Book Reviews: Professional and Workplace Communication

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Topics: Communication practices within technical organizations and teams, including project communication strategies and work/life balance

Move Slow and Upgrade: The Power of Incremental Innovation

Evan Selinger and Albert Fox Cahn. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 2026. 240 pages, including index.

Index Terms — Artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, disruptive innovation, ethics of design, incremental progress

Reviewed by Akhil Reddy Mandadi, IEEE Senior Member, Senior Software Engineer at Meta, Farmington Hills, MI (akhilreddymandadi@gmail.com)

Review posted on Sept 16, 2026

In Move Slow and Upgrade: The Power of Incremental Innovation, Evan Selinger and Albert Fox Cahn offer a clear warning about the technology industry obsession with fast and sudden change. The book is meant for software engineers, technical communicators, and everyday consumers who want to better understand our automated world. The book’s main goal is to challenge the popular idea that rapid technology leaps always lead to social progress. It suggests a different path based on steady, proven upgrades. The authors reach this goal perfectly by showing how the hype around disruption hides real risks and pushes the costs onto the public. Readers will find at least two great reasons to read this book: it gives a practical, ethical guide for looking at new software, and it gives technical workers the words they need to push for safer design choices.

The book’s main argument is that the technology industry focuses too much on risky bets and quick profits instead of building things that actually help society. Selinger and Fox Cahn look closely at the famous idea to move fast and break things, showing how blind trust in technology creates weak and unsafe systems. They compare sudden innovation, which breaks existing social rules, with gradual upgrades, which offer safe, steady improvements. As the authors point out, putting money into disruptive breakthroughs is like buying a lottery ticket, while investing in upgrades is like putting money in the bank. Using the idea of innovation speak, the book shows how investment hype drives corporate desires. This hype hides past failures and shifts the danger onto the people who are most easily harmed.

In terms of methods, the book uses case studies from many different fields to look at major technology failures and upgrade successes. In their chapter on virtual reality, the authors criticize a major technology company’s push for a digital universe. They note this project chased a fuzzy vision without solving any real problems for users. When looking at cryptocurrency, the authors show how blockchain was sold as a machine for creating trust. However, it failed as actual money because of slow processing times, payments that cannot be reversed, and wild price changes. In the area of home security, products like video doorbells are shown to create a well-documented pattern of cultivating paranoia without offering real proof that they stop crime. The book also explains how shiny technology answers to Covid-19, like flawed tracking apps and thermal cameras, failed completely. Instead, simple upgrades like hiring human contact tracers and updating old health databases worked much better. Similarly, remote testing software used in schools acted like invasive spy programs, unfairly targeting minority and disabled students. The authors also explore how artificial intelligence is used to hire people. They show that using bots to conduct interviews treats candidates poorly and ignores their basic dignity. The software tries to read faces and voices using junk science, which leads to unfair choices.

For readers in professional and technical communication, Move Slow and Upgrade fits perfectly with growing research on data rules, user friendly design, and technology ethics. Technical communicators often have to explain complex new tools to the public. This book offers a strong guide for looking at how marketing materials, user manuals, and screen designs push hidden agendas. Pushing back against the rush for quick fixes, the authors praise cybersecurity as the land of the true upgraders. Security engineers show the upgrader mindset by adding layers of protection, such as zero trust architecture and privacy by design. These methods accept that humans make mistakes and focus on steady risk reduction. For designers and technical writers, these ideas show how clear guides and smart design choices can prevent blind trust in automation and protect human dignity.

While the book offers a strong, convincing critique, a few respectful suggestions could make it even more useful for professionals. The authors point out the need for stronger government rules, but the text would be better if it offered clear policy templates or exact laws to guide action. For example, the critique of artificial intelligence in hiring correctly points out how video interviews can strip away a person’s humanity. Providing clear audit standards for these algorithms would give human resource teams a practical plan to follow. Also, the book focuses heavily on Western technology systems. Future versions could look at how steady upgrades work in global settings where limited resources shape how technology is used. These ideas are offered to build on a necessary piece of work, making sure its lessons are fair, grounded, and as helpful as possible.

Move Slow and Upgrade serves as both a deep critique and a call to action. It challenges technical writers and software engineers to stop accepting chaotic changes and instead focus on careful, steady improvement. By asking society to value safety, access, and human dignity over wild hype, Selinger and Fox Cahn offer a plan that supports the goal of building technology that truly serves people. This book is a must read for anyone who wants to help build a stronger, fairer digital future.

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Data-Driven Marketing Strategy: How to Apply Data to Achieve Measurable Results

Kamila Miller. New York, NY: Kogan Page Inc. 2026. 462 pages, including index.

Index Terms — Artificial intelligence, customer insights, data-driven marketing, data privacy and governance, predictive analytics.

Reviewed by Ravi Kiran Pagidi, IEEE Senior Member, Senior AI Data Engineer at Navy Federal Credit Union, Vienna, VA. (ravikiranpagidi@ieee.org)

Review posted Sept 16, 2026

In Kamila Miller’s Data-Driven Marketing Strategy: How to apply data to achieve measurable results, we find a general manual for practitioners concerning the rapidly developing field of marketing, customer analysis, artificial intelligence (AI), and personalization. The book is organized by its main message, which is that good marketing is not about gathering more data, but about transforming the customer data into insights, relevant communication, and coordinated action.

Miller addresses these core problems in her book: customer insights, data gathering, behavioral trends, psychology, AI, personalization, targeted communication, and predictive analytics. The learning objectives suggest that readers will learn to understand the concept of customer insights; collect and analyze customer data; use behavioral psychology, artificial intelligence, and machine learning; develop hyper-personalized marketing campaigns; and consider ethical issues related to customer data. Miller’s style of presenting the material sets the tone for reading her succinct theory explanations combined with examples from famous brands.

’The author describes customer insights as the interpretations of customer actions, choices, and attitudes as opposed to just data. This distinction dismisses the idea of marketing being platform-centric: “metrics like customer lifetime value, net promoter score, conversion rate, engagement, and sentiment” (pp. 5–6) are valuable as they assist the marketer in determining what the customer values and what the organization needs to do next. This insistence on the need to interpret data is one of the book’s most enduring contributions to an industry that is enamored with platforms and automation.

Data-Driven Marketing Strategy is an important text as it addresses the concept of personalization as a communicative activity. Miller defines personalization as the process of adapting the content and experience to each individual user, whereas targeted messaging refers to sending a message to groups of people that share certain traits like geographic location, device used, behavioral profile, and position in the customer journey. This division is particularly useful: personalization relates to how a message or an experience is adapted to a person, whereas targeting is the process of selecting the audience itself. Through the book, one can learn that customer data systems are also systems of relevancy and content creation.

Chapter 1 provides valuable insights into the documentary and infrastructural foundation of customer communication. In Miller’s concept of the “360-degree view of the customer” (pp. 15–16), all aspects of customer relationship management (CRM), web activity, in-store activity, purchasing history, reviews, and others are combined in one unified, actionable source of truth, The Sephora example demonstrates the organizational value of such an integration: the combination of online and in-store purchases, reviews, virtual try-ons, and beauty consultation helps in providing recommendations, rewards, offers, and personalized content. The essential message for researchers is that consistent messaging on various channels does not only require consistent branding or editorial style but also consistent data and interpretations.

Miller categorizes data into two kinds: one being primary data (surveys, focus groups, and interviews), while the other is secondary data (web analytics, social listening, and market reports). She gives a simple three-step process that involves cleaning data, segmenting customers, and analyzing trends. This process may seem obvious but its inclusion here is appreciated as it shows how important good data is for marketing communication.

Miller’s explanation of AI technology is equally clear. Technologies like predictive analytics, sentiment analysis, recommendation systems, dynamic pricing, automated segmentation, chatbots, and visual recognition are avenues through which marketers can find patterns and make predictions about consumer behavior. She correctly links these tools to human wisdom and control, especially when she highlights how algorithmic bias can lead to discrimination and stereotyping. The book cites GDPR and CCPA as practical examples of privacy restrictions imposed by consent, data processing, and transparency, and suggests privacy by design as an organizational solution.

The author’s straightforwardness is a positive trait, although it may also be a detriment to analytical accuracy. The book contains many corporate examples that are known to us such as Amazon, Sephora, Nike, Spotify, Airbnb, and others that demonstrate how data influences loyalty, content recommendation, experience personalization, product review, and customer support. Such examples are useful as orientation points, but they are usually not represented as full case studies with evidential support, but rather as short success stories. The book is a great source of strategic imagination and terminological knowledge, but it is poor regarding implementation details or organizational challenges.

The same applies to the behavioral-psychology chapters. The models of Fogg’s behavior, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, System 1 and System 2 of Kahneman, neuromarketing, choice architecture, and social proof are presented as instruments for explaining consumer choices. In this way, an effective terminology is offered to practitioners who develop persuasive messages and consumer journey, especially given that Miller contrasts emotion-based persuasion and more rational forms of communication like specifications, comparisons, and white papers. For those readers who want to have a more academic discussion of consumer psychology, the models are presented quickly and with little discussion of their flaws, reproducibility problems, and ethical concerns.

The book achieves its highest quality when it recognizes that data-driven marketing may produce negative and positive effects. When addressing the issues of the amount of available customer information, Miller talks about “analysis paralysis,” mentioning that people can miss the signal within noise when the amount of data grows without proper instruments and priorities. Her approach towards the issues of bias, privacy, and trust guarantees that the problem of ethics will be discussed not just as an afterthought, but rather throughout the book as an issue that constrains the processes of segmentation, automation, personalization, and data integration. This point gives special meaning for those who operate at the intersection of marketing and technologies.

There are two main reasons why one should read Data-Driven Marketing Strategy. First, the book gives cross-functional teams a shared vocabulary for discussing customer insight, segmentation, technographics, unified profiles, predictive analysis, omnichannel experience, dynamic content, and targeted messaging across marketing, product development, data, and customer experience. Second, it stresses that the result of data analysis should be in more meaningful dialogue with customers rather than more precise measurements.

Miller’s book can be considered quite a good starting place for marketing newcomers, as well as other related fields, such as CRM and personalization. It may be especially interesting for professional communication readers because Miller offers an insightful study of how customer data and marketing messages turn into a means of communication in organizations. It is evident from Chapter 1 that the contemporary marketing approach cannot be conceived without a complex system of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data about customers; other chapters, starting with the formation of personas  and segmentation strategy, seem to elaborate on this idea further.

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Project Management: From Traditional Project Management to Hybrid Forms

André Dechange. Dortmund, Germany: Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature 2025. 2^nd ed. 432 pages, including index.

Index Terms — Agile project management, hybrid project management, multi-project management, project management, traditional project management

Reviewed by — Sameena Begam Savukath Ali, IEEE Senior Member, Liberty Mutual, Plano, TX (sameenabegam.savukathali@ieee.org)

Review posted Sept 16, 2026

Project Management: From Traditional Project Management to Hybrid Forms is a practice-oriented textbook intended primarily for students, participants in further and advanced training, and practitioners seeking to understand or consult project management topics, methods, and tools. The book states that its aim is to provide an overview of projects and project management and to equip readers to structure and independently manage small and medium-sized projects. This second edition expands this purpose by giving traditional, agile, and hybrid project management comparable prominence, including expanded agile material, design thinking, and a dedicated chapter on hybrid project management. As an instructional text, the book achieves its stated purpose through a process-oriented structure, extensive definitions, diagrams and tables, a continuous practical example, chapter summaries, and review questions. Two features make it particularly useful to academic and professional readers: it connects foundational project management concepts with concrete planning and control tools, and it does not treat traditional and agile management as mutually exclusive choices but extends the discussion to hybrid approaches that combine their characteristics.

The book is organized into eight chapters that move from foundations to increasingly specialized applications. One of the book’s strongest instructional features is the progression from project fundamentals to the three project management forms emphasized in the second edition. Traditional project management receives detailed treatment through project planning and control. Planning is broken into practical management elements including goals and deliverables, quality, work, organization and communication, time, resources, costs, stakeholders, and risks. The subsequent controlling section considers progress measurement, reporting, change requests, and related control activities before the discussion proceeds to project closure, final reporting, and lessons learned. This structure makes the book particularly suitable as a teaching resource because the methods are presented within the stages and activities in which a project manager would use them rather than as an isolated catalogue of techniques.

The treatment of agile project management broadens this foundation. Chapter 4 covers Scrum, Kanban, and Design Thinking and explains Scrum through its roles, artefacts, events, and estimation methods. Kanban and Design Thinking are presented as additional agile approaches. The book also uses figures and tables to compare traditional and agile project management and to distinguish Scrum from Kanban. This comparative presentation is useful because readers who first encounter the detailed traditional approach can subsequently see how agile project management changes the organization and execution of project work. Rather than simply presenting agility as a replacement for traditional planning, the structure prepares the reader for the book’s central transition toward hybrid project management.

Chapter 5 discusses hybrid project management as a range of combinations rather than as one fixed model. André Dechange identifies a traditional approach supplemented with agile methods, traditional approaches containing serial or parallel agile phases, combined traditional and agile approaches, an agile approach supplemented by traditional methods, and a freestyle approach. He then discusses selection of an appropriate hybrid approach, hybrid procedural models, and the construction of project management models. This framework is useful for practitioners because it shifts the decision away from a simple traditional versus agile choice and toward deliberate configuration according to project circumstances.

The scope in chapter 6 extends beyond schedules, budgets, methods, and procedural models by addressing self-management, communication, leadership, team management, and conflict management. Including these topics reinforces Dechange’s view that successful project management depends not only on technical planning and control but also on competencies needed to lead and coordinate people. For students, this provides a broader conception of project-management competence than a text limited to schedules, resources, costs, and risk.

Chapter 7 expands the perspective from individual projects to multi-project environments. It distinguishes multi-project, program, portfolio, and individual project management and discusses portfolio evaluation and prioritization as well as the Project Management Office (PMO). The chapter describes the PMO tasks and roles associated with portfolio steering, portfolio management, project-management competence, operational support, and overall PMO leadership. This gives readers an organizational perspective after the preceding chapters have concentrated primarily on individual projects.

The explicit teaching design is another important strength of this book. Chapters establish learning objectives, while summaries and review questions allow readers to assess their understanding. A practical example continues through the book to demonstrate methods and tools. Dechange explains that the example is intentionally simple for instructional purposes and that real projects need not use all methods and tools at the same level of detail. This qualification is valuable because the extensive number of methods presented could otherwise encourage novice readers to treat every technique as mandatory.

One limitation in this book is the breadth in how it covers foundations, initiation, traditional management, agile management, hybrid management, interpersonal competencies, and multi-project management in one volume with some areas receiving greater depth than others. Traditional project management receives extensive treatment of planning and controlling, whereas Scrum, Kanban, and Design Thinking appear within a shorter agile chapter. This allocation is reasonable for readers seeking an introductory or integrative understanding. Readers seeking advanced specialization in one agile method would need more depth than this book provides. The book is strongest to provide stated objective of providing an overview and enabling project-management novices to work more effectively with small- and medium-sized projects.

A second improvement area concerns the English-language presentation. The publication explains that the book was translated from the German second edition with an artificial-intelligence machine-translation tool and that subsequent human revision focused primarily on content; it notes that the text may read stylistically differently from a conventional translation. That qualification is noticeable in the review copy. For example, the foreword says that hybrid project management has been “addressed by a own chapter” where idiomatic English would require “addressed in its own chapter” (p. 5). The copyright page also prints “Springer Berlin Heidelbarg” in one line and “Springer Berlin Heidelberg” in the next (p. 4). These issues do not prevent comprehension, but additional English-language copyediting would improve readability, terminological consistency, and professional polish.

A related improvement would be greater consistency in established English project management terminology. Because the book contains many definitions, methods, role descriptions, diagrams, and reusable templates, terminology is especially important: readers may adopt these terms as part of their professional vocabulary. A final terminology-focused editorial pass would strengthen the book without changing its underlying content or instructional structure. This is particularly relevant because the book presents clear definitions and a comprehensive index as characteristics that make it a reference work.

Overall, Dechange provides a broad, organized introduction to contemporary project management in this book. Its principal strength is not advocacy of one methodology but the structured progression from foundational concepts through traditional and agile management to hybrid forms, followed by the human and organizational dimensions of project work. The continuous example, learning objectives, figures, tables, summaries, and review questions make the volume suitable for students and readers developing practical project management competence. Practitioners may also value it as a reference because it brings planning, controlling, agile methods, hybrid configurations, interpersonal competencies, portfolio management, and PMO concepts into one volume.

Despite these editorial issues previously discussed, there are at least two compelling reasons for an academic or practitioner to read the book. First, it provides a systematic foundation in project management methods and tools while connecting them to practical applications. Second, its explicit treatment of traditional, agile, and hybrid forms helps readers understand project management as a configurable set of approaches rather than a choice between two opposing methodologies. Project Management does succeed in its stated goal of helping project management novices develop the knowledge needed to structure and manage projects while also providing a broad reference for readers who need to revisit methods, tools, and organizational concepts.

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The Bloomsbury Introduction to Creative Writing

Tara Mokhtari. London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic. 2026. 3^rd ed. 288 pages, including index.

Index Terms — Creative writing, fiction, non-fiction, performance writing, screenwriting

Reviewed by Diane Martinez, Associate Professor of English Studies at Western Carolina University. Cullowhee, NC  (dlmartinez@email.wcu.edu)

Review posted Sept 16, 2026

Creative writing, like any discipline, has an abundance of books on honing the craft, so to stand out from the rest means the book must offer something special that others do not. This is the third edition of The Bloomsbury Introduction to Creative Writing by Tara Mokhtari, which means this book has some history. In some ways, it delivers, but it might be time for a complete rewrite of the book.

Mokhtari divided the book into nine chapters that cover the usual content expected in an introductory creative writing text: personal writing, poetry, fiction, screenwriting, performance writing, writing for digital media, critique, and a final chapter on culture and intersectionality. This content is appropriate for students in an undergraduate creative writing course, which is who this book is written for; however, given this audience, I was surprised at how little instruction was included in some chapters. For example, the chapter on personal writing covers memoirs, autobiographies, reflective writing, human interest articles, and personal essays, but there is little instruction on how to develop and write in each form. Definitions are provided and a discussion about what it means to be literary or fact-based is included, but beyond that there is no instruction on how to develop each genre. Although there are ample exercises and workshop activities in each chapter, even those exercises give little guidance on how to develop a scenario, for example, into a full piece of writing. Additionally, few examples and references are mentioned in this chapter, which seems counterintuitive to the advice given in the first chapter that encouraged readers to read to help hone their craft.

The poetry chapter was also problematic because more time was spent on explaining historical sects of poets (Romanticism, Victorian, Beat) instead of giving information or instruction on how to write in various poetic forms. It is important to learn about poetic movements and how they impacted form, but this background information took over the chapter leaving little room for actual writing instruction. Instead, Mokhtari tells readers to research and experiment with forms on their own, a comment that recurs in later chapters as well. As a reader, this made me feel like the book was incomplete and even frustrated me because, for an introductory text, I expected a chapter on poetry would tell me the rhyme scheme for several forms of poetry and how to develop ideas for them, not for me to go look up this information elsewhere.

Another issue that struck me was how dated many of the examples were. For instance, in the fiction chapter, references are made to classics like The Bell Jar, To Kill a Mockingbird, To the Lighthouse, and Pride and Prejudice, as well as George Orwell, Allen Ginsberg (both who are referred to multiple times throughout the book), and James Joyce. These usual, traditional authors contradict the message in the final chapter on culture and intersectionality where there is a great deal of discussion about identity and inclusion, but the rest of the book seems to cater to the tired old literary canon and includes only limited references to contemporary and diverse authors, whose works are also dated at this time.

Most chapters would benefit from more examples, especially annotated ones. Examples in the digital media and critique chapters are extensive and helpful, but examples in the other chapters are sparse and abbreviated. The limited number of longer examples is especially problematic because readers cannot see how ideas are developed; they are only told to do so. To show how to write a slug line and then action in a screenplay is basic instruction, but how an idea is developed and then written as a screenplay is never addressed, even in the exercises. The same can be said for writing a play where it is important to know that you capitalize each character’s name and indent the dialogue, but right after that basic instruction, readers are expected to look up the script of a play and study it, but they have little guidance on what they should be studying it for beyond dialogue and action. In other words, in a book about creative writing, it is expected that there would be instructions on how to actually write in various creative forms.

Digital media, culture, and intersectionality are important to cover in creative writing classes. Issues like using AI for creative writing and changing habits with online reading do affect how something is written, so it is important that content be part of an introductory creative writing text. These chapters, however, feel like they are add-ons and not part of the original book plan. This book, now in its third edition, comes across like it has glued on parts. For instance, contemporary references feel like they were added after the fact instead of being part of the main text simply because so many older references remain in previous chapters. Another major issue is the lack of actual writing instruction, as mentioned above. It is for these reasons that I suggest it might be time to rewrite this book instead of revising for future editions because this edition does not fulfill the title’s promise. There is still helpful content, but the book itself needs to be re-envisioned to be helpful for its audience of new writers.

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Key Terms for Business Journalism: An A–Z Reference for Reporters, Editors, and Professional Communicators

Chris Roush and Bill Cloud. New York, NY: Routledge. 2026.  3rd ed. 256 pages, including index.

Index Terms: Business journalism, editors, journalism, reporters

Reviewed by Jeanette Evans, Associate Fellow of the Society for Technical Communication (jeanettepevans@gmail.com)

Review posted Sept 16, 2026

Practitioners and students will find value in Key Terms for Business Journalism: An A–Z Reference for Reporters, Editors, and Professional Communicators especially as it relates to financial journalism, business communication, and journalism. In its third edition, this book covers 2000 terms and abbreviations in business and financial language for journalists and other writers.

As an example, the 401(k) entry explains the term and notes that “the k is lowercase and always in parentheses”. A 501(c)(3) is a “provision of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service code that exempts certain types of organizations, such as charities, churches and universities, from paying federal taxes. These organizations are called nonprofits. Note that both the c and the 3 are in parentheses. The IRS offers information about the exemption requirements for these organizations on its site’’. The entry for 7-Eleven indicates to “always capitalize the E after the hyphen” and gives a short history of the term (p. xiii).

The authors are certainly qualified to tackle the subject matter. Bill Cloud is Associate Professor Emeritus of Journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and former director of the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund Center for Editing Excellence. Chris Roush is Assistant Vice President of Strategic Partnerships and former journalism dean at Elon University and Quinnipiac University as well as a former business journalist.

Entries often cover terms that can make business reporting challenging. For example, the entry for cryptocurrency gives a short history and current summary as it is a “digital currency where the price is determined through a digital network. Unlike other currencies, a cryptocurrency is not regulated or overseen by a central bank. The first cryptocurrency was released in 2009, and ownership is stored online in what is commonly called a blockchain. Variations of a cryptocurrency include altcoins, memecoins and bitcoins, with the last accounting for more than half of all cryptocurrencies. Prices of these currencies are often volatile” (p. 61).

These examples show how the authors look at not only usage but also meaning and application. Readers can note that the terms covered could appear in government reports, regulatory filings, and corporate documents. In addition, the authors explain how to help an audience understand a term or concept, but also how and when to use a term.

Consider the Federal Reserve Board entry. This is the “federal government agency that makes key decisions about short-term interest rates. The chairman is considered one of the most powerful people in the United States. In recent years, the chair has clashed with the president over when interest rates should change. While the president appoints the chair, the agency’s actions are considered independent and based on what it believes is in the best interest of the U.S. economy. On second reference, use the Fed or the board. Do not lowercase Fed on second reference” (p. 91).

For sure, writers and students in many disciplines will find value in Key Terms for Business Journalism with its guidance not only on issues such as punctuation and capitalization, but also on trademarks, company names, and legal issues.

Concerning trademarks, the authors write that a “trademark is any word, name, symbol, or design that sets off the goods of one manufacturer or seller from those of another, thereby providing legal protection. Use the generic equivalent unless the trademark name is essential to the story. Never use a trademark as a thing; for example, it’s Scotch-brand adhesive tape, not Scotch Tape” (p. 231).

It would be easy to go on and on with more examples of the useful content appearing in Key Terms for Business Journalism. It is best to just follow the advice from Bill Cloud: “Stay on top of things for me. Our style guide will help you. Keep it handy” (p. viii). You might also enjoy reading that Chris Roush states, “I love business news. To me, it’s the most important aspect of journalism because it’s the one where the stories are told of money gained or lost. And I hope that the updated stylebook helps others fall in love with reporting and writing stories about business” (p. vii).

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What To Do If…? How to handle any situation at work and come out winning

Anne-Maartje Oud. New York, NY: Kogan Page Inc. 2026. 276 pages.

Index Terms — Life lessons, life studies, practical solution, philosophy

Reviewed by Mahesh Soni, IEEE Senior Member (soni.mahesh@ieee.org)

Review posted July 29, 2026

I really loved reading What To Do If…? How to handle any situation at work and come out winning. As a self-development book, Anne-Maartje Oud covers topics like rewriting behaviors, building discipline, enhancing self-awareness, self-presentation, and boosting confidence. The breakdown of each topic is super clear, and the strategies feel doable for everyday life.

Part Two, Communication, focuses on mapping out highly effective, clear strategies for both personal and professional settings, balancing face-to-face communication seamlessly with online interactions.

I have personally been trying to apply the exact strategies mentioned in this chapter. While the frameworks are excellent, putting them into practice highlights just how tough real-world communication can be. For instance, I still find it difficult to overcome presentation nerves; that frustrating feeling when your throat totally goes dry or your voice starts to change mid-speech! I also find it challenging to smoothly step into already-formed social or professional groups and converse naturally without feeling like I am interrupting them.

Even though these real-world habits are tough to break, gained useful tips from this chapter. The step-by-step nature of the advice makes me believe that with consistent practice, these hurdles will absolutely improve over time.

Part Three, Working with others, does a fantastic job of helping individuals understand how to become better observers and listeners. Oud points out that by truly tuning in and watching group dynamics, we can learn an immense amount about our team members. Furthermore, the specific troubleshooting strategies mentioned for handling difficult situations, like when someone belittles you or completely fails to respond, are perfect.

My only critique for this part is that Oud should consider expanding these rules into the modern workspace. While the advice works beautifully in person, this part could be improved by adding a section on how to be a great remote teammate. Observing body language or listening for subtle cues is completely different over video calls, Slack, or email.

Part Four, Leadership, outlines essential basic suggestions on how to build trust and become an approachable leader. I especially appreciated the book’s balanced perspective on when to be lenient and support your people      versus when you must step up, make the hard choices, and let certain individuals go so the entire team’s productivity and morale don’t suffer.

Oud could have expanded this part more by covering how to start as a leader in a brand-new company. The book also would benefit by emphasizing the importance of holding independent 1-on-1 talks to diagnose deep-rooted issues first, allowing the leader to drive meaningful changes with the whole team through collaboration rather than forcing changes or decisions from the top down.

Part 5, Difficult situations. outlines strategies for dealing with heavy emotional responses and frameworks for navigating narcissistic traits, emotionally unstable individuals, and sensitive, difficult conversations.

While the tactics are fascinating, I feel they may be difficult to apply directly at work. The boundary between a friend and a colleague is much more defined, which can create a real fear of crossing a line. In professional settings, there is always a lingering fear of crossing a line, leading to a constant whether to ask or not to ask dilemma. To make this part highly realistic, Oud should address these professional boundaries. She should guide the reader on how to manage these heavy situations calmly without overstepping or entangling themselves too deeply in a coworker’s private emotional life.

Furthermore, the book needs to offer clearer guidelines regarding personal safety and knowing when not to intervene. Oud should include realistic safety protocols for these extreme moments, teaching readers how to assess risk, look for alternative ways to help, and know when it is smarter to stand back or call for professional security rather than playing the hero.

The book would be even stronger with a few practical additions, such as 1) including examples for readers with limited time; 2) showing how small daily actions can build confidence; and addressing accent anxiety and cultural differences.

What To Do If…? bridges the gap between theory and everyday reality beautifully. It doesn’t just tell you what to do; it gives you a practical mirror to reflect on your own journey. Whether you are working on your internal habits, trying to polish your public speaking, navigating modern teamwork, stepping into a leadership role, or managing tough office politics, this is a highly recommended read!

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Don’t Say Um: How to Communicate Effectively to Live a Better Life

Michael Chad Hoeppner. New York, NY: Balance. 2026. 272 pages.

Index Terms — Business, communication, personal growth, public speaking, self-help, speech.

Reviewed by Josh Anderson, Paligo (josh.anderson@paligo.net)

Review posted July 29, 2026

Don’t Say Um: How to Communicate Effectively to Live a Better Life distills public speaking and communication skills advice from Michael Chad Hoeppner, a top speech coach. The title is meant more as an attention grabber than genuine guidance. I myself was drawn to the title in the hope that I could lessen such filler words when I present at conferences or at work. Hoeppner quickly clarifies that he doesn’t actually advocate for “thought suppression” (p. 8) techniques that focus on what not to do. Instead, he spends most chapters of his book describing exercises that seem simple and sometimes silly where better public speaking arises as an unconscious consequence. 

One exercise involves lifting a piece of paper and speaking one complete thought before placing the paper back down, not beginning the next statement until you lift the paper up again. The point is to break rambling, aimless speech into concise, complete thoughts, separated by natural pauses. He divides one page in the book into six regions, instructing the reader to cut out each square to use as props to aid in the exercise. This is far from the only example where the author goes beyond the boundaries of the written word, breaking the fourth wall to incorporate the physical book into his lessons. Elsewhere the author presents two pages side-by-side, one entirely filled with the repeated words “lorem ipsum,” standardly formatted, and the other with a big jumble of differently sized letters that break all the rules of conventional typography. Here, he emphasizes how our brains naturally gravitate to what’s novel and unusual, making the case for vocal variety. Yet another sequence in the book features two massive shoeprint shapes—one on each page—preceded by instructions to stand atop the book to grow accustomed to speaking with stillness. 

The exercises are the meat of the book; to skip them is to lose much of its value. Thus, Don’t Say Um is a book where readers will get out of it what they put into it. It may be worth reading a single chapter at a time, reflecting on it, and incorporating its lessons into your daily speech before starting the next chapter at a later date. There’s so much advice in here that Hoeppner’s mentioning in the final pages of your “first trip through this book” (p. 262) does not feel unwarranted.

It’s not a small commitment, however. Don’t Say Um took me a while to get through for two reasons. First, I wanted to take the exercises seriously, although I will admit that I skipped the one that told me to pour a bag of flour all over my floor so that any restless movements would leave evidence beneath my feet. Second, Hoeppner tends to write verbosely. It’s not enough, for example, to tell readers that he prefers the advice “be as tall as you actually are” over the more conventional “stand up straight;” we’re given several examples of differing heights for which this advice is equally applicable (p. 161). Then there’s an aside about how you can measure your height in centimeters if you prefer the metric system. In the hands of a stricter editor, much of this book could have been trimmed, but it may have then lost some of its conversational charm. Personally, I didn’t mind the wordy style.

Don’t Say Um can save you the cost of an expensive coaching regimen. Its best insights are embodied. Get ready to stand up, speak aloud, and in some cases, cut up and trample on the physical book to experience it as the author intended.

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The Storyteller’s Advantage: How Powerful Narratives Make Businesses Thrive

Christina Farr. New York, NY: Basic Venture. 2025. 336 pages, including index.

Index terms ⎯ Authenticity, openness, pathos, storytelling, surprise

Reviewed by Michelle Gardner, McKinsey & Company (mrswtgjr@gmail.com)

Review posted July 29, 2026

Former business journalist and current health-tech investor and advisor Christina Farr’s debut book, The Storyteller’s Advantage: How Powerful Narratives Make Businesses Thrive, celebrates those who use stories to inspire, persuade, and lead. She argues that storytelling is a competitive edge and proves it with a diverse cast of leaders who have mastered the art.

Farr shows that authenticity, vulnerability, surprise, and empathy are the hallmarks of great storytellers. The purpose of this review is to highlight these and other storytelling traits and show you why they make stories memorable.

If you’re interested in the power of narrative in business and leadership, then you’ll find that the personalities in this book (founders, CEOs, investors, and even controversial figures) demonstrate the universal relevance and impact of storytelling.

Alexis Ohanian: Vulnerability and relatability

One of the first personalities we meet in The Storyteller’s Advantage is Alexis Ohanian, Reddit co-founder. Ohanian recounts how his original idea for a food ordering app had failed. Instead of glossing over it, he describes the disappointment. His willingness to share his failures as openly as his successes proved to be a powerful way to connect with audiences and build trust.

He also shares a good quote that sums up the book’s purpose, “Most of us tune out when we feel pitched, but we become far more alert when we are in the presence of a good storyteller” (pp. 11–12).

Anne Wojcicki: Storytelling for motivation and meaning

Anne Wojcicki, 23andMe CEO, uses humor to make her storytelling authentic and engaging; her stories also inspire her team and reinforce the company’s mission. Sharing customer stories reminds employees of the real-world impact of their work and boosts morale and retention. Notably, 42% of 23andMe employees have stayed for over five years, far above industry norms.

Jonathan Bush: Radical authenticity and humor

Jonathan Bush, former CEO of Athenahealth, begins sales pitches by saying that he and a bunch of former consultants ran an independent medical practice into the ground. It surprises and disarms his audience, but his self-deprecating humor and authenticity make him a memorable presence in a crowded industry and a favorite with the press. His method of storytelling builds trust and makes his company stand out.

Apoorva Mehta: The comeback kid

Apoorva Mehta, Instacart founder, tried and failed with 20 startups before finding success. He wore his failures as a badge of honor, and it has made his eventual triumph more compelling. Mehta’s stories of failure and persistence inspire confidence in a founder’s resilience. His openness about his journey makes investors and employees root for him and demonstrates the power of the underdog narrative.

Kate Ryder: The heroine’s journey

Kate Ryder, Maven Clinic CEO, shares her observations of challenges women face in maternal health, which led to her founding Maven. Her struggle resonated with female investors, but rejections from male investors are part of her pitch; they said no man would work for her and that women did not need this kind of help. Ryder’s determination to solve a problem makes her story inspiring and persuasive.

Tony Fadell: Emotional activation and surprise

Tony Fadell, Nest thermostat creator, uses surprise and emotional language when he pitches to investors: he describes thermostats as “unloved” devices. By imagining a world where thermostats could be loved, Fadell activates their emotions by telling a compelling story about turning a thermostat into an interoperable, accessible product that could make our lives better.

SOAP: The big four storytelling secrets

Farr distills the traits of great storytellers into the SOAP framework:

• Surprise: Capturing attention with the unexpected (Fadell’s unloved thermostats)
• Openness: Transparency about failures and challenges (Mehta, Bush)
• Authenticity: Being true to oneself (Wojcicki, Ohanian)
• Pathos: Empathy for the audience (Ryder, Wojcicki)

These traits recur in every profile, which makes The Storyteller’s Advantage a practical guide for those wanting to hone their storytelling skills. It’s packed with engaging examples that make the case for storytelling as an important skill in the business world. Whether you’re a founder, executive, or aspiring leader, you’ll discover insights that will change how you think about communication. The book’s diversity of voices proves that anyone can become a great storyteller with practice and intention.

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Learning from Neurodivergent Leaders: How to Start, Survive and Thrive in Leadership

Nancy Doyle. London, UK: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. 2025. 299 pages, including index.

Index terms  – Leadership, neurodivergent, self-help

Reviewed by Siobhan Patterson, Auburn University, Auburn, AL (skgehrs@gmail.com)

Review posted July 29, 2026

Nancy Doyle creates space for those prone to overthinking, anxiety, and a desire to do the right thing with her book Learning from Neurodivergent Leaders: How to Start, Survive and Thrive in Leadership. She is straightforward that this book isn’t written with traditional studies and statistics. Instead, it relies heavily on qualitative research drawn from her personal experience, as well as narratives and testimonies from others in the neurodivergent community. Doyle is transparent in her limited experiences, detailing the importance of including marginalized voices using these first-person experiences.

Doyle outlines in her opening chapters that this book is intended for those diagnosed as neurodivergent. It is designed for those who are looking to “unpack the nuances between the characteristics you developed as masking and the natural skills of leadership to hold better boundaries” (p. 27). Learning from Neurodivergent Leaders would also apply to those in the workforce who are open to learning more about others on their teams. Individuals are not required to share their diagnoses, and some may never have formal testing, however reading this book can help provide more understanding and compassion toward one another.

This book follows a clear format with three key sections: Becoming a Leader, Surviving Leadership, and Sustainable Leadership. She encourages readers to choose a section based on where they are in their careers, not necessarily requiring a sequential path. Each section is then split into three subsections. The first subsection features the qualitative research she referred to as autoethnography, covering relevant topics such as emotional intelligence, approaches to burnout prevention, and the clean feedback model. The second subsection is focused on advice, modeling a question-and-answer format that addresses the content tied to the section theme. The third subsection is designed as a workbook and referred to as Doing the Work. Readers are provided the opportunity for reflective and critical thinking, whether that means completing worksheet tables or answering questions to connect the qualitative research and advice.

One element of Doyle’s writing style I appreciate is how she presents information in an accessible way. She chose to define terms, such as autoethnography or the four drama roles, and re-define them in each section in the event someone is reading out of order as encouraged. Re-defining terms also shows a continuity in her writing, drawing parallels from becoming a leader to sustaining that leadership role.

Another element I enjoyed was her inclusion of links and worksheets throughout. Doyle included links in the footnotes that were easy to follow when she referenced a video or online inventory assessment. Her publisher, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, also provides free downloads from the Doing the Work subsections. It is worth noting that these downloads from the publisher do require account creation to access. However, these downloads provide the reader an additional resource in the event they want to share this book with others without marking their personal reflections and observations in the physical book.

There were two stories Doyle shared that stuck out to me while reading. In one, she shared how the structure of agile methodologies and sprint planning calls better supported those with neurodivergent behavior. Those work styles are designed to prevent long meetings and have focused attention on specific topics, which are more accommodating and productive for these individuals. A second story that I enjoyed was when Doyle shared her experience with hyperlexia. As a prolific note taker, she learned that she needed to simplify her notes and share information in a condensed format to others on her team. It showed a balance of giving her what she needed to gain understanding, while also adapting to the needs of others to create team success. I was unfamiliar with the term hyperlexia, so her definition and example were beneficial to my understanding.

As someone new to Doyle’s work, it did take a few mentions of Genius Within before realizing that it is a business she founded. Genius Within specializes in neurodiversity support for adults and organizations that work with and employ them. I initially correlated mentions of the company to the Working Genius assessment given the high-level similarities of leadership and uncovering strengths. The Working Genius assessment is often used by teams to discover personality and preferred work styles, and I had recently attended a workshop dedicated to the topic. It would have been helpful to have additional context to her background before reading about Working Genius.

Once recognizing that Genius Within is a separate entity that she created, it made sense as to why the third section of the book, Sustainable Leadership, is heavily focused on her business. This section includes testimonials from team members and lessons learned from the organization. It also evaluated how leadership received buy-in from those who didn’t normally engage in culture building activities and preferred to stay focused on the tasks at hand. It’s the largest section in the book and is focused on radical candor, highlighting how Doyle implemented systems to create a sustainable culture.

One other feedback element I would suggest is to limit the use of forward slashes when creating lists. In the first section, Doyle provides a list of the five personality characteristics. It took me a few reads to understand the use of forward slashes indicates a comparison. For example, spectrum of extraversion/introversion, neuroticism/stability. In a previous technical writing role, my team was instructed not to use the forward slashes for accessibility reasons. I would suggest limiting the use of them in long-form text to help reduce misunderstandings.

Doyle provides valuable insights and resources with practical application throughout Learning from Neurodivergent Leaders. An underlying theme to her observations is positivity, even concluding her writing with a reminder to readers that they are enough. This book is designed for those who feel as though they constantly need to raise the bar or are trying to figure out how they fit into their workplace culture. However, Doyle encourages leaders at any stage to pause and reflect on where things have gone right and celebrate those milestones along the way.

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Resumes for Dummies

Laura DeCarlo. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. 2026. 9^th ed. 312 pages, including index.

Index Terms — job-focused resume, job-search optimization, modern resume strategies, sample resumes

Reviewed by Jackie Damrau, IEEE Senior Member (jdamrau3@gmail.com)

Review posted July 29, 2026

Resumes for Dummies, 9^th edition, is a timely book that is packed with different types of resumes for one to peruse and consider using during their job search or when updating their format to a more modern look. Laura DeCarlo authored this book in three parts: Creating Today’s Winning Resume, Crafting Resumes That Command Attention, Exploring Real-World Resumes That Work, and the infamous The Parts of Ten that comes in all For Dummies books.

My reason for reviewing this book is that being currently unemployed and listening to all my friends and professional acquaintances tell me include this in my resume, remove that, don’t write it this way, or format it that way, I wanted to read this book to determine if the advice is accurate. In most parts, yes; however, I will say that depending on your career field, the advice may not be applicable. DeCarlo writes for general job careers, so for the IEEE Professional Communication readers, you will need to follow our own industry experts, hiring managers/recruiters, and others when in doubt.

Overall, this book did provide me with information that you may find useful. In the past, we used one standard resume that covered one of the standard formats: reverse-chronological, chrono-functional, or hybrid. The job market is definitely changing now to where we’re being encouraged to customize our resume and cover letter for every job description. We may have done this in the past to a modest degree, yet now it’s really needed as recruiters and companies are using artificial intelligence (AI) and application tracking systems (ATS) to evaluate who does or does not make it to the next level. DeCarlo states, “In today’s hiring world of algorithms,…you have only seconds to prove your value” (p. 1). According to a recruiter colleague, he says you have microseconds, not seconds to prove your value of how you match what the reader is looking for.

One key attribute to this book is to remember that your “resume is never just a formality—it’s your story of impact told with focus and purpose. Done right, it captures attention, builds confidence, and turns opportunity into offer” (p. 4).

Resumes should be customized to fit the role, use a clean format structure for ATS parsing, and make use of bullets and tight paragraphs that connect required responsibilities to your results. DeCarlos shares, “A core resume is your complete, behind-the-scenes master document….An OnTarget resume is the tailored version you create from your core resume for a specific job or career direction” (p. 8). The OnTarget resume should high what aligns you with the role and use language that matches what the employer and screening systems are looking for.

One caveat when using AI for customizing your resume is to be aware of how it can hallucinate its response to a job description or other information that you feed it. AI tends to fabricate achievements and metrics, so make sure you read each and every word and line before incorporating it into your OnTarget resume. Even then you will want to validate that the content sounds like you, is what you know you did, and there are no untruths in the statements.

Another resume trick that some may have used in the past or may still be using is keyword stuffing using hidden text or white text in your resume. DeCarlo clarifies this by stating, “Don’t game keywords by playing tricks like stuffing or pasting them as invisible text. No matter what you see online and in social media, it backfires with humans and can get filtered by systems” (p. 11).

When working with an ATS, DeCarlo recommends these tips (p. 14):

• Keep the key facts as normal body text (name, phone, email, city/state, job titles, employers, dates, and education).
• Use standard section labels (summary, experience, education, and skills).
• Use simple bullets and avoid text boxes, columns, tables, and graphics when presenting essential information.
• Keep job titles and dates consistent format-wise (for example, “January 2023 – August 2025”. [Personal recommendation as heard from multiple recruiters I have worked with, always include a space, an en-dash, and a space between dates as an ATS can misread them.]
• Have a plain-text version ready for portals that only accept paste-in content (very rare today).

Consider following these tips when you have to manually enter your uploaded resume into the numerous fields and boxes in a company’s job portal (p. 15):

• Paste from your OnTarget resume, then proof every field, especially job titles, employer names, date, and locations.
• Watch for lost characters (bullets, quotes, em dashes). Fix odd symbols and reinsert line breaks when needed. [Personal recommendation: If you have a multi-page resume where job experience crosses to another page, look at the Job Description area for each employer as the ATS oftentimes (at least for me) brings that content in between your job duties.]
• Use the “Additional Information” box for a one-sentence value line that mirrors your resume branding summary.
• If the site allows a file upload, attach a clean .docx or PDF as backup. [Personal recommendation attributed to a recruiter colleague: Don’t submit .docx files! They contain metadata you don’t want to share. A savvy documentation manager will turn on hidden characters to see if you are using styles, etc.]
• Save a copy (screenshot/print to PDF) of what you submitted for later reference.

Another new element for resumes that I have learned is related to your resume keywords. There is a difference between your hard skills (technical qualifications) and soft skills (interpersonal talents). You will want to list these in separate sections in a parsable format for an ATS. DeCarlo and others recommend that the format should be displayed on a bulleted table, columns, and such. Yet, the best that I’ve found in job application process is to make it easier for the ATS to parse where I include my header, Technical Skills, then no more than 6-8 keywords separated by the Unicode symbol (Alt+0149 in Windows) to create the bullet. I do the same for my Core Competencies section. ATS’s can read the Unicode symbol with no problems. They have difficulty in reading the bulleted lists in a tabular or columnar format as often that code registered with HTML table markup. Even the use of other iconography like the pipe ( | ) can be misconstrued.

Dates are definitely an issue if included anywhere except in your work experience. For those of us that have been out of school for more than three years, remove those dates. For those who are still in school or have just graduated and are looking for your first job, dates are needed but keep them to Month and Year. Nothing more is needed.

For those that have professional association affiliations, DeCarlo recommends this: “If you have professional and civic affiliations, especially with leadership role, these could enhance your value and standing. Be sure to relate these affiliations and roles to reviewers in terms of marketable skills, knowledge, and accomplishments. A high profile in the community (online or local) is particularly important for many professions” (p. 46).

The best use of AI is to use it to “rewrite, tighten, and translate content you’ve already though through and not to shortcut truth, ethics, or strategy. If a tactic sounds like a trick, it probably is” (p. 86).

Keywords are the strongest thing that resumes must include. Each job responsibility needs to be written with a qualified action verb. In Chapter 7, Working Wonders with Wow Words, DeCarlo lists the preferred keywords by categories: Administration and management, Communications and Creativity, Sales and Persuasion, Technical Ability, Office Support, Teaching and Training, Research and Analysis, Helping and Caregiving, and Financial Management. This is one chapter you would want to bookmark or consider downloading her keyword skills list from her online companion website (www.dummies.com/go/resumesfd9e).

Overall, Resumes For Dummies is a timely book for those in the job search today. Updated this year, DeCarlo has put together a vast trove of resume formats, examples, and tips for the job seeker to follow. For the more professional job seekers, we will want to adapt as much as we feel comfortable with. After all, you must represent you as truthfully as you can as your next potential employer is looking for that. I encourage you to read this book, check out the Cheat Sheet at www.dummies.com and the online companion website at www.dummies.com/go/resumesfd9e. You won’t regret it.

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Engineering Leadership: The Hard Parts — Navigating Chaos to Build Teams That Deliver

Juan Pablo Buriticá and James Turnbull. Santa Rosa, CA: O’Reilly Media, Inc. 2026. 274 pages, including index.

Index Terms — Chaos management, engineering leadership, psychological safety, software delivery, technical strategy

Reviewed by Rakesh Reddy Ramasani, Microsoft, Georgetown, TX (reddyrakesh926@gmail.com)

Review posted July 29, 2026

In Engineering Leadership — Navigating Chaos to Build Teams That Deliver, Juan Pablo Buriticá and James Turnbull offer a candid practitioner’s guide for engineering leaders working under conditions that most management literature politely overlooks. They focus on organizations where priorities shift weekly, processes are improvised, and the leader’s actual role rarely matches the one on the organization chart. Drawing on more than a decade of combined experience across startups, scale-ups, and enterprises, the authors frame chaos not as an edge case but as the default operating mode of contemporary software organizations. The stated purpose is to equip new managers, seasoned directors, and influence-based technical leaders such as staff engineers with mindsets and techniques for leading through chaos rather than waiting it out. Measured against that purpose, the book succeeds: it is an unusually honest, mostly practical, and pleasantly opinionated companion to titles such as Camille Fournier’s The Manager’s Path and Will Larson’s An Elegant Puzzle, with a sharper focus on the messy middle of execution than either.

Buriticá and Turnbull organized the book into two halves: the first half (Chapters 1–5) covers “understanding your role, navigating chaos, setting directions and strategy, and building your team’s resilience and skills” (p. xv); the second half (Chapters 6–11) focuses on “techniques that you can use to deliver software and set your team up for technical success” (p. xvi). Recurring vignettes such as “April at PixelCurl” anchor the abstractions in plausible team dynamics. The central argument is methodological rather than theoretical, the authors contend that the standard leadership canon implicitly assumes stable conditions “clear structures, well-defined processes, and ample resources” (p. xv) and that its prescriptions therefore degrade badly when ported into chaotic environments, much as “telling a drowning person to ‘just’ swim to shore” (p. xv). Their counter proposal is a deliberately small set of high-leverage practices, layered incrementally, that prioritize forward momentum over polish. Chapter 1 introduces a list of common symptoms lack of ownership, undefined process, blame culture, frequent crisis mode, and no meaningful measurement that functions as a diagnostic instrument. Later chapters revisit these same symptoms as the problems each new technique is meant to address, giving the book unusual internal coherence for the genre.

For IEEE Professional Communication Society readers, the book’s most relevant contributions are where leadership practice and organization communication intersect. Chapter 8 reframes architectural strategy as a written artifact that helps “create alignment without requiring constant coordination” (p. 230) by replacing meeting-driven decision-making with explicit, durable guideposts. Chapter 9 treats requests for comments (RFCs) as a collaboration genre whose value lies as much in shared interpretation as in shared decisions. Chapter 10 is, at its core, a chapter about technical communication: the authors warn that “metrics without context are just numbers cosplaying as truth” (p. 232) and argue that every number on a dashboard must be paired with a story explaining what it means and why it is moving. Throughout, the prose is plainspoken and willing to be unfashionable, arguing that “action beats inaction almost every time” (p. 230) and defending good enough as a legitimate engineering target.

The diagnostic vocabulary occasionally leans on overlapping categories, and the authors provide no scoring rubric to convert the symptom list into a prioritized action plan. The vignettes are composites rather than case studies, so readers expecting the data-grounded argumentation of Forsgren, Humble, and Kim’s Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps will find the empirical scaffolding thinner here.

There are two reasons readers will want to read this book. First, it offers a usable practitioner vocabulary for naming dysfunctions that engineering organizations routinely experience but rarely articulate vocabulary portably into documentation strategy, incident-review writing, and internal change communication. Second, it treats artifacts (RFCs, technical principles, metric narratives, retrospective notes) as primary instruments of leadership rather than administrative residue, a stance aligned with the discipline’s interest in how professional documents shape organizational outcomes. For academics in technical and organizational communication, the book also supplies practitioner-grounded examples of how workplace genres are produced, contested, and put to work material that complements the more sanitized cases typical of the management literature. For new managers, it is a survival guide; for seasoned leaders in firmware, embedded, and cloud-security domains, it is a useful corrective against over-engineering governance.

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The Neural Mind: How Brains Think

George Lakoff and Srini Narayanan. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. 2025., 418 pages including index.

Index Terms — Brain, ideas, language, linguistics, modeling, mind, neuroscience, thinking

Reviewed by  Ginny Redish, IEEE Goldsmith Award Winner (ginny@redish.net)

Review posted June 24, 2026

Our brains are made up of neurons and neural circuitry. However, as George Lakoff and Srini Narayanan write in The Neural Mind: How Brains Think, “Neurons are just cells. Alone, they are incapable of thought” (p. viii).

Despite those facts, humans think. We have ideas. We have language. So, we might all be interested in the questions that Lakoff and Narayanan ponder: “How can physical entities such as neurons create nonphysical ideas?…How can the brain of one person reproduce the ideas in the brain of another person?” (p. 8).

The Neural Mind is an attempt to answer those questions. It brings together many decades of the authors’ and others’ work in linguistics, neuroscience, cognitive science, and computer modeling.

As the authors point out, our minds and bodies are deeply connected. Our neural circuitry controls what we do physically—from babies sucking their thumbs in utero to the exercise I do in my old age. They posit that “over the course of evolution, neural circuitry has been repurposed (exapted) from controlling motor movements to carrying out reasoning” (p. 108). The Neural Mind is a deep dive into how that repurposed circuitry might work for thoughts and language.

As the authors write (p. 92):

Physical action requires movement. Thinking is a kind of mental movement, understood via the metaphor “thinking as moving”; thinking, like movement, is done sequentially in time. Examples of the common conceptual metaphor of thinking as moving include “I’m stuck,” “You’ve gone off on a tangent,” “I’m not getting anywhere on this problem,” and so on.

Lakoff and Narayanan remind us several times that they are modeling, hypothesizing with great specificity possible neural pathways and actions for which future research might provide more direct evidence. Some of the implications of their model that might most interest the readers are these:

• We think metaphorically, even when we aren’t aware that we are doing it.
• Language is a complex interaction that requires many computations. That means it uses many parts of the brain. What is localized in a specific part of the brain (for example, Broca’s area) are just some of the computations that are part of how we put together what we think and say.
• To understand how humans use language, we must account for both how our neural circuitry allows some combinations of our particular language’s phonemes, morphemes, and words into sentences and how it inhibits other combinations.

The Neural Mind is a very dense, technical book. But working through it, you will be rewarded with a deeper appreciation of your own mind, of the wonderous complexity of human thought and language, and of how we can ask and try to answer such fascinating questions as the ones that Lakoff and Narayanan tackle.

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Self-Care Won’t Save Us: How to Fight Burnout with Solidarity and Social Change

Caroline Moore. Portland, OR: Microcosm Publishing. 2026. 192 pages, including index.

Index Terms — Burnout, hustle, overwork

Reviewed by Sara Buchanan, IEEE Member (sara.buchanan@lcs.com)

Review posted May 27, 2026

How to Manage Your Time Effectively: Be Organized and Productive and Get Things Done

Patrick Forsyth. London, UK. Kogan Page. 2026. 7^th ed. 172 pages, no index.

Index terms — Productivity, time management, work habits

Reviewed by Joanne M. DeVoir, Information Development Manager at Minitab, LLC (jdevoir@minitab.com).

Review posted 13 May 2026

How to Manage Your Time Effectively: Be Organized and Productive and Get Things Done is a concise, practical guide that frames time management as a set of intentional habits. Patrick Forsyth writes primarily for managers and executives who need to balance competing priorities in fast-paced professional environments. The book’s purpose is to help readers improve productivity by adopting structured approaches to planning, prioritization, and daily work practices. It achieves this goal by offering straightforward advice, reinforced with summaries and exercises that encourage reflection and application.

The primary audience is professionals in leadership roles, particularly those responsible for coordinating work across teams and managing competing demands. However, the principles are accessible for anyone who wants to build strong time management habits. As Forsyth states, “Good, effective time management is a core skill…a real, differentiating factor” (p. x) in today’s workplace.

He organized the book into nine chapters that review foundational time management concepts and specific techniques. Effective time management requires ongoing effort and reflection. Forsyth stresses that small, consistent improvements can produce meaningful gains over time.

In the introductory chapter, Forsyth defines time as a critical, finite resource, emphasizing that effective time management is what works best for the individual. Time management is based on “how you plan your time and how you implement the detail of what you do” (p. 3). Productivity is a function of good time management rather than simply working longer hours.

Forsyth encourages an assessment of current work habits as the first step in improving personal time management. He reinforces familiar, but essential, ideas such as thoughtful planning and setting clear objectives. For leaders, “giving yourself more time to think creatively, both alone and within a team, may be one of the most important things effective time management can do for you” (p. 27).

Related to organization and execution, topics include batching similar tasks, using a planner effectively, maintaining a clear workspace, and using checklists. Forsyth also discusses how to deal with time wasters, such as unwanted interruptions, and how “difficult things do not get easier if they are left for a while” (p. 61). However, while the book acknowledges the internet as a potential time waster, this treatment feels understated given its central role in the modern workplace. For many professionals, digital distractions represent one of the most significant challenges to productivity, and a more detailed discussion would strengthen the book.

Forsyth devotes an entire chapter to email, framing it as both a productivity tool and a potential “time black hole” (p. 83). He outlines guidelines for managing email effectively, including sorting, prioritizing, and minimizing unnecessary communication. These recommendations are practical and relevant, but readers may also benefit from discussion of more advanced strategies such as automation or integration with task management systems.

Effective time management depends on setting the right priorities, focusing on high-impact tasks, and eliminating unnecessary work. “Remembering that you can only do one thing at a time, you must be clear what the key factors on your list are and which are in fact most important, and constitute the real priorities” (p. 108).

Forsyth advocates minimizing paper handling. While these principles are sound, the emphasis on physical paperwork does not reflect many contemporary offices. Much of today’s work is computerized. The discussion would benefit from a stronger focus on digital information management, including file organization, collaboration tools, and version control.

This book emphasizes that an important part of time management involves working well with others, including delegation, communication, and meeting management. This content is particularly valuable for managers, as it connects time management with leadership effectiveness.

Accessibility is one of the book’s strengths. The writing is clear, concise, and easy to read with its short chapters. Each chapter includes summaries and often exercises that encourage readers to reflect on their own habits and apply the concepts. Forsyth’s emphasis on habit formation is also a key strength. He consistently reinforces that sustainable productivity comes from consistent behaviors and discipline.

Yet, the book has several limitations. Originally published in 2003 and now in its seventh edition, parts of the content feel a bit dated, including references to paper-based workflows and limited discussion of modern software tools. Similarly, the treatment of the internet as a time waster is brief and does not fully address the complexity of technological distractions in today’s environment. The book does not include any discussion of how time management is affected by team collaboration and chat applications, such as Slack or Microsoft Teams. Forsyth makes only a passing reference to artificial intelligence (AI), which limits the book’s relevance in a work environment where these tools are increasingly part of everyday productivity. AI now supports tasks such as drafting, scheduling, and information retrieval, all which are related to how professional time management.

From a structural perspective, the absence of an index limits the book’s usefulness as a reference, though the table of contents is quite detailed. In addition, the book does not include citations, which is a drawback for readers who prefer evidence-based approaches or want to explore the underlying research in more depth.

How to Manage Your Time Effectively is a practical, approachable guide whose strength lies in its clarity and focus on actionable habits. It provides a concise overview of core time management principles, along with a realistic framework for sustainable improvement through discipline and consistency. While it does not fully address all aspects of the current digital workplace, the book reinforces time management fundamentals in a way that is easy to understand and implement.

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Philosophy of Writing

David Arndt. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic. 2026. 226 pages, including index.

Index Terms — Discovery, invention, philosophy, writing as engineering, writing as thinking

Reviewed by Dr. Donald R. Riccomini, IEEE Member (driccomini@gmail.com)

Review posted 29 Apri 2026

In the Philosophy of Writing, David Arndt examines how writing operates in two modes: as the ability to represent the existing world accurately and as an opportunity to create new models of understanding. Accuracy is enabled by an underlying theory of truth Arndt calls the “veridical dimension of writing”—the belief that “Writing is true if it corresponds to reality” (p. 15). Although demonstrably powerful in science and engineering, the veridical theory offers an incomplete view of the world, because it “presupposes a level of understanding that precedes and eludes epistemological questions” (p. 15). That is, before we can think scientifically or rationally about the world, we must already have an awareness of it as a world, as something beyond ourselves and incompletely understood, but inviting deeper inquiry.

This awareness exists as a condition of our consciousness that contains, precedes, and is not limited to the correspondence theory of truth. We are always already within a larger existential context that lets us perceive and think outside the existing veridical paradigm. For Arndt, writing can function not only as a mirror of the world but also as thinking, a way of exploring and imagining what could be. Writing in this mode leads to “truth as illumination” (p. 21), or discovery fundamental enough to revise the existing paradigm. This process drives the growth of knowledge and underscores the value of writing not only for faithfully recording what is—truth as correspondence—but also for imagining what might be, or in Arndt’s view, for thinking.

To qualify as thinking, writing must be technically correct (grammatical), achieve a purpose (advance a thesis or engender a result), and be moral (truthful and just). Its highest aim, however, is “not just to communicate thoughts but to test and examine them” (p. 3); to make something “visible” (p. 30); and to give “’pleasure’” through style (p. 23) so that others can share the “experience of illumination” (p. 50) and achieve “wisdom, the integration of all the virtues” (p. 63). Whereas we can learn logical processes like coding or scientific methods, discovery and illumination arise within us through an exercise of curiosity and imagination. The wisdom it offers is unteachable because it requires us “to transform our ethos” (p. 70), our sense of what is fitting and right: “True understanding involves not just the correspondence of belief with reality, but the illumination of what has been hidden or dimly seen” (p. 69), and what now modifies the norm.

Arndt formalizes this process by outlining ways of writing as thinking: demonstrative, proving a thesis as formalized in “scientific papers” (p. 96) or “essays” based on “evidence and argument” (p. 97); interpretive, explaining the “meaning of things” (p. 82); perspectival, “the analysis of varying points of view” (p. 12); and narrative, thinking in stories that, whether fact or fiction, reveal unrecognized truths, “meanings that things always already have for us within the human world” (p. 91), but that have remained undisclosed.

A classic example of this process is Einstein asking, “What would the world look like if I rode on a beam of light?” The question is not strictly logical or conventional, but narrational, imaginative, a little story whose elucidation resituated Newtonian physics within the broader paradigm of relativity. Einstein’s question involves all four modes of thought delineated by Arndt: it is imagined as a narrative (riding on a beam of light); establishes a perspective (a contrast to classical physics); increases our understanding of physical reality (requires interpretation from a new point of view); and is communicated using evidence and logic (through scientific papers). Einstein’s image also engenders pleasure (it is childlike and playful but also provocative) and fundamentally expands our wisdom by impelling us to reconsider our place in the universe (what would the world look like if I rode on a beam of light?).

Arndt offers copious practical advice for developing insights and discoveries: writing multiple drafts; getting feedback as you go; outlining; giving readers a “self-contained” argument with all the “tools they need to understand it” (p. 145); and using the classical tools of rhetoric and composition (examples, quotations, sentence, and paragraph structure) to create a holistic argument. His specific, practical guidelines apply to writing within both established, veridical formats, such as stylesheets for engineering publications, and exploratory “think pieces” challenging the existing paradigm. The difference lies less in rhetorical technique than argumentative objective; writing is a craft, but also a “search for wisdom” (p. 184).

Arndt’s argument may seem remote from the everyday, practical focus of engineering and its reliance on field-tested mathematical and scientific tools that produce predictable results. But as far as engineers participate in disclosing their discoveries and inventions to others, including non-engineers, they are already engaged in writing as thinking, and are already in basic harmony with Arndt’s philosophy. Therefore, although they may find Arndt’s philosophical discussion trying and obscure, his practical advice is definitely useful to engineers whether they need to write a specification or propose a novel idea and may lead them to a deeper understanding of engineering as process, invention, and discovery.

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Alive Inside: Unlock Your Leadership Advantage in the Age of AI

Emmanuel Gobillot. New York, NY: Routledge (Taylor & Francis Group). 2026. 292 pages, including index.

Index Terms: Artificial intelligence, ethical leadership, human-centered leadership, professional communication, technology and society

Reviewed by Ravi Teja Reddy Mandala, IEEE Senior Member (rteja7799@gmail.com)

Review published 15 April 2026

In Alive Inside: Unlock Your Leadership Advantage in the Age of AI, Emmanuel Gobillot argues that effective leadership in an artificial intelligence (AI)-saturated workplace depends not on outperforming machines but on reclaiming irreducibly human qualities such as presence, moral judgment, intuition, compassion, and storytelling. The book proposes a leadership framework designed to help managers lead with energy and meaning rather than fear and mechanical efficiency. Written primarily for practitioners working alongside AI and automated systems, the book positions itself as a corrective to leadership models that overvalue optimization, speed, and predictability. Overall, Alive Inside largely succeeds in its purpose by offering a coherent, example-driven framework for human-centered leadership, though it occasionally suffers from repetition and structural redundancy.

The primary audience for this book is emerging and experienced leaders, managers, and decision-makers operating in AI-enabled environments. While the book does not assume deep technical AI expertise, it expects readers to be familiar with organizational dynamics, leadership responsibilities, and the growing influence of automated systems. The book is particularly relevant for practitioners in technology-driven organizations, but educators and students in professional and technical communication may also find value in its emphasis on meaning-making, ethical judgment, and narrative coherence. In most cases, the book successfully addresses the needs of this audience by translating abstract leadership principles into accessible concepts supported by illustrative examples.

Gobillot organized this book into an introductory chapter followed by three major parts with each part structured around a set of leadership principles. Across the book, the author presents seven principles with each principle explored through five short chapters. These chapters typically introduce a concept, develop it through examples, and conclude with a practical reflection chapter intended to help readers apply the ideas. While this structure provides consistency and reinforces key themes, it also contributes to redundancy, as similar ideas are repeated across chapters.

The introductory chapter establishes the book’s central argument: although AI can convincingly mimic human behavior, it cannot think, care, or exercise moral judgment. Drawing on a statement attributed to Sam Altman: “If you can’t tell the difference, how much do you care?,” (p. 2) the chapter highlights the distinction between imitation and genuine presence Gobillot identifies qualities such as values, nuance, courage, ethical judgment, and meaning-making as uniquely human capabilities that AI cannot replace.

One of the chapter’s key contributions is its critique of leadership styles shaped by predictability, rigid deadlines, and machine-like efficiency in an inherently probabilistic world. The chapter effectively frames the book’s overall framework and previews the seven leadership principles that follow. Its strengths lie in its clear organization and attention-grabbing narrative. However, the decision to organize the book metaphorically around “paperclips” feels unnecessary as several ideas are reiterated using different phrasing, reducing concision.

Part I, Obnoxious Paperclips, focuses on the over-automation dangers and introduces three leadership principles: Authenticity over Automation, Moral Courage over Mere Compliance, and Intuition over Instruction.

Under the first principle, Gobillot uses the example of Microsoft’s Clippy to illustrate how automation can unintentionally erode authenticity. The chapters argue that leaders should resist the perceived inevitability of adopting AI uncritically and instead ask whether a given technology genuinely serves human needs. One chapter contrasts AI’s “ABC” (artifacts, blueprint, composition) with human “ABC” (awareness, bodies, cultures) reinforcing the idea that machines cannot replicate human experience. The discussion of leaders mimicking AI perfection explains how overly polished, machine-like leadership narratives can alienate followers. While the principle is well developed and supported by examples, Gobillot could have reduced the repetition by consolidating five chapters into one.

Moral Courage over Mere Compliance, the second principle, is one of the strongest sections. These chapters explore the limits of data-driven decision-making and argue that ethical judgment cannot be outsourced to machines. Gobillot effectively explains how data reflects human biases and priorities, making blind reliance on AI ethically risky. The discussion of ethical issues—consent, transparency, accountability, bias, and oversight—is clear and oriented. The emphasis on leaders taking principled stands, even at personal or organizational cost, reinforces the book’s central claim that leadership is inseparable from moral responsibility.

The third principle, Intuition over Instruction, examines decision-making in conditions of uncertainty. Gobillot argues that intuition, developed through lived experience and emotional memory, becomes critical when data is insufficient. While the topic is highly relevant, this section is less cohesive. Some chapters suffer from unclear organization, abrupt transitions, and dense vocabulary. The discussion of “messy leadership” (pp. 101-106) and improvisation introduces valuable ideas, but their relationship to intuition and ambiguity is not always clearly articulated. Nonetheless, the exploration of introspection, regret, and accountability usefully distinguishes human judgment from algorithmic outputs.

Part II, Demonic Paperclips, addresses the unintended consequences of AI systems optimized for efficiency without ethical or contextual boundaries. It introduces essential leadership principles of Curiosity over Certainty and Compassion over Calculation.

The chapters on curiosity argue that effective leadership requires knowing when to pause and ask the right questions. Gobillot persuasively contends that AI lacks epistemic sensitivity and cannot recognize when something meaningful is missing. The discussion of creativity, confusion, and unlearning is particularly strong, emphasizing that innovation often emerges from disorder rather than structure. The introduction of frameworks, such as PACE (Perceive, Attend, Contain, Execute) (pp. 150-151), provides practical value without overwhelming the reader.

TheCompassion over Calculation principle highlights emotions that AI cannot replicate, such as genuine care, connection, and biological cues of safety. Gobillot carefully distinguishes sympathy, empathy, and compassion, and argues for integrating compassion as a systemic strength rather than treating it as a soft skill. While some chapters repeat earlier arguments, the REAL (Restore, Empathize, Align, Listen) (pp. 188-189) framework for building connection offers a concrete and actionable contribution. This section is especially relevant to professional communication, as it emphasizes responsiveness to individuals rather than abstract systems.

The final part of the book, Heroic Paperclips, introduces Presence over Performance and Stories over Structures, focusing on communication, attention, and meaning-making.

The chapters on presence argue that a leader’s most critical resource is attention. Drawing on neuroscience and organizational examples, Gobillot explains how presence shapes culture, emotional energy, and collective focus. While some repetition occurs, the emphasis on calm presence over dominance is a valuable counterpoint to performance-driven leadership models.

Stories over Structures is the final principle that reinforces the importance of narrative in leadership. Gobillot argues that stories grounded in lived experience provide coherence, clarity, and motivation. The discussion of language shaping thought, metaphors guiding culture, and repetition reducing uncertainty is aligned with professional communication. Although some chapters repeat central claims, the four-part narrative framework effectively links intention, language, and action.

Across the book, terminology and frameworks remain consistent, and the balance between theory and practice is well maintained. However, redundancy is a recurring issue, with several chapters restating similar ideas. While Gobillot claims the book can be read in any order, this assertion is misleading; later chapters frequently reference earlier concepts, making sequential reading more effective.

The book’s primary strength lies in its use of examples and narratives to illustrate abstract leadership concepts. Each chapter builds on previous discussions, reinforcing learning through repetition and reference. However, this repetition also constitutes the book’s main limitation, as several sections could be condensed without sacrificing clarity.

Alive Inside contributes to professional communication by reframing leadership as a communicative practice grounded in ethics, presence, and meaning-making rather than optimization alone. Practitioners in technology-driven organizations, leadership educators, and readers interested in the human implications of AI will find this book to be of value. Despite structural redundancies, the book offers a timely, thoughtful framework for leading with humanity in the automation age.

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The Art of Less: How to Focus on What Really Matters at Work

Mats Alvesson and André Spicer. London, UK: Bloomsbury Business. 2025. 250 pages, including index.

Index terms  — Bureaucracy, organizational behavior, organizational efficiency, productivity, workplace design

Reviewed by Yogiraj Awati, IEEE Senior Member, Independent Researcher (yogirajawati@gmail.com).

Review published 11 March 2026

In The Art of Less: How to Focus on What Really Matters at Work, Mats Alvesson and André Spicer address a pervasive, widely felt problem in contemporary organizations: the buildup of rules, procedures, systems, and well‑meaning initiatives that eventually make it harder to conduct meaningful work. They refer to this accumulation as organizational sludge. This book was written for managers, technical professionals, organizational leaders, and scholars who care about the design and practical functioning of work systems. Engineers and project managers will find the authors’ analysis relevant to the daily operational challenges that arise when processes expand beyond their original purpose. Alvesson and Spicer aim to explain what sludge is, why it spreads, and how individuals and leaders can reduce it. They succeed in offering a clear, well‑supported framework that is grounded in examples across several industries.

The authors divide this book into three parts. The first part defines sludge and illustrates how it develops. Examples from healthcare, policing, education, and private companies show how sludge often begins with reasonable intentions—improving safety, ensuring quality, or standardizing work—but becomes counterproductive as layers accumulate. Alvesson and Spicer show that sludge is not limited to the public sector; many large private firms struggle with slow decision cycles, lengthy approval chains, and complex compliance processes. For professionals in technical environments, the discussions of documentation requirements, digital reporting tools, and organizational routines will feel familiar. These examples demonstrate how even minor procedural frictions, when multiplied across teams and projects, reduce efficiency and dilute attention from core work.

The second part analyzes the deeper causes of sludge. The authors describe several societal and organizational trends that contribute to overload: growing expectations from employees and customers, expanding regulatory requirements, fear of mistakes, the rise of specialized knowledge workers, imitation of fashionable organizational practices, and an institutional desire to appear modern and forward‑thinking. What stands out in this section is the argument that sludge rarely emerges from bad intentions. Instead, it appears when organizations try to respond to too many pressures at once, without a clear hierarchy of priorities. For readers engaged in professional communication, the authors help explain why certain systems become overloaded with information, why coordination mechanisms expand faster than needed, and how ambiguous expectations create more documentation rather than better clarity.

The third part focuses on solutions. Alvesson and Spicer open with a set of survival strategies that individuals naturally use to navigate excessive procedures, such as selective compliance, avoiding unnecessary meetings, and reframing tasks to maintain focus. These strategies describe how workers cope in high‑friction systems but are not presented as a replacement for structural change. The authors then outline organizational methods for reducing sludge. These include creating filters to prevent low‑value initiatives from entering the system, simplifying or removing existing processes, and ensuring that the organization does not push unnecessary burdens on customers or colleagues. The examples provided, such as the reduction of quality indicators in hospital units that resulted in better workflow without harming outcomes, show that subtracting tasks can sometimes be more effective than adding new ones.

A notable strength of the book is its discussion of leadership. Alvesson and Spicer argue that many organizations need leaders who act less like visionaries and more like plumbers. These leaders work to identify blockages, simplify systems, and protect their teams’ time and attention. This perspective aligns closely with engineering and systems‑thinking principles, where improving a process often requires removing constraints or reducing complexity rather than adding new controls. The emphasis on prioritizing core tasks and avoiding unnecessary initiatives offers a practical framework for technical managers who regularly balance operational demands with compliance, safety, and communication requirements.

The Art of Less also highlights the importance of clarity about organizational purpose. Institutions often expand their activities in response to external pressures or internal ambitions, which can blur their mission and make it harder for employees to focus. For IEEE readers, this emphasis on purpose connects directly to designing clear workflows, supporting effective communication, and ensuring that systems enable rather than hinder core technical work.

If there is one area where readers may want more detail, it is in evaluating the long‑term impact of sludge‑reduction efforts. While Alvesson and Spicer offer strong examples of simplification, organizations in highly regulated or safety‑critical industries may require additional guidance on sustaining these improvements. This is a minor limitation and does not detract from the book’s overall value. It points instead to an opportunity for further applied research and experimentation in technical settings.

The Art of Less offers at least two compelling reasons for scholars and practitioners to read it. First, it provides a clear vocabulary for discussing a problem that many employees experience but cannot easily articulate. Naming sludge allows teams to examine their processes more critically. Second, the book offers practical approaches that can be implemented in real organizations, making it useful for leaders who want to streamline workflows and help teams focus on meaningful work. The combination of conceptual clarity and practical guidance makes the book particularly well suited to technical fields where efficiency and communication are essential.

Overall, The Art of Less is a thoughtful, well‑constructed analysis of how organizations lose focus and what can be done to restore it. It provides insights that will resonate with engineers, managers, and scholars who seek to reduce unnecessary burdens and improve the design of work systems. The book is a valuable resource for anyone responsible for shaping how work is organized, communicated, and supported within complex institutions.

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Personal Branding for Introverts

Goldie Chan. New York, NY: Basic Venture. 2025. 256 pages, including index.

Index Terms: Branding, business, introversion, marketing, self-help, social media

Reviewed by Josh Anderson, an Information Architect at Paligo (josh.anderson@paligo.net).

Review published 21 Feb 2026

The idea of establishing a strong “personal brand” can feel like something limited to those who are outgoing, extroverted, and talkative. Personal Branding for Introverts argues that even those of us who don’t thrive in people-heavy, socially dense environments have the capacity to make a name for ourselves and be recognized as leaders in our professions.

This is especially true for those who are willing to take advantage of social media and commit to consistently creating useful, visible online content. Goldie Chan writes about how she posted 800 consecutive daily videos on LinkedIn, which then led to further professional opportunities. This exhortation to create, create, and create some more is what I found most memorable. After reading this book, I felt inspired to update my blog and post on LinkedIn, which I had been ignoring for months.

Apart from the obvious but helpful reminder that volume and consistency are your best shot at getting noticed by your peers, I found much of the book’s advice familiar, albeit presented in a straightforward and easy-to-read manner. Those who are early in their careers or who have not yet spent much time considering how to establish a presence in their field beyond their immediate daily workplace may learn more from this book than I did. I’m not sure you even need to be an introvert to glean wisdom from this book since much of its advice struck me as applicable to anyone. For example, I see no reason why extroverts cannot also leverage technology and establish content calendars for themselves. Chan shares tips for the introvert to do things like schedule breaks when we go to public events or feel confident to turn down requests so that we can avoid burnout. As a self-described introvert who is already years into a professional career, much of this insight I had already figured out for myself.

Chan insists that introverts do not need to change themselves into extroverts to find professional success, which I agree with, but as a result I questioned a couple of her examples of successful introverts named in the book. Marilyn Monroe is described as someone who completely reinvented herself—changing her name, altering her appearance, and even training herself to speak in a breathy voice—to find stardom. Mike Tyson is quoted as regarding himself as a normally “shy and introverted guy” who then adopts an “extreme super extrovert” persona when he’s in the boxing ring (p. 46). I found it tough to reconcile Chan’s advice to both be genuine but also “transform strategically” (p. 52). I know there is a difference between introversion and social anxiety, but it is not uncommon to see an overlap between the two, so the suggestion that we simply be more like Monroe or Tyson struck me as overambitious and unlikely to be put into practice by any normal introvert reading the book.

Personal Branding for Introverts is most valuable when it emphasizes sustainable habits—consistent creation, clear goals, and intentional boundaries—rather than dramatic reinvention. Those who are just beginning to think about their own professional visibility may find motivation in these pages, while more established introverted professionals will more likely interpret this advice as confirmation.

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The Price of Nice: Why Comfort Keeps Us Stuck—and 4 Actions for Real Change

Amira Barger. Oakland, CA. Berrett-Koehler Publishers. 2025. 208 pages, including index.

Index terms: Business communication, change agents, organizational change

Reviewed by Joanne M. DeVoir

Review published 21 Feb 2026

The Price of Nice: Why Comfort Keeps Us Stuck and 4 Actions for Real Change is an action-oriented examination of how niceness is a social, organizational construct that often preserves comfort over meaningful change. Amira Barger explores the historical, social, and psychological underpinnings of niceness and argues that habits often labeled as polite, supportive, or conflict-avoidant frequently function to maintain norms. The book’s purpose is to help readers recognize these patterns and replace them with deliberate behaviors that promote accountability, clarity, and progress. The book achieves this purpose well by combining personal narrative, cultural critique, and structured actions that readers can apply in their own personal and professional lives.

Professional communicators who want to enable positive change are the primary audience for The Price of Nice. This book will also interest organizational leaders, managers, and any professionals who want to learn how to be more courageous, authentic, and impactful. If you sometimes think, “If I speak up, will they think I’m not nice?” (p. xi), I recommend this book. Academics will appreciate this book for its clear framing of niceness as a socially reinforced behavior that can limit both individual and social progress. The author also provides a useful lens for examining power, silence, and accountability in organizational communication, making this book relevant for both teaching and scholarship in professional communication, business, and related fields.

Barger defines in the introduction what she means by “nice” and why it is problematic. Niceness is not kindness or empathy, but it is a pattern of behavior that is reinforced from childhood, which prioritizes comfort over truth. She contends that niceness often masquerades as professionalism while discouraging honesty, reinforcing power imbalances, and protecting the status quo. This framing establishes the book’s central idea that niceness can be personally and organizationally costly.

Barger organizes the book into four sections that align with actions for change: Think, Feel, Do, and Revisit. This framework, rooted in social psychology and widely used in professional communications, reinforces the book’s central claim that change requires cognitive awareness, emotional engagement, behavioral action, and sustained reflection.

The Think section describes mental models and how society and institutions reward niceness. In Barger’s view, the opposite of nice is nerve. Nerve is resilience, standing up for your beliefs, maintaining boundaries, and speaking up for yourself and others even when it is uncomfortable. She challenges readers to examine how words and our assumptions affect how we think about the world and dives into how niceness has been used as a control tool and a way to maintain norms throughout history. Barger also discusses social conditioning and explains the psychological and sociological underpinnings of niceness. “At its core, the drive to be nice stems from a fundamental human need for belonging…To feel accepted, people often suppress their true feelings and desires, aligning with group norms” (p. 63).

In the Feel section, Barger discusses how emotional intelligence supports the capacity to act with greater nerve. “By looking at things differently, we can rethink our reactions, grow, and turn tough moments into opportunities for real change” (p. 111). She identifies four characteristics of niceness that impede progress—lack of awareness, accountability, agency, and adaptability—and reinforces these concepts with clear, easy-to-scan tables that contrast “nice” and “nerve” behaviors. Barger encourages the use of journaling to surface assumptions and patterns and emphasizes the importance of becoming comfortable with discomfort as a necessary condition for change.

Barger discusses in the Do section the concrete behaviors to move from nice to nerve, stressing that “change requires us to communicate with intention, clarity, and courage” (p. 127). She provides examples of change agents throughout history, explores how to communicate with nerve in both your professional and personal life, and calls out the seemingly small, everyday “nice” behaviors that keep us stuck and reviews the power dynamics that are often in play in the workplace. Barber also explains how leaders can use balance, strength, flexibility, and endurance to ensure that growth opportunities are available for everyone in an organization.

Part 4, Revisit, contains one chapter that explores how to sustain change. Barger encourages readers to revisit assumptions, reflect on outcomes, and recalibrate actions as contexts evolve. “Revisiting is a commitment to show up again and again—not perfectly, but purposefully” (p. 158).

Throughout the book, Barger includes “promising practices” that offer practical guidance for translating the book’s concepts into action. She also provides a comprehensive daily reflection checklist that integrates the book’s core ideas and encourages application as well as a list of references for further reading.

The author relies heavily on narrative, reflection, and behavioral examples rather than empirical studies. For some readers, especially those in highly regulated or data-driven environments, this may leave open questions about measurement and scalability. However, this choice also makes the book accessible and adaptable across industries and roles.

Overall, The Price of Nice is a compelling, practical guide for anyone who believes that politeness can sometimes undermine progress. Barger offers language, insight, and actionable guidance for replacing comfort-driven habits with intentional communication, accountability, and action. The book’s clear structure, relatable examples, and focus on everyday behavior make it a useful resource for professionals who want to lead, communicate, and collaborate more honestly, bravely, and effectively.

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