The Problem

If we liken the capitalist system to a vehicle, the "check engine soon"  light has been flashing urgently for quite some time.   The failure of our economic engine is systemic and ongoing.  The latest financial crisis is just the worst of a string of failures ranging from scandals like Enron, to incompetent auditors, excessive executive compensation, corrupt Wall Street analysts, complacent boards, questionable accounting, disengaged employees and weak leadership.

This creaking dinosaur of a system is ill suited for a turbulent global economy where companies need to be nimble, innovative and have everybody's head in the game.  The old model has created disengaged workforces where only 29% of employees care about their jobs (Gallup).  Gallup estimates that we could save literally trillions in lost productivity if only we could more effectively harness the energy of our employees.

The Primal-Management Solution

What are we to do? Paul Herr, in his book, Primal Management, provides a number of solutions:

1. For the investment community Herr offers a tool--magic glasses, if you will--to peer into the heart of an organization to determine if it's motivational engine is broken or humming.  Would you invest in a company with a malfunctioning engine?  
2. For the management community Herr provides a human-performance technology--a better mousetrap for understanding and measuring motivation in the workplace and a methodology to get the motivational horsepower to go up.  There are five motivational hot-buttons that managers can press to motivate employees.  Herr describes each of these hot buttons in unprecedented detail.
3. For employees Herr offers the optimally-rewarding workplace where people arrive with smiles on their faces instead of frowns.  Human beings, it turns out, are built to be productive, industrious, skilled and innovative.  Companies that satisfy these primal needs can succeed beyond their wildest dreams.
4. For customers Herr offers superior products and services provided by people with a good attitude.

Herr calls his better-way "natural management."  When treated correctly, employees are self motivated, self managing and self organizing--just like our ancient ancestors who hunted in small, intensely-bonded groups during the last ice age.  We can't physically go back to our lost ice-age habitat, but we can incorporate elements of our lost lifestyle to make the modern workplace more productive, rewarding and human-friendly. 

Human beings, you see, are designed to be self managing, self organizing and self motivated without the need for a thick rule book or an army of overseers when they are embedded within committed and tightly-bonded workgroups.  Companies that recreate this sort of natural, low-bureaucracy, low-oversight ecosystem, unleash human potential instead of stifling it.  By following Herr's advice, companies can take a rag-tag collection of squabbling individuals and bond them together into a powerful superorganism--a group of human beings who think and act as one.

As you can see, the basic idea behind Herr's plan is remarkably simple--align the workplace with human nature and thereby hit the high-productivity sweet-spot inherent within our psychological makeup. Herr's game plan is poised to "go viral"--to spread organically into every corner of the globe because it provides a hopeful, win-win future where everybody prospers. Please take a look at the sample chapters to decide if you want to join the natural-management revolution too.

The Science

Herr's "natural management" solution to the crisis has a nice ring to it, but how on earth does one know what human nature looks like, much less how to align with it? Herr looks to the brain sciences, and his own social-appetite theory of motivation for the answer to this crucial question.

The core of human nature, Herr demonstrates, consists of five biologic appetites for things like food, oxygen and rest, and five social appetites that reward human beings with pleasure when we innovate, master skills, achieve group goals, work as part of a tightly bonded team, and protect ourselves from physical and psychological harm.  These ten systems, taken as a group, constitute the motivational engine that lies at the core of human nature.  When this system becomes unplugged due to injury or disease, human beings either become entirely inert or malfunction in various ways.  Herr points to the specific brain areas involved in regulating motivation and the specific neurotransmitters, neuropeptides and hormones involved in the process.

Herr proves, using the latest groundbreaking research in neuroeconomics and neurobiology, that pleasure (intrinsic reward) lies at the core of economic decision making, the core of employee engagement, the core of customer satisfaction, and the core of organizational excellence. The latest science indicates that intrinsic emotional rewards, emanating from the basal striatum, drive essentially everything we do. Primal Management shows managers how to tap into nature's pleasure-pain engine to create optimally-productive and rewarding workplaces.

Primal Management strikes a balance between theory and practice.  On the practice side, it provides a survey for measuring motivational horsepower and tips for getting the horsepower to go up.  We think you will find the human-performance technology described in Primal Management to be the simplest, most logical, most scientifically advanced approach to motivation on the market.  Take a look and try out some of Herr's natural-management tips and tools in your workplace.