A Whole New Mind

I thought that I would post some random things that I've been up to in short increments in order to increase the number of smaller posts we have as opposed to my more traditional 'once a month gigantic' post. So, the book that Rachel and I just finished reading is 'A Whole New Mind' written by Daniel Pink.

It's an interesting book, written on the premise that, although there still are careers in left-brained disciplines, with the advent of outsourcing and the overall evolution of the global marketplace, a new type of worker will find themselves successful. No longer is just engineering a good product good enough. Instead, products need to be continuously improving, customizable, and relative in order for them to maintain success. It does a good job of opening the right mind of those of us who are left brained (If you're organizationally based, numbers oriented, scientific and/or logical, that's you.....and me). At any rate, here is a link if you'd like to read an excerpt or a professional synopsis as opposed to mine.

http://www.danpink.com/aboutwnm.php
(The photo was also pulled from the same link...)

Overall, I liked it. It is extreme in a few instances and predictions, but the point of the book (I believe) is to pry open the mind of us left brained folk; therefore some extreme language is warranted. I've found it surprisingly applicable in my brief career of real world engineering experience. When I was at ATK, I found myself complaining about the higher ups and certain members of my surrounding cast because they held so fast to the archaic business model of slow and steady wins the race combined with a false belief that the status quo is fine because the numbers say so. What a gross waste of time in meetings, meaningless redundancy and illegitimate time frames existed there in my opinion.

PS.... It's everywhere in the engineering world.
PPS.... I wonder what the statistic is on how much time is wasted in corporate America annually? What does this equates to in dollars?

At any rate, this is surprisingly an easy read, and I did it in a week with my incredibly slow reading ability. He is a very good author in the fact that he writes in a very conversational tone as opposed to a formal tone so it makes for an enjoyable read.

Enjoy!