episode include: What are the four general perceptual shifts that research suggest make a huge difference in improving our odds of success in tackling projects and other initiatives. Which emotion or emotions may best fit or spur on each of those four strategies. Of all the research studies that went into this book, which one is Balcetis’s favorite. Why did this optical “trick” lead to double-digit growth in the likelihood of making progress. To get a transcript of this episode, click here.Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of eight books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. (https://www.sensorylogic.com). To check out his “Faces of the Week” blog, visit https://emotionswizard.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How are we going to address inequality and put the economy on a sounder footing?Today I talked to Eric Lonergan and Mark Blyth about their new book Angrynomics (Agenda Publishing/Columbia University Press, 2020).Lonergan is an economist and macro fund manager in London whose writings often appear in The Financial Times. Blyth is a political economist at Brown University who received his PhD in political science from Columbia University.Topics covered in this episode include:--An exploration of how the emotions of anger, fear and disgust animate both the long-term economic stresses in society and those brought on by the Covid-19 crisis.--What the differences are between moral outrage versus tribal outrage.--Descriptions of three, potentially viable and game-changing solutions, including among them a “data dividend” and the creation of national wealth funds like those in Norway and beyond.Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of eight books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. (https://www.sensorylogic.com). To check out his “Faces of the Week” blog, visit https://emotionswizard.com.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How is the retail sector going to be best able to survive the Amazon juggernaut?I address this question with B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore in a discussion of their book The Experience Economy: Competing for Customer Time, Attention, and Money (Harvard Business Review Press, 2020).Pine and Gilmore are the cofounders of Strategic Horizons, LLP. Besides their other books and activities, Pine is a Lecturer at Columbia University and Gilmore teaches at Case Western Reserve University.Topics covered in this episode include:--What have been the relevant emotions in play as the economy has evolved across the four stage of commodities, goods, services, and now experiences and transformations alike.--How is achieving “customer satisfaction” too limiting, and what’s the emotional storyline that, first, Walt Disney and now business leaders worldwide must embrace to survive and thrive.--How does the emotional labor of employees being “on stage” as part of an experience square with workers’ and customers’ desire for authenticity.For a transcript of this episode, click here.Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of eight books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. To check out his “Faces of the Week” blog, visit https://emotionswizard.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You mean big business is good, contributes to our general welfare, and is not generally guilty--with notable exceptions--of all of the charges made against it? That's the argument libertarian economist Tyler Cowen makes in his book Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero (St. Martins, 2019) Most NBN listeners will raise an eyebrow to that claim, but most of those same NBN listeners are up for a good back-and-forth on the virtues and demerits of our market system. And to that end, being familiar with Cowen's arguments--made in this book and his many other publications and platforms--is very useful. The shift in the reputational balance between government and big business as a result of the Covid-19 crisis is another reason to consider Cowen's argument.Daniel Peris is Senior Vice President at Federated Investors in Pittsburgh. Trained as a historian of modern Russia, he is the author most recently of Getting Back to Business: Why Modern Portfolio Theory Fails Investors. You can follow him on Twitter @HistoryInvestor or at http://www.strategicdividendinvestor.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Advertising is everywhere. By some estimates, the average American is exposed to over 3,000 advertisements each day. Whether we realize it or not, "adcreep"―modern marketing's march to create a world where advertising can be expected anywhere and anytime―has come, transforming not just our purchasing decisions, but our relationships, our sense of self, and the way we navigate all spaces, public and private.In Adcreep: The Case Against Modern Marketing (Stanford Law Books, 2017), Mark Bartholomew journeys through the curious and sometimes troubling world of modern advertising. Bartholomew exposes an array of marketing techniques that might seem like the stuff of science fiction: neuromarketing, biometric scans, automated online spies, and facial recognition technology, all enlisted to study and stimulate consumer desire. This marriage of advertising and technology has consequences. Businesses wield rich and portable records of consumer preference, delivering advertising tailored to your own idiosyncratic thought processes. They mask their role by using social media to mobilize others, from celebrities to your own relatives, to convey their messages. Guerrilla marketers turn every space into a potential site for a commercial come-on or clandestine market research. Advertisers now know you on a deeper, more intimate level, dramatically tilting the historical balance of power between advertiser and audience.In this world of ubiquitous commercial appeals, consumers and policymakers are numbed to advertising's growing presence. Drawing on a variety of sources, including psychological experiments, marketing texts, communications theory, and historical examples, Bartholomew reveals the consequences of life in a world of non-stop selling. Adcreep mounts a damning critique of the modern American legal system's failure to stem the flow of invasive advertising into our homes, parks, schools, and digital lives.John Danaher is a lecturer the National University of Ireland, Galway. He is also the host of the wonderful podcast Philosophical Disquisitions. You can find it here on Apple Podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices