A WHOLE NEW MIND: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age, by Daniel H. Pink

Wired writes, “Why right-brainers will rule the future.” Wired is wrong. What Daniel Pink actually argues is that success in the 21st century while require a “whole” mind, in which both left and right brain are engaged.

Starting a book with a first chapter entitled “Right Brain Rising” almost made me put it down. But Pink is an effective writer, who quickly makes it clear that he is no New Age enthusiast for right-brain thinking. Instead, he spends Part One of A Whole New Mind laying out an argument for why knowledge workers who depend exclusively on left-brain expertise in sequential logical thinking face a future of shrinking opportunities. Why? Pink sums it up in three key words, “Abundance,” “Asia,” and “Automation.” Abundance means that consumers are no longer satisfied with merely functional products that perform as advertised. From equally functional alternatives they are able to choose those whose design adds aesthetic or other significance to their lives. Asia and Automation mean that repetitive work of any kind, including the kind that gets done with spreadsheets, can be done more cheaply, either by cheaper Asian labor or tireless computers and robots. Success in the brave new world defined by these three A’s will require additional, right-brain skills. And what might those be? In Part Two, Pink suggests six: Design, Storytelling, Symphony, Empathy, Play, and Meaning. Workers with these skills will create or recognize the edge that good design adds, tell great stories to motivate people to want what they sell, work in harmony with people of diverse talents and tempraments, have a gut feeling for where others are coming from, turn work into play and play into something that adds meaning to the whole of life.

Individually the ideas are not new. I first saw the argument from Abundance in research by the Hakuhodo Institute of Life and Living that taught me to ask if a product or add will snap into focus for its target. I learned about the implications of Asia and Automation by reading Robert Reich’s The Work of Nations and got my first exposure to right-brain theory from Betty Edward’s Drawing on the Right Hand Side of the Brain. What Pink has done, however, is to pull these ideas together and forge a persuasive argument that avoids the trap of sour critique and points in positive, perhaps even actionable, directions. Highly recommended.

Seth Godin (2005) All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World

What are the most important skills a marketer needs? According to Seth Godin, it’s being able to tell a good story and then make it happen.

It used to be that if I knew someone, a student or friend, who needed a quick introduction to the basic concepts and language of marketing, I’d point them to Dallas Murphy (1997) The Fast Forward MBA in Marketing. Probably still would if what they need is to be able to sound like they’ve been to business school. But if I wanted them to get beyond the jargon to the real guts of marketing in today’s world, my recommendation would now be Seth Godin’s All Marketers Are Liars. Godin’s book is an almost too-easy read, so I’d have to warn them to slow down, read it carefully and think about what he’s saying. Here is just a taste,

It’s impossible to transmit every single fact, instantly, to every person you want to reach. So marketers tell stories. Sometimes we tell stories with packaging or with advertising or with words. Sometimes we tell a story with a smile, or with a sign in front of a building. Often those stories are well intentioned and even an attempt at communicating all the facts. But when a human being eventually confronts the idea, he will interpret it in his own way—he will lie to himself, creating a judgment without access to all the facts. The best marketing techniques, then, are the simple stories that are the most likely to break through, the most likely to be understood and the most likely to spread. And because the rules keep changing, the tactics must change as well.

That puts the basic situation pretty well. What Godin adds in the rest of the book is a lot of useful advice on how to make a story believable, ideally by behaving as if it is true. Today’s consumers want to believe but are very wary of anything that smacks of hard sell or hypocrisy. If your walk doesn’t match your talk, you’re cooked.

First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently.

As anthropologist, adman and activist, John is often involved in discussions of leadership. That is why, when he was scanning his library a few days ago, a book that said, “Read me” was Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman (1999) First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently.

Now if this were just another couple of managment gurus pontificating, he would probably give it a pass. But what Buckingham and Coffman discuss is a research project conducted by the Gallup Organization, in which 105,000 employees of 2,500 companies, covering a wide span of industries, answered questions designed to find out what it is about managers who are able to achieve the leadership goals described above, building strong teams of happy, talented people who not only work well together but turn out to be far more productive as well.

The study began with lots of questions. What the Gallup researchers wanted to discover was which of these questions were most closely correlated with effective, productive leadership. As they analyzed their mountains of data, they focused in on twelve questions. After further research, they pared the list to six.

1. Do I know what is expected of me at work?
2. Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right?
3. At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?
4. In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for doing good work?
5. Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person?
6. Is there someone at work who encourages my development?

Turn those questions around and they become a recipe for how to be a good leader.

1. Set clear goals.
2. Make sure that people have what they need to achieve them.
3. Create opportunities for people to use their talents, ideally every day.
4. Don’t be stingy with strokes. As the old proverb has it, you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.
5. Take the time to show people you care about them.
6. Keep asking yourself, not just “What can they do for us now?” but “What could they do with a little more training and encouragement?”

Think about it. If you had to score your leadership on each of these six measures, on a five number scale where 1 means “Lousy” and 5 means “Great” how well would you score?