New Book: Primal Management

Through this blog, I have had the pleasure to meet very interesting people. One of them is Paul Herr who has just published a new book with the title "Primal Management".  In there, Paul writes about the importance of overcoming weaknesses which is a bit at odds with the strengths-management's focus on strengths. But as I have always said, this blog is also a place for critical thoughts about strengths-based management. With the permission of Paul Herr, I would like to copy here a brief excerpt of our email conversation with some of his concerns:

"Strengths are obviosly vital to building a confident, high self-esteem workplace.  However, there is more to the story.

 

The culture (people around us) define which skills and abilities are desireable and worth acquiring. According to my theory, our brains automatically track the tribe's optimal skill portfolio, and skills that are missing from our portfolios create painful psychological wounds that can only be healed by acquiring the missing skill. This, I suggest is nature's version of tough love--master the survival skills of the tribe, or else!

 

So strengths are vitally important, but healing psychic wounds is important too.  For example, I managed to perform admirably in math, even though I don't have an aptitude for it.  Mastering this difficult skill healed one of my psychic wounds."

Read more on Paul Herr's views in his comment in this blog.