Reinventing management thinking: Using science to liberate the human spirit - Paperback

by Jeremy Old (Author)

"This is a terrific book. It is a great business studies manual, and a superb contribution to the application of psychology in business and leadership."

"This is a tour de force, there's no doubt ..." IOSH Magazine

Thirty years of progress in neuroscience and psychology are changing the ways we need to think about leadership and management. The new findings explain why so many of the established ways of managing things are inadequate for the task of motivating and harnessing high performance. Reinventing management thinking gives you principles, concepts, tools and techniques that will transform your organizational destiny and incidentally make life a lot easier as well.

With the help of modern science, the author explains that the key factor holding enterprises back is the common experience of high-stress and resultant low individual performance. Jeremy Old then goes on to show you vividly that because of stress, group outcomes everywhere are woefully below the full human potential latent in the workforce. He explains the antidote in clear logical terms. And that is to learn how to work with human nature. Whether you are designing the organizational structure, work activity or employee conditions, when you align your design with human nature you release a surge of energy that transforms commitment, focus, productivity, planning and decision-making outcomes.

This is an immensely practical book drawing on a wealth of easy to digest research findings as well as the author's twenty-five years' experience as both a business improvement specialist and psychotherapist. The author's wealth of experience enables him to cram his book full of down-to-earth advice and observations. And these points will help you modify your enterprise or work group, so that it works with human nature not against it. His own day-to-day experience in improving performance across dozens of enterprises large and small has convinced him that, if you work with human nature, you quickly access the full potential of all the employees and as a result the whole organization leaps forward.

Reinventing management thinking shows you:

• How to get your team's inherent survival instincts working for you rather than against you.
• How to work with twelve innate biological needs to liberate employee creativity, loyalty, commitment and focus
• How creating a positive work atmosphere boosts energy levels by 60%.
• How to escape the trap of stress-driven quick-fix decision-making.
• How to prevent existing beliefs obstructing organizational learning.
• The simple steps to build a financial business case for employee well-being.
• Ten golden rules from neuroscience that underpin new management thinking.
• The twelve qualities to cultivate successful leadership.
• Eight methods to help you reduce dangerous bias in planning and decision-making.
• Why the dreaming brain is a key ingredient in organizational success.
• How to tap into the intelligence, problem-solving ability and experience of every brain in the organization
• How to use the '30 stressors model' to design stress out of your organization.

IOSH Magazine "The book's main theme is that stress makes our managers and organizations dysfunctional ... Old argues that when people are blocked from exercising their innate abilities - by daft targets imposed without consultation, conflicting priorities, and rules that take away individual discretion - the result is heartache, poor performance and yet more stress.

The book's large format and the use of tables and diagrams to break up the text makes it highly readable. Many in-depth case studies bring home the realities of corporate blunders.

The book gives a unique perspective on where so many managers go wrong ... a most stimulating read. It's also exceptionally good value ... This is a tour de force, there's no

Author Biography

Jeremy Old's twenty-five year experience as a management coach, dealing with stressed managers and stressed organisations, inspired him to write 'Reinventing management thinking'. His training as a psychotherapist has helped him see that the root cause of low engagement, poor productivity and leaden organisational performance, are due to the unhealthy brain states people habitually sink into when at work. In contrast to this almost universal negative, he sees people express the natural qualities of enthusiasm, commitment and desire to improve things when participating in his collaborative planning workshops. From first hand every-day experience he has witnessed for himself the new scientific understanding that the human species is a highly socialised, collaborative problem-solving mammal.

People love collaborating and they thrive off it, as do the organisations they work for.

Jeremy became determined to share this illuminating experience with a wider audience. Work doesn't have to be tedious and stultifying; organisations don't have to be bureaucratic nightmares. What is needed to vastly improve employee engagement and productivity is for managers to understand the reasons why they unwittingly demotivate their staff and undermine their own best efforts to manage effectively.

Jeremy developed the concept of 'organisational stress' to include his '30 stressors model' so as to explain the cause of dysfunctional and sub-optimum organisational behaviour. Jeremy now uses this model in his 'organisational stress audits' to help design stress out of an organisation. Remove the stress and you galvanize a sea-change in employee engagement.

Originally based on systems thinking and psychology research carried out at Stanford Research Institute (SRI), Jeremy has used his planning methods in over fifty assignments and always finds them to be highly motivational and a rapid way to develop a turnaround plan or dynamic growth strategy.

Jeremy's psychotherapy training made him realise that this spontaneous eruption of enthusiasm and creative problem-solving arose from a well-structured collaborative atmosphere. Essentially, team-planning meets a number of key emotional needs and this makes working together so exhilarating. He feels that if leaders everywhere can learn how to tap into this innate collaborative quality they will transform organisational life and we will all be the happier for it.