Book Review: Subject - Business Management

Title: A Whole New Mind - Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age
Author: Daniel H. Pink
Publisher Riverhead Books
ISBN: 1-57322-308-5

What started out as a small ripple of interest with the release of Daniel Goleman's epic book, Emotional Intelligence, has turned into a tidal wave of support for his work. The release of Daniel H. Pink's most recent book, A Whole New Mind - Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age, is a case in point. If you aren't yet convinced there is a major shift taking place in how workers like to be managed and that managers need to adopt a more "touchy-feely" management style to manage effectively in the 21st Century, then you need to read this book.

Pink professes that we have progressed from the "Information Age" of the 20th Century into what he calls the "Conceptual Age" of the 21st. He suggests that success in the Information Age was based primarily on the knowledge worker whose defining characteristic was proficiency (knowing what you know and knowing it very well, i.e., left brain directed activities). He believes the main characters in the Conceptual Age will be creators and empathizers whose distinctive ability will be mastery of "R-Directed Thinking" (people who are more in-tune with their "right" side - more emotionally connected).

We may live in a world of hi-tech but Pink believes that the organizations who survive and prosper in the Conceptual Age will be those companies that can tap into the "emotional side" of their employees and customers. "R-Directed Thinking is beginning to achieve social and economic parity - and, in many cases, primary," writes the author. "In the twenty-first Century, it has become the first among equals, the key to professional achievement and personal satisfaction. L-Directed Thinking remains indispensable. However, it is just no longer sufficient." (I couldn't agree more. Powerful stuff indeed.)

Pink believes that the successful manager of the 21st Century will need to compliment his or her L-Directed reasoning by mastering six essential R-Directed aptitudes. Pink suggests they are: Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play and Meaning. He believes that these six high-concepts, high-touch senses is what the new era, the Conceptual Age, demands. Fear not. The high-concept, high-touch abilities that Pink believes will be needed are fundamentally human attributes that can be learned.

Enter stage right - women. I believe women will finally get their due and take their rightful place at the board room table. Why, you ask? Because women are far more in tune with their "right" side. (Women come by it naturally.) Charlotte Whitten, a feminist and the first female to serve as mayor of Canada's capital city, would have been amused by all this. She was once quoted as saying, "Whatever women do, they must do it twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult to do." You can already see examples of this shift taking place. There are more women then ever before running big companies. Women now outnumber men in small business start-ups.

I give Daniel Pink's book, A Whole New Mind - Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age, two thumbs up. It's well worth the investment.