A Whole New Mind Book Review
August 13, 2007
A Whole New Mind
Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age
Our egos took a beating in the Industrial Revolution when we learned machines could perform some tasks better than people. But hey, we still had our brains, right? Surely, no machine could ever match the power and intricacy of the human mind. But then came computers, and soon the brain’s superiority was being challenged.
Deep Blue whupped Garry Kasparov, Time magazine nominated the PC as 1983’s “Person” of the Year, and microprocessors appeared that could perform four billion calculations a second without ever getting tired or cranky.
Is it any wonder that knowledge workers feel hopelessly outclassed? Leave the computers to the problem solving, says Pink, a contributing editor for Wired magazine. Logic and analytical skills only get you so far, which is how come Western countries don’t lose much by outsourcing routine technical work to countries like India. In A Whole New Mind, Pink argues that what really matters is, well, meaning. And beauty. And empathy. And joyfulness. Those and other innately human qualities produce the kinds of innovations that resist commoditization and resonate with customers, many of whom, after all, are human themselves.
Leading by Feel - Question Authority
August 10, 2007
by: Ronald Heifetz
Emotional intelligence is necessary for leadership but not sufficient. Many people have some degree of emotional intelligence and can indeed empathize with and rouse followers; a few of them can even generate great charismatic authority. But I would argue that if they are using emotional intelligence solely to gain formal or informal authority, that’s not leadership at all. They are using their emotional intelligence to grasp what people want, only to pander to those desires in order to gain authority and influence. Easy answers sell.
Leadership couples emotional intelligence with the courage to raise the tough questions, challenge people’s assumptions about strategy and operations – and risk losing their goodwill. It demands a commitment to serving others; skill at diagnostic, strategic, and tactical reasoning; the guts to get beneath the surface of tough realities; and the heart to take heat and grief.
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Leading by Feel - Balance the Load
August 10, 2007
by: Linda Stone
Emotional intelligence is powerful – which is precisely why it can be dangerous. For example, empathy is an extraordinary relationshipbuilding tool, but it must be used skillfully or it can do serious damage to the person doing the empathizing. In my case, overdoing empathy took a physical toll. In May 2000, Steve Ballmer charged me with rebuilding Microsoft’s industry relationships, a position that I sometimes referred to as chief listening officer. The job was part ombudsperson, part new-initiatives developer, part pattern recognizer, and part rapidresponse person. In the first few months of the job – when criticism of the company was at an all-time high–it became clear that this position was a lightning rod. I threw myself into listening and repairing wherever I could.
Within a few months, I was exhausted from the effort. I gained a significant amount of weight, which, tests finally revealed, was probably caused by a hormone imbalance partially brought on by stress and lack of sleep. In absorbing everyone’s complaints, perhaps to the extreme, I had compromised my health. This was a wake-up call; I needed to reframe the job. I focused on connecting the people who needed to work together to resolve problems rather than taking on each repair myself. I persuaded key people inside the company to listen and work directly with important people outside the company, even in cases where the internal folks were skeptical at first about the need for this direct connection. In a sense, I tempered my empathy and ratcheted up relationship building. Ultimately, with a wiser and more balanced use of empathy, I became more effective and less stressed in my role.
Linda Stone is the former vice president of corporate and industry initiatives at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington.
Analyzing the Seller’s Operations:Leases
August 9, 2007
A thorough examination of the seller’s lease should be high on your list of priorities. The lease may contain some news (including news the seller isn’t even aware of) that may be so bad as to prevent the business from being sold on any terms.
Let’s assume Houston Sash & Door leases its plant and office space from a local real estate company. Houston tells you what the monthly rent is and it sounds favorable. The plant is located close to a major highway; consequently you’d like to stay in this location after you buy the business. You ask Houston how long the lease has to run, and he tells you it expires in three years. With three years left on the lease, you could buy the business and take your chances on what’s going to happen when the lease expires. Either you’ll be able to negotiate a new lease on favorable terms or you’ll have to move. But what if the lease has only eight months (or eight weeks) to go? Whatever you do, don’t take the seller’s word that the landlord will agree to a new lease or to extend the existing lease. Before you commit to buy, make sure the landlord will sign a new lease. If you can, get the landlord to sign a new lease with you, which should take effect only if and when you close the sale.
Leading by Feel - Go for the Gemba
August 9, 2007
by: Hirotaka Takeuchi
When books on emotional intelligence were first translated into Japanese, people said, “We already know that. We’re actually trying to get beyond that.”We’ve been so focused on wah that we’ve built up a supersensitive structure of social niceties, where everyone seeks consensus. In the Japanese hierarchy, everyone knows his or her place so no one is ever humiliated. This social supersensitivity – itself a form of emotional intelligence–can lead people to shy away from conflict. But conflict is often the only way to get to the gemba – the front line, where the action really is, where the truth lies.
Thus, effective management often depends not on coolly and expertly resolving conflict, or simply avoiding it, but on embracing it at the gemba. Japan’s most effective leaders do both.
The best example is Nissan’s Carlos Ghosn. He not only had the social skills to listen to people and win them over to his ideas, but he also dared to lift the lid on the corporate hierarchy and encourage people at all levels of the organization to offer suggestions to operational, organizational, and even interpersonal problems – even if that created conflict. People were no longer suppressed, so solutions to the company’s problems bubbled up.
Hirotaka Takeuchi is the dean of Hitotsubashi University’s Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy in Tokyo. Self-awareness, self-control, empathy, humility, and other such emotional intelligence traits are particularly important in Asia. They are part of our Confucian emphasis on wah, or social harmony.
Leading by Feel - Keep It Honest
August 8, 2007
by: Carol Bartz
A friend needed to take a six-month assignment in a different part of the country. She had an ancient, ill, balding but beloved dog that she could not take with her. Her choices boiled down to boarding the poor animal, at enormous expense, or putting it out of its obvious misery.
Friends said,“Board the dog,”though behind my friend’s back, they ridiculed that option. She asked me what I thought, and I told her, kindly but clearly, that I thought she should have the dog put to sleep rather than spend her money keeping it in an environment where it would be miserable and perhaps die anyway. My friend was furious with me for saying this. She boarded the dog and went away on her assignment.
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Leading by Feel - Know the Score
August 8, 2007
by: Michael Tilson Thomas
A conductor’s authority rests on two things: the orchestra’s confidence in the conductor’s insightful knowledge of the whole score; and the orchestra’s faith in the conductor’s good heart, which seeks to inspire everyone to make music that is excellent, generous, and sincere.
Old-school conductors liked to hold the lead in their hands at all times. I do not. Sometimes I lead. Other times I’ll say, “Violas, I’m giving you the lead. Listen to one another, and find your way with this phrase.” I’m not trying to drill people, military style, to play music exactly together. I’m trying to encourage them to play as one, which is a different thing. I’m guiding the performance, but I’m aware that they’re executing it. It’s their sinews, their heartstrings. I’m there to help them do it in a way that is convincing and natural for them but also a part of the larger design.
My approach is to be in tune with the people with whom I’m working. If I’m conducting an ensemble for the first time, I will relate what it is I want them to do to the great things they’ve already done. If I’m conducting my own orchestra, I can see in the musicians’ bodies and faces how they’re feeling that day, and it becomes very clear who may need encouragement and who may need cautioning.
The objectivity and perspective I have as the only person who is just listening is a powerful thing. I try to use this perspective to help the ensemble reach its goals.
Michael Tilson Thomas is the music director of the San Francisco Symphony.
Leading by Feel - Find Your Voice
August 8, 2007
by: William George
Authentic leadership begins with self-awareness, or knowing yourself deeply. Self-awareness is not a trait you are born with but a capacity you develop throughout your lifetime. It’s your understanding of your strengths and weaknesses, your purpose in life, your values and motivations, and how and why you respond to situations in a particular way. It requires a great deal of introspection and the ability to internalize feedback from others.
No one is born a leader; we have to consciously develop into the leader we want to become. It takes many years of hard work and the ability to learn from extreme difficulties and disappointments. But in their scramble to get ahead, many would-be leaders attempt to skip this crucial developmental stage. Some of these people do get to the top of companies through sheer determination and aggressiveness. However, when they finally reach the leader’s chair, they can be very destructive because they haven’t focused on the hard work of personal development.
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Leading by Feel - Engage Your Demons
August 7, 2007
by: David Gergen
American history suggests not only that emotional intelligence is an indispensable ingredient of political leadership but also that it can be enhanced through sustained effort. George Washington had to work hard to control his fiery
temper before he became a role model for the republic, and Abraham Lincoln had to overcome deep melancholia to display the brave and warm countenance that made him a magnet for others. Franklin Delano Roosevelt provides an
even more graphic example: In his early adult years, FDR seemed carefree and condescending. Then, at 39, he was stricken with polio. By most accounts, he transformed himself over the next seven years of struggle into a leader of empathy, patience, and keen self-awareness.
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Leading by Feel - Watch Your Culture
August 7, 2007
by: Janja Lalich
Cult leaders don’t do anything mysterious; they just know how to package themselves and their promises well and how to target responsive audiences. They’re very good at influencing, or, to be more precise, manipulating, followers. To do this, they rely on a keen ability to perceive others’ vulnerabilities and longings – to know what people want.
One way a cult leader manipulates is by exploiting followers’ eagerness to be part of something bigger than themselves. That desire often prompts followers to assign to a leader attributes that he doesn’t actually possess. A type of group contagion can take hold–a “truebelieverism” mentality. Then followers can fall into what I call uncritical obedience, never questioning the leader’s claims. When followers give a leader this power, there are obvious dangers.
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