“Go and wake up your luck.” – Persian proverb

We’ve talked about diversity of thought primarily in the context of how different people have different thinking preferences. But as compared to the more traditional dimensions of diversity, diversity of thought is unique in a number of ways, not the least of which is the fact that each of us has diversity of thought within ourselves.

The pressure’s building. It’s a consumer-driven world, and staying relevant means keeping pace with an ever-intensifying rate of change.

With so much data available now, new competitors are popping up all over, ready to fill the void if you can’t keep up. The race is on to get there first, to get that new product out there or to innovate your process so you can meet demand and stake your claim on the market.

There are some obvious advantages to being first to market with a new product or innovation. But in the rush to be first on the scene, with the analysis done and the case made, it can be pretty tempting to ignore potential user issues or alternative ideas, or to downplay latent quality issues or opportunities for improvements.

Twenty years ago, Ned Herrmann’s groundbreaking book opened the eyes of business leaders and professionals around the world to the power of Whole Brain^® Thinking. With the release of The Whole Brain Business Book, Second Edition, Ann Herrmann-Nehdi, CEO of Herrmann International, is carrying on her father’s legacy and bringing practical new insights and advice specific to the challenges of the 21^st century business environment.

Filled with real-world examples and essential charts, action steps, exercises, and tools, The Whole Brain Business Book shows you how to rethink your business, prepare for the future, realign your goals, and reinvigorate your team—by putting your whole brain to work.

The select quotes below give you a taste of what’s inside:

Imagine that you're recovering from triple bypass surgery. You're not feeling great. A doctor leans over your bed to take your pulse and says to you, “We need to talk about some changes you're going to have to make in your lifestyle to prevent this from happening again.”

Would you change?

Well, if you’re like the majority of patients, probably not. Research by Dr. Edward Miller, dean of the medical school and CEO of the hospital at Johns Hopkins University, found that nine out of 10 bypass patients don’t make the necessary lifestyle changes to reduce the chances of a next event.

If 90% of people don’t change when faced with a life-threatening situation, imagine how many people don’t change for smaller, less important things.

And if it’s so hard to get one person to change, imagine how hard it can be to get a group to change. Now think about how hard it is to change an entire organization, made up of people with different agendas, different mindsets, different ideas.

If you’ve ever been responsible for leading change in an organization, you don’t need to imagine it—you know how hard it is.

The keynote I delivered at World Financial Group last week had more than 200 leaders in attendance, all seated by their HBDI® thinking preferences. It’s always so striking to see how that validates people’s learning about themselves and others, both as they discover their HBDI® Profiles and begin applying what they’re learning.

In The Whole Brain Business Book, Ned Herrmann shares a story of the “aha” moment that came from just such a seating exercise. Presenting to a leadership group of a large company, he had assigned people to tables based on preferences (unbeknownst to the participants), and it turned out that the company’s chairman/CEO and president/COO had opposing profiles.