andreweverett360 Book Review, Management

Understanding Organizations Finally!

Understanding Organizations Finally! Structuring in Sevens

by Henry Mintzberg

The four forms of organization are Personal (autocracy), Programmed (bureaucracy), Professional (meritocracy), and Project (adhocracy). Respectively, the coordinating mechanism of each form is direct supervision, standardization of work, standardization of skills, and mutual adjustment.

That last term should be defined before going further, as Mintzberg uses it throughout the book. “Coordination and control are two different concepts. Mutual adjustment is coordination without control… Currently, the literature of management gives considerable attention to teams, task forces, and networks, all manifestations of mutual adjustment.”

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andreweverett360 Book Review, General

A Full Life: Reflections at 90

A Full Life: Reflections at 90

by Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter was born on October 1, 1924 and was elected the 39th president of the United States in 1976. The world has changed a lot in the 100 years since Carter grew up in the segregated south. At the same time, many of the issues he writes about sound quite familiar, such as inflation, contested elections, and conflict in the Middle East.

I was surprised by Carter’s emphasis on fiscal discipline—something we haven’t seen in recent administrations. (At the end of the Carter administration, the national debt to GDP ratio was 32%. In 2022 it was 123%.) What also stands out is Carter’s cooperative relationships with presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, in stark contrast to more recent polarization.

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andreweverett360 Book Review, General

WCVB-TV Boston: How We Built the Greatest Television Station in America

WCVB-TV Boston: How We Built the Greatest Television Station in America

by Robert M. Bennett (1927-2016)

In this memoir, the highlight of television executive Bob Bennett’s career was launching and growing WCVB-TV, Channel 5 in Boston. A major theme is his commitment to locally-produced programming. Another theme is Bennett’s leadership style, whereby he encouraged new ideas and risk-taking from his lieutenants, and inspired a sense of pride which brought out the best in people at all levels of the organization. It’s also a high-risk, high-reward story that could have turned out very differently.

The book is comprised of Bennett’s recollections interspersed with commentary from former colleagues.

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andreweverett360 Art, Book Review

Composition: Understanding Line, Notan, and Color

Composition: Understanding Line, Notan, and Color

by Arthur Wesley Dow (1857-1922)

Composition is “the ‘putting together’ of lines, masses and colors to make a harmony. Design, understood in its broad sense, is a better word, but popular usage has restricted it to decoration.”

In the visual arts, “there are three structural elements with which harmonies may be built up” – line, notan, and color.

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andreweverett360 Book Review, Management

Purposeful Enterprise

Purposeful Enterprise: Design Your Organization to Change the World

by Roger Mader

“Purposeful enterprise means doing work that makes a difference, work that helps others, and aspires to make the world a better place. As a happy consequence, you’ll find you take pride in your accomplishments and discover that you love your work more deeply.” The premise is compelling, in theory.

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andreweverett360 Book Review, General

Every Life a Story: Natalie Jacobson Reporting

Every Life a Story: Natalie Jacobson Reporting

by Natalie Jacobson

Natalie Jacobson was a household name in greater Boston, with a 35-year career as a reporter and news anchor at WCVB, channel 5. For two decades the husband-and-wife team of “Chet and Nat” anchored the 6:00pm and 11:00pm weekday newscasts. This memoir includes stories of her personal life, career, colleagues, significant news events she covered, and some of the people she met. She also shares her views on the decay of broadcast journalism.

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andreweverett360 Book Review, Humor

The Peter Principle

The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong

by Laurence J. Peter (1919-1990) and Raymond Hull (1919-1985)

For anyone who is frustrated with the dysfunction of a bureaucracy, this satirical study of hierarchiology—the social science of hierarchies—will shed some light. The Peter Principle states, “In a hierarchy, everyone tends to rise to his level of incompetence.”

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andreweverett360 Book Review, risk

Why Can’t You Just Give Me The Number?

Why Can’t You Just Give Me The Number? An Executive’s Guide to Using Probabilistic Thinking to Manage Risk and Make Better Decisions

by Patrick Leach

Decisions can be based on a deterministic calculation only in conditions of certainty, that is to say the input parameters are known quantities. But strategic decisions are often made in a context of uncertainty and complexity, where a definite answer is unknowable, so we must turn to probabilistic thinking.

Uncertainty. “I make the case that all value generated by business executives comes—directly or indirectly—from how they manage uncertainty. Without uncertainty, a share of a company’s stock is effectively a bond, with guaranteed future cash flows. Guaranteed bonds don’t need management. But stocks (or rather, companies issuing stock) certainly do.”

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andreweverett360 Book Review, Finance

HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business

HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business: Think big, buy small, own your own company

by Richard S. Ruback and Royce Yudkoff

This book provides a methodology to find, evaluate, finance, and acquire a small business. The autonomy of entrepreneurship is compelling to many, but the failure rate of start-ups is high—more than two-thirds of them never deliver a positive return to investors. In contrast, this approach seeks to buy and manage an existing “enduringly profitable” business. The authors teach a course in entrepreneurship through acquisition at Harvard Business School.

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andreweverett360 Book Review, Crime & Law Enforcement

Modern Police Firearms (1969)

An Introduction to Modern Police Firearms

by Duke Roberts and Allen P. Bristow    

I purchased this textbook for 50 cents at a college library book sale. The distinctive smell of a vintage library book adds to the nostalgic appeal. The book was published in 1969 during the Adam-12 era. This was about 20 years before American police departments made the switch from revolvers to semiautomatic pistols, although the book covers both. There is a chapter on the police shotgun, but nothing about rifles. Other topics include safety, maintenance, ballistics, marksmanship, chemical agents, the legal and ethical use of firearms, and sample Use of Deadly Force policies.

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