Engage the Fox
A Business Fable about Thinking Critically and Motivating Your Team
by Jen Lawrence, Larry Chester
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Pub Date Oct 07 2014 | Archive Date Oct 17 2014
Greenleaf Book Group | Greenleaf Book Group Press
Description
A more-than-memorable allegory that will teach you to embrace change, develop superior critical-thinking skills, and solve any problem that comes your way by using teamwork.
Engage the Fox is a charismatic business fable set at a newspaper run by publisher Hedgehog, and his executive team of woodland creatures. When met with a difficult decision regarding where the newspaper industry is headed, as well as pressure to give discounts to their top advertisers, Hedgehog engages consultant Thaddeus P. Fox to teach the team at The Toad Hollow Gazette how to make important decisions. By thinking critically and utilizing the different personality types present in the office, the team learns to see the big picture and tap the energy and imagination of everyone. The animals portrayed here, by their very nature, represent different aspects of the human personality as illustrated in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Sensing sales manager Squirrel is adept at gathering information; feeling Animal relations director Dog is keen on seeking agreement amongst the pack; thinking finance director Owl needs to know the entirety of a situation before settling on a decision; and intuitive consultant Fox can think up an endless amount of ideas for solving problems.
The authors base their book on Lawrence Chester’s popular course in critical thinking that helps participants identify the cause of problems large and small and generate better, more implementable solutions. That process incorporates four key critical thinking skills that businesspeople can develop to help them evaluate their options as they learn how to manage complex, messy issues in a systematic way that ensures stakeholder buy-in and increases their success rate.
Lawrence and Chester have created an entertaining imaginary world where the memorable management team that has lived and breathed their industry for decades “engages the fox” as they undergo a strategic shift. They recognize the need to involve someone with an outside perspective who is adept at navigating change. Enter the hero, for, as is often quoted in management and political theory, “The fox knows many things; the hedgehog one big thing.” Literally and figuratively, it seems.
Advance Praise
Engage the Fox is a delightful read and thought-provoking look at critical thinking. If you're interested in improving your decision-making ability, I recommend it highly.
---Michael Hlinka
Business Commentator, CBC Radio
Through the vehicle of a witty narrative, Engage The Fox makes a complex subject understandable. Through the cast of characters they assemble the complex topic of business problem solving suddenly comes alive. And they manage to weave in complex topics of neuroscience, human behaviour, decision making and personality preferences. This all wrapped around a business challenge where the reader is curious to know the outcome. The book is packed with insight and relevance and will be incredibly helpful to leaders in any organisation.
---Andrew O'Keeffe, author of Hardwired Humans
Engage the Fox puts the fun back into critical thinking. The creative use of a fable illuminates the variety of personalities and approaches that we face daily on decisions we make. The reader gets seduced into the plot and begins to think more deeply and widely about the process of thinking. This thoughtfully structured book offers an excellent foundation for understanding the stages of rational thought, and provides the requisite tools and frameworks.
Invest in yourself, read this engaging story and enjoy increased confidence in your decision making.
---Lynn Nicolai
Desjardins Group
Engage the Fox offers a very simple, enjoyable read that will help the reader understand, learn and apply critical thinking skills to their work and life. They will be able to make and successfully implement better and more effective strategic and operational decisions.
As a student of critical thinking I developed enhanced business and political acumen allowing me to train my own students to negotiate more effectively and to better manage conflict.
---Hind Kabawat, Conflict Management Expert
Senior Program Officer for Syria, United States Institute for Peace
A superb book with an engaging storyline! Engage the Fox succeeds in teaching the reader to effectively understand and apply a critical thinking process to achieve better results.
---Lea-Ann Lovatsis-Toor
Organizational Development Manager
''You are going to love this clever story-telling technique for teaching critical thinking skills. In an age where software tools provide us with all the answers at our fingertips, Engage the Fox teaches us about the thought complexity that leads to asking the right question.'' ---Malcolm Gabriel, Sr. Manager, Human Resources, Post Foods, Battle Creek, MI
Available Editions
| EDITION | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9781626341234 |
| PRICE | $23.95 (USD) |
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Featured Reviews
John G, Reviewer
When the four biggest advertisers in the Toad Hollow Gazette band together to demand a big cut to the newspaper’s advertising rates, the newspaper’s publisher, Hedgehog, is left with an awkward dilemma of the type faced by many business leaders in the face of digital disruption and the other forces which are making it harder to run a profitable business. The outcome of Hedgehog’s dilemma is described in the allegory by Jen Lawrence and Larry Chester, Engage the Fox: A Business Fable About Thinking Critically and Motivating Your Team.
According to ancient Greek wisdom, the Hedgehog knows one big thing, while the Fox knows many things. This makes the Hedgehog good at running a stable business in his field of expertise, but when he encounters uncertain times he is often blinded into thinking that only one or two obvious courses of action are available. This is where he needs to consult the Fox, who can generate numerous options which the Hedgehog would have overlooked.
Hedgehog and his team, with the guidance of Fox, eventually come up with a non-obvious solution to their dilemma as the result of working through the authors’ critical thinking process, which involves gathering information before making a decision, generating ideas using a fresh perspective, evaluating options using a logic-driven process, and agreeing at each stage of the process.
The allegory provides an engaging and compelling vehicle for presenting the critical thinking framework advocated by the authors. Rather than simply describing the framework, the book shows how it can be used to achieve a creative result which would have been overlooked by normal decision-making processes.
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