The Whole Brain Business Book

Average customer rating:

Spurred my burning interest in understanding the world's most powerful portable thinking machine located between my two ears!
Too Simple
Herrmann's Brain Dominance Instrument: A New Way of Thinking
A "must read" for any business person!
Whole brain thinking at its best.

The Whole Brain Business Book
Ned Herrmann
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Company Profiles | Biography & History | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Management | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Motivational | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Training | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Industrial Psychology | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Business Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Health Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Investing | Business & Investing | Bargain Books | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0070284628

Spurred my burning interest in understanding the world's most powerful portable thinking machine located between my two ears!.......2006-10-08

This book is divided into five dynamic sections; each section is packed with methodologies, examples and exercises for utilizing Herrmann's concept. Herrmann provides some hard evidence to support his Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI) tool. HBDI is an assessment tool that is uses to determine what drives the way one thinks and makes decisions. HBDI utilizes four quadrants (styles), Organizer, Personalizer or Visualizer, each quadrant represented by a letter A-D. Herrmann believes that we make decisions based on some combination of these four thinking styles and that cultivating these styles and utilizing the resulting energy is the key to productivity and creativity in business.

Herrmann presents some very interesting information about entrepreneurals, and how they rank based on his HBDI tool. He expands this discussion by pointing out the difference between a entrepreneural, one who works for him/herself and a intrapreneural, one who works for a company. Herrmann discusses risk taking and the importance in learning from failure. He pursues this further by describing the type of management that nurtures creativity and sets the stage for innovative thinking. Herrmann discusses characteristics of people who are on the outer realm, (he calls them Mavericks) and how and why they are so successful (he uses Tom Peters and David Letterman as examples). He touches on process reengineering, and how it is generally initiated based on cost savings versus change in work processes. In addition, he provides some interesting research data regarding CEO's and how they ranked a list of sixteen primary work elements. In the final chapter, Herrmann presents some helpful steps for becoming a Whole Brained Businessperson.

Mr. Herrmann's conversational style and "whole brain" teaching approach make the book highly readable. The book reviews the history of business in this country in terms of the kinds of thinking valued during each era. More importantly, it predicts the shift that must take place in business thinking in order to compete effectively in the growing global economy in decades to come. Effective team functioning and creative, strategic thinking are enormously important to business today. The Whole Brain Business Book tells how to maximize both.

The four quadrant model developed by Ned Herrmann is a powerful tool. The Whole Brain Business Book describes how to use it. Because the model was developed while Mr. Herrmann was working at GE, for use by business, and because it is physiologically based, it is more acceptable to many business people than many similar organizing constructs available today.

With this book Ned Herrmann provides individuals and companies with a tool to enhance understanding of themselves and others, take the emotional charge out of differences, and increase individual and team effectiveness. Unlike many business books whose ideas are good in the abstract, but difficult to make concrete, Mr. Herrmann provides simple graphics which make the ideas easy to remember and use. Examples include the Communication Walk-Around Exercise and the Whole Brain Delegation Walk Around Model.

Anyone working at any level in business should read The Whole Brain Business Book. Incidentally, it will improve your personal relationships as well. You will never look at yourself or others in quite the same way!

Our trade deficit increases by $2 billion a day. Pharmaceutical companies and their lobbyists have such influence in Washington that Medicare, by current law, is not allowed to negotiate lower drug prices. We import oil on an ever-increasing scale, putting ourselves into dept with the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, and other Middle Eastern nations. With their windfall profits, they continue to buy American assets. China’s booming economy and abundance of cheap labor are threatening our economic survival. We have mortgaged our fortunes, our principles, and our way of life.
In this comprehensive look at the real, human toll of America’s unsound trade policy, Senator Byron Dorgan exposes the myth of “free trade.” Indeed, free trade is not free; it is something that is slowly but surely draining away American prosperity. Sure, Chinese labor can drive down prices at Wal-Mart; at the same time, however, those saved wages—dollars that would have gone to buy these cheaper goods—are gone. Too soon, it will all come crashing down.
Major U.S. corporations continue to ship jobs overseas by the millions and, because of their influence in Washington, avoid paying a king’s ransom in taxes. Many billions of dollars that these companies fleece from the government and the American people go overwhelmingly to investments in expanding production capabilities overseas. In short, our government is in the grip of corporate and foreign interests, and the American worker has born the brunt of this culture of corruption. How can we stem the tide of outsourcing? Why has the White House done nothing? Will the middle class survive?
From describing corporate profiteering to calling to action a lethargic, inactive government, Byron Dorgan exposes the truth about the destructive relationship between corporations and Congress and proposes strategies for what can really be done to preserve America’s preeminence in the world.

“Written with poignant stories, persuasive logic and superb factual support, this book is a wake up call for every American who cares about U.S. policy on trade and jobs. One doesn’t have to agree with all that Senator Dorgan writes in this book to find it remarkably compelling.” --Senator Tom Daschle

“If you’re tired of seeing good American jobs shipped overseas in search of cheap labor, you’re going to appreciate this book. Senator Dorgan and I have joined forces in the Senate to fight the trade policies of a weakening America. His book offers real solutions that can strengthen our country.” --Senator Lindsay Graham

:If you think that no one in Washington gives a damn about about corporate greed and the decimation of America’s middle class, you haven’t met Senator Byron Dorgan. In TAKE THIS JOB AND SHIP IT,” this modern day Prairie Populist pops the greedhead right in their snouts, using both facts and a stinging sense of humor. Byron’s book is both a rallying cry and a blueprint for action. If you believe America is headed in the wrong direction and you want to do something about it read this book, then help us elect more Byron Dorgans.” --Jim Hightower

“Senator Byron Dorgan is one of the few elected official of either party who ahs consistently and unwaveringly defended the interests of American working men and women and their families. His commitment to our country and the truth is inspiring. His book is a trenchant and timely examination of America’s so-called free trade policies and the exorbitant cost to our middle class and our nation.” --Lou Dobbs

“I watched Senator Dorgan take on the powerful interests in the U.S. Senate, and this book shows that he is still at it. Our country’s trade policies are a scandal, and Dorgan has the guts to expose it and name names. He also tells us how to put our country back on track. This is an important book that might finally call our country to action to protect good jobs and our way of life.” –Senator Fritz Hollings

In Retrain Your Business Brain, restructuring expert and business consultant Donalee Markus, Ph.D., presents a challening new approach that will result in reenergized business decisions and practices.

The authors claim that leaders and employees who work their way through the book become better at solving business problems and spotting opportunities; they even promise to turn detail-oriented people into big-picture thinkers. They walk you through solutions, coaching you to color-code and label problem elements, create categories and apply other problem-solving tools. By the final chapter--in which you decipher an ancient Babylonian numbering system without the use of a decoder ring--you'll never approach a problem the same way again, whether it's unraveling a market trend or trying to develop a new product.

Corporations have been a world of Newtonian organization, thriving on certainty and predictability. They are hierarchical, with power emanating from the top, and control exercised at every level. Heavily bureaucratic and rule-bound, they are necessarily inflexible and are managed as though the part organizes the whole.

Rewiring the Corporate Brain argues that we are moving away from a Newtonian to a complexity-based system and offers a new conceptual structure for a fundamental transformation in corporate thinking and leadership, together with suggestions for practical, structural implementation. Zohar, a noted author and speaker, writes with skill and breadth about the implications of new science, and remarkably brings her insights home in ways that are practical and applicable to the science and practice of organizational behavior and management. Rewring the Corporate Brain relates quantum and chaos thinking directly to organizational problems and challenges facing corporate leaders. It offers the human brain and its various thinking structures as the primary model for exercising the full creative capacities of the corporate brain.

Rewiring the Corporate Brain offers a genuinely new conceptual structure for a fundamental transformation in corporate thinking and leadership, along with suggestions for practical, structural implementation. Beautifully written, passionately and clearly argued, Rewiring the Corporate Brain makes new paradigm scientific thinking accessible, practical and inspiring to business readers.

To some, the whole notion of "The New Science", let alone it's relation to the business world may seem like a bunch of new age babble. We (in the US especially) are used to thinking in terms of action-reaction, events, actions, and people, as individual and isolated. We make distinctions and often-strict divisions between work and the rest of our lives. We thrive on predictability, being able to determine outcomes, and control environments, which can inhibit the ability to quickly adapt to and accept change.

"Rewiring the Corporate Brain" recognizes this, and uses quantum theory to illustrate that we might be missing something. The author demonstrates the shortcomings of the common, rigid Newtonian thinking and organization that permeates so many companies and minds, yet also recognizes that a pure quantum approach is not a cure all. The author presents a hybrid model that recognizes the importance of managing and living to obtain certain objectives, while allowing and encouraging the creativity, exploration, and openness to continually grow and adapt to the torrid pace of change. Not only does the application of quantum thinking make sense for the development and management of organizations, but also when trying to bring the separate parts of ones' life together into a more holistic, satisfying existence.

The book refers to a few related "new science" books, which may be of interest to the reader. It also draws on some early Fast Company articles from the good ol' days before Fast Company became the useless waste of paper it is today.

This book is not technical or difficult to read. You'll be able to polish it off within a few hours. If you liked this book, and would like to read more on the "New Physics", or would simply like to explore it ("New Physics") w/o the business context, pick up a copy of:

I- Using the New Science to Rewire Corporate Thinking. In this part, she basically:

* describes the uses and limitations of traditional paradigms in business activities and other life contexts.

* focuses on three kinds of thinking (serial thinking, associative thinking, and quantum thinking) that the human brain can do, and discusses their advantages and disadvantages.

* contrasts eight key ideas from Newtonian science/old paradigm, and their effects on business thinking, with eight key ideas from quantum science/new paradigm and their application to new thinking about leadership, and thus constructs a management-leadership chart that puts the features of these two contrasting paradigms as follows:

- N.division of labor or function fragmentation, Q.multifunctional and holistic (integrated effort)

- N.power emanates from top or center, Q.power emanates from many interacting centers

- N.employees are passive units of production, Q.employees are cocreative partners

- N. single viewpoint; one best way, Q.many view points; many ways of getting things done

- N.inflexible structures; heavy on bureaucratic control, Q.responsive and flexible structures; hands-off supervision

II- Structure and Leadership of the Rewired Corporation. In this part, she basically:

* discusses Western/Newtonian and Eastern/Networked models of the self/person and organization, and then attempts to reach a Quantum model of self and organization drawn from the thinking of the new science. And she shows the features of these three models as follows:

- W.self (the personal) wholly excluded and isolated; interactions grounded in universal principles, E.self wholly embedded and contextual; no universal principles, Q.self embedded and contextual with universal dimension

- W.stability achieved through excluding the self and the emotions, and organizing only the predictable and controllable aspects of relationships, E.stability achieved through reinforced familiarity and discipline of the self, Q.stability balanced with instability

- W.dictatorial leadership, E.consensual leadership, Q.leader relies on trust and feel for situation

- W.mechanical, E.organic, Q.both naturally unfolding (organic) and that which can be made from it (mechanical)

* argues that servant leadership is the essence of quantum thinking and quantum leadership, and then presents a new model of servant leadership.

Finally, she writes, "much of the book contrasts the Newtonian and new sciene, or quantum, approaches to leadership. But this is not to convey a message of either-or. All the fundamental thinking of the new science is about both-and. The new science incorporates the old. Quantum physics does not invalidate Newtonian physics. It just shows that Newton's laws are restricted to one band of reality. But they are still necessary to corporate leadership as the new paradigm, quantum thinking. The core competence I hope to convey in this book is about 'managing at the edge' - that is, becoming aware that there are different paradigms and cultivating the judgement to know when to use one or another, or when to remain at the edge between the two."