Primal Management

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Primal Management

Review in the Journal of Personnel Psychology:  

"The book is clearly written, strongly and convincingly argued, insightful, provocative, stimulating, and interesting to read."

Paul's Blog

Are decisions really 80% emotional?
As some of you know, I'm a graduate of the University of Chicago, a very rational place where, according to legend, "Fun goes to die." I expect to be tarred and feathered at the next U of C management conference for this provocative and contrarian post.
 
Advertisers, like Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi and Saatchi, claim that the buying decision is 80% emotional and 20% rational. According to Roberts, "Reason leads to conclusions. Emotion leads to action." What about other decisions, like the decision on the part of our employees to work hard? Is this also 80% emotional? What is going on here? If emotions are so important in decision making, why was the word never uttered in any of my econ classes?
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Featured Review by the Winning Workplaces Organization PDF Print E-mail

(This group organizes the Wall Street Journal's "Winning Workplaces" awards for small business)  

Paul Herr has spent 30 years exploring the links between biology, psychology, physics and the workplace, and has proven that there is scientific evidence that employees have natural emotional needs that are often overlooked at work. He defines these hardwired needs, demonstrates how they operate and presents tools that can help create organizational superorganisms that achieve extraordinary results in his new book Primal Management.

Herr's thesis is that organizations that work in harmony with human nature can achieve far more than those that resist it. He defines five "social appetites" that motivate human behavior and work in congruence with five basic biologic appetites and argues that if organizations can tap into these basic needs, they will be far more successful.

The book goes beyond theory to offer tools to measure an employee's "emotional paycheck" and gauge an organization's overall "horsepower metric." He also demonstrates how the tools he offers can be used as a diagnostic to understand which employee needs should be addressed to improve the horsepower metric.

With this book Herr provides a new way of looking at employee motivation and creates a compelling argument that if organizations can effectively work with the basic needs of people, defined in his social appetites, they can achieve far more than they ever imagined.