Precision Retailing: Driving Results with Behavioral Insights and Data Analytics
Edited by Laurette Dubé, Maxime C. Cohen, Nathan Yang, and Bassem Monla
Rotman-UTP Publishing
February 2024, $39.95

Without a doubt, the COVID-19 era has forced the retail sector to rethink the way it conducts business. Customer experience has largely shifted into the digital realm, and questions have emerged about how to best optimize and evolve business operations in light of this change.

Drawing on a host of expert contributors, Precision Retailing takes a broad perspective of precision retailing as the interaction point between individuals, organizations, institutions, systems, and policies that support them in ever-changing contexts. The book assembles key concepts, methods, and tools related to precision retailing that complement existing behavioural research. The decision-support tools will help managers better capture the multiscale drivers of consumer behaviour in real-time and successfully integrate these into their retail strategies and tactics. Each chapter includes a short strategic brief for successful human-centred digital transformation that focuses squarely on actionable insights for practitioners. Shedding light on the way we understand and handle this complex customer journey, Precision Retailing examines how retail will evolve in the post-pandemic era, shaping how businesses meet their future, and the inevitable continuation of the digital transition.

Cash Transfers for Inclusive Societies: A Behavioral Lens
Edited by Jiaying Zhao, Saugato Datta, and Dilip Soman
Rotman-UTP Publishing
October 2023, $35.95

The latest title in the Behaviorally Informed Organizations series offers practical advice on how to successfully design, deliver, and evaluate efficient cash transfer programs, with a view to alleviating poverty.

While much progress has been made in reducing poverty worldwide—especially in the pre-pandemic era—it is fair to say that an unacceptably large proportion of the world’s people still live in poverty. Cash Transfers for Inclusive Societies sheds light on the widely prevalent cash transfer programs. The book asks three central questions: What is the state of the art in the development of welfare programs? What do we know works in these programs, and what does not? How can an understanding of behavioural science better inform the design, delivery, and evaluation of welfare programs?

The latest title in the Behaviorally Informed Organizations series, the book develops a nuanced framework for how governments, practitioners, and society in general should design cash transfer programs to increase inclusivity, reduce poverty, and improve equality. It draws on field experiments and case studies to showcase past successes, while also building frameworks and developing prescriptive advice that we can give to practitioners who are looking to design a behaviourally informed cash transfer program. With contributions from leading academics as well as seasoned practitioners, Cash Transfers for Inclusive Societies presents a new model to policymakers to study and shift the discourse on poverty alleviation from purely economic factors to include behavioural ones.

Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon 
Michael Lewis
WW Norton
October 2023, $40.00

When Michael Lewis first met him, Sam Bankman-Fried was the world’s youngest billionaire and crypto’s Gatsby. CEOs, celebrities, and leaders of small countries all vied for his time and cash after he catapulted, practically overnight, onto the Forbes billionaires list. Who was this rumpled guy in cargo shorts and limp white socks, whose eyes twitched across Zoom meetings as he played video games on the side? In Going Infinite, Lewis sets out to answer this question, taking readers into the mind of Bankman-Fried, whose rise and fall offers an education in high-frequency trading, cryptocurrencies, philanthropy, bankruptcy, and the justice system. Both psychological portrait and financial roller-coaster ride, Going Infinite is Michael Lewis at the top of his game, tracing the mind-bending trajectory of a character who never liked the rules and was allowed to live by his own—until it all came undone.

Move Fast and Fix Things: The Trusted Leader’s Guide to Solving Hard Problems
Francis X. Frei & Anne Morriss
Harvard Business Review Press
October 2023, $38.99

Speed has gotten a bad name in business, much of it deserved. When Meta (Facebook) made “move fast and break things” its motto—and then proceeded to deliver on it—they fuelled a cynical but widely accepted assumption that a certain amount of wreckage is the price we must pay for inventing the future. Leadership experts Frances Frei and Anne Morriss argue that this belief is seriously wrongheaded—and that it keeps leaders from achieving excellence. In helping companies solve their toughest problems over the past decade, the authors have learned that the trade-off between speed and excellence is false. The best change leaders, according to Frei and Morriss, solve hard problems with fierce urgency while making their organizations—employees, customers, and shareholders—even stronger. They move fast and fix things. Based on their work with Uber, Riot Games, WeWork, and other fast-moving companies, Frei and Morriss reinvent the playbook for leading change. With trust as the foundation for a “move fast and fix things” approach, the authors reveal the five practices that the most effective leaders use to build trust, accelerate the pace of change, and improve their organizations: Identify the right problem to solve; run small experiments before scaling solutions; build the case for change while driving it; empower the organization; and champion difference. With chapters that provide a “one-week plan,” Frei and Morriss show how to execute these five priorities on a fast cycle time of “one per day.” By the end of the week, you won’t just have a road map for solving your company’s toughest problems—you’ll already be well on your way, transforming your company at an exhilarating speed.

The Fund: Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates, and the Unraveling of a Wall Street Legend
Rob Copeland
St. Martin’s Press
November 2023, $42.00

Ray Dalio does not want you to read this book. Late last year, when the billionaire founder of Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund on the planet, announced that he was stepping down from the company he started out of his apartment nearly 50 years ago, the news made headlines around the world. Dalio cultivated an aura of international admiration and fame thanks to his company’s eye-popping success, coupled with a mystique he encouraged with frequent media appearances, celebrity hobnobbing, and his bestselling book, Principles. In The Fund, award-winning New York Times journalist Rob Copeland punctures this carefully constructed narrative of the benevolent business titan, exposing his much-promoted “principles” as one of the great feats of hubris in modern memory—in practice, they encouraged a toxic culture of paranoia and backstabbing. The Fund is a page-turning, stranger-than-fiction journey into a rarefied world of wealth and power. It offers an unflinching look at the pain so often caused by the “radical transparency” Dalio has described as a core tenet of his recipe for business success and a meaningful life. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with those inside and around the firm, Copeland takes readers into the room as former FBI director Jim Comey kisses Dalio’s ring, recent Pennsylvania Senate candidate David McCormick drinks the Kool-Aid, and a rotating cast of memorable characters grapple with their personal psychological and moral limits—all under the watchful eye of their charismatic leader. This is a cautionary tale for anyone convinced that the ability to make lots of money has anything at all to do with unlocking the principles of human nature.

The Big Fail: What the Pandemic Revealed About Who America Protects and Who It Leaves Behind
Joe Nocera and Bethany McLean
Penguin Publishing Group
October 2023, $42.00

From the collaborators behind the modern business classic, All the Devils Are Here, comes a damning indictment of American capitalism and the leaders who left us brutally unprepared for a global pandemic. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic made it painfully clear that the US could not adequately protect its citizens. Millions of Americans suffered—and over a million died—in less than two years, while government officials blundered; prize-winning economists overlooked devastating trade-offs; and elites escaped to isolated retreats, unaffected by and even profiting from the pandemic. Why and how did America, in a catastrophically enormous failure, become the world leader in COVID-19 deaths? In this page-turning economic, political, and financial history, veteran journalists Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera offer fresh and provocative answers. With laser-sharp analysis and deep sourcing, they investigate both what really happened when governments ran out of PPE due to snarled supply chains and the shock to the financial system when the world’s biggest economy stumbled. They zero-in on the effectiveness of wildly polarized approaches, with governors Andrew Cuomo of New York and Ron DeSantis of Florida taking infamous turns in the spotlight. And they trace why thousands died in hollowed-out hospital systems and nursing homes run by private equity firms to “maximize shareholder value.” In the tradition of the authors’ previous landmark exposés, The Big Fail is an expansive, insightful account of what the pandemic did to the economy and how American capitalism has jumped the rails—and is essential reading to understand where we’re going next.

Beyond the Five Whys: Root Cause Analysis and Systems Thinking
James C. Paterson
Wiley
December 2023, $60.00

A straightforward explanation of root cause analysis and systems thinking, illustrating, with real-world examples and first-hand accounts, why things can “slip through our fingers” and what to do to reduce the chances of things going off track.

Beyond the Five Whys summarizes, for the first time, many of the tried and tested ways of understanding problems using insights from aviation, high reliability organizations, and a range of thought-provoking sources. The book provides readers with a clear and structured explanation of how to analyze setbacks and head-off problems in the first place. It will challenge much of the received wisdom, such as the idea there can be one root cause or that a person or bad culture could be a root cause.

In this book, readers can:

• Learn what root causes are, how they differ from immediate and contributing causes, and why it’s so important to go beyond the Five Whys technique for root cause analysis
• Recalibrate the way you think about things going wrong, incorporating insights from systems thinking, so you can be clearer what “cultural” or systemic problems mean in practice
• Learn about the eight principal ways things can slip through our fingers
• Go beyond the blame game and firefighting to avoid the never-ending cycle of repeating issues
• Strengthen your ability to read the output of a “lessons learned” or inquiry report
• Get a fresh perspective, using these techniques, on why the Titanic tragedy turned out so badly, and understand the numerous parallels between what happened then and a range of recent setbacks we have seen, such as the COVID-19 pandemic
• Consider the broader application of these techniques to some of the challenges we face in the 21^st century

The Greatest Capitalist Who Ever Lived: Tom Watson Jr. and the Epic Story of How IBM Created the Digital Age
Ralph Watson McElvenny and Marc Wortman
PublicAffairs
October 2023, $41.00

A riveting, first-ever, sweeping biography of Thomas Watson, Jr.—more important to the history and development of the modern world than Vanderbilt, Morgan, Rockefeller, and Carnegie—who risked everything, personally and professionally, to reinvent IBM and launch the computer age that created the world we live in today.

Thomas Watson Jr. drove IBM to undertake the biggest gamble in business history with a revolution no other company of the age could dare: the creation in the 1960s of the IBM System/360, the world’s first fully integrated and compatible mainframe computer that laid the foundation for the information technology future. Its success made IBM the most valuable company in America. Fortune Magazine touted him as “the greatest capitalist who ever lived.” Time named him one of the “One Hundred People of the Century.”

Behind closed doors, Watson was a multifaceted, complicated man. As a young man, he was a failed student and playboy, an unlikely candidate for corporate titan. He pulled his life together as a courageous World War II pilot and took over IBM after his father’s death. He suffered from anxiety and depression so overwhelming that he spent days prostrate and locked in a bathroom at home while IBM faced crisis after crisis. And he carried out a family-shattering battle over the future of IBM with his brother Dick, who expected to follow him as CEO.

But despite his many demons, he laid the foundation for what eventually became the global information technology industry that dominates today’s world. His story, and the industry he created, is equal to, if not more important than that of Rockefeller and Standard Oil, Vanderbilt and the railroads, and Morgan in finance.

Warriors, Rebels, and Saints: The Art of Leadership from Machiavelli to Malcolm X
Moshik Temkin
PublicAffairs
November 2023, $39.00

Do leaders make history or does history make leaders? A deep dive into how we define, seek, and become leaders.

We live in a period of leadership in crisis. At home and across the globe, we sense that unqualified and irresponsible individuals are being elevated to positions of power, strongmen and autocrats are consolidating their hold on governance, and the people are losing faith in the prospect of a better future. How have we arrived at this point? And how can we correct our course?

For the past decade, Moshik Temkin has challenged his students at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and around the world to grapple with the nature of leadership as part of his wildly popular course “Leaders and Leadership in History.” Now, in Warriors, Rebels, and Saints, Temkin refashions the classroom for a wider audience.

Using art, film, and literature to illustrate the drama of the past, Temkin considers how leaders have made decisions in the most difficult circumstances—from the Great Depression of the 1930s to the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo, and from the anticolonial wars of the 20th century to the civil rights struggle—and how, in a world desperate for good leadership, we can evaluate those decisions and draw lessons for today.