Management Rewired: Why Feedback Doesn't Work and Other Surprising Lessons from the Latest Brain Science

by Charles S. Jacobs
Portfolio

The incredible discoveries of brain science challenge our common sense, but they also teach us a much better way to manage.

Scientists are now able to watch the brain at work, and what they’re learning is mind-boggling. Not only have they located the areas of the brain that are responsible for our emotions, our reason, and even our moral character, they’ve also discovered what makes us empathetic, able to learn, and take pleasure in our work.

Applying brain science to management fundamentally changes the way we think about business. Charles Jacobs, author of Management Rewired finds brain scans, cognitive experiments, and behavioral studies have dramatic and counterintuitive implications for all aspects of management, from strategy to sales to leadership.

In fact, Jacobs shows that most of what we take for granted about management is probably wrong.

• Our emotions lead to better business decisions than our logic. Luckily, we rarely decide rationally, despite thinking that we do.

• Feedback—both positive and negative—doesn’t improve performance; it tends to make it worse.

• Pay increases aren’t motivational; engaging work, however, is, and it produces the natural equivalent of a cocaine high.

Jacobs explains how the latest discoveries are transforming our understanding of the way people think and behave. For each area of management he shows why our current practices are so often self-defeating and demonstrates new, more effective approaches that leverage how the mind works naturally. The improvement isn’t only incremental—it’s a quantum leap.