Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy (Hardcover)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: widespread empathy, hidden payoff, how you see the world, Golden Rule, United States, Lou Gerstner (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. A veteran business strategist and adjunct faculty member at Stanford Univ., Patnaik explores the role of empathy in successful companies, producing a thoughtful, practical meditation on the power of walking in someone else's shoes. Though he utilizes examples from his work with Harley Davidson, Cisco and Nike, his skills in the classroom get a good showcase too, with lessons on history and biology, as well as revealing exercises from his class (called Needfinding) with "aha" revelations like: "For thousands of years, people made things for other people they knew"; it was the Industrial Revolution that divided producer from consumer. Essentially, Patnaik proposes that a successful company must cross that divide and learn about their customers' needs by interacting with, understanding and, in some cases, hiring them. Incorporating some familiar ideas-the power of "framing," the golden rule-Patnaik manages to keep his text fresh and brisk, making this a cagey but compassionate guide for execs and business students.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

Starred Review. A veteran business strategist and adjunct faculty member at Stanford Univ., Patnaik explores the role of empathy in successful companies, producing a thoughtful, practical meditation on the power of walking in someone else's shoes. Though he utilizes examples from his work with Harley Davidson, Cisco and Nike, his skills in the classroom get a good showcase too, with lessons on history and biology, as well as revealing exercises from his class (called Needfinding) with "aha" revelations like: "For thousands of years, people made things for other people they knew"; it was the Industrial Revolution that divided producer from consumer. Essentially, Patnaik proposes that a successful company must cross that divide and learn about their customers' needs by interacting with, understanding and, in some cases, hiring them. Incorporating some familiar ideas-the power of "framing," the golden rule-Patnaik manages to keep his text fresh and brisk, making this a cagey but compassionate guide for execs and business students. Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --From Publishers Weekly

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: FT Press; 1 edition (January 19, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 013714234X
• ISBN-13: 978-0137142347
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (67 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #42,302 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #17 in

  Books > Business & Investing > Marketing & Sales > Marketing > Research

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In Search of Empathy, June 15, 2009

By	John W. Pearson "John Pearson Associates" (San Clemente, CA, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

(What's this?)

This book is a sleeper that, I predict, will become a classic. The author writes, "More than one business leader has complained to me that their company is attracting smart and ambitious young people who lack any sort of gut sense for the work they do."

I'm on the hunt for the 10 best books for each of the 20 buckets (critical competencies) that help all of us with leadership and management issues. Dev Patnaik's book is a gem and immediately landed a spot on my Top-10 books for the Customer Bucket. (See my book, Mastering The Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Non-profit.) I'll tempt you with three stories on how "widespread empathy" (what's going on in other people's lives) will help you stay close to the customer.

STORY #1: Eisner's Tiger Encounter. When Joe Rohde, a Disney Imagineer, wanted to convince Michael Eisner to open a safari-like experience for guests, he needed a way to get past the mantra "Disney doesn't do zoos." After making the pitch to CEO Eisner (still unimpressed), Rohde opened the doors of the executive suite to let in a 400-pound Bengal tiger. After experiencing this immense beast (bigger than his desk) up close, Eisner responded simply, "I see your point." Disney's Animal Kingdom was born.

STORY #2: Eat More Jell-O. Author Dev Patnaik, founder and principal of Jump Associates, a growth strategy firm, was invited to meet with the senior leadership of Jell-O about their declining sales. "For several hours, we sat through presentation after presentation of depressing quantitative research that described the situation. At some point, I had to raise my hand. I looked around the room and asked if anyone there had eaten any Jell-O in the past six months. No one raised a hand. Interesting, I said. Maybe that was part of the problem."

STORY #3: Mercedes-Benz. Twenty senior executives from Mercedes-Benz flew from Germany to San Francisco to meet with Patnaik to learn how their cars could appeal to younger Americans. To help them develop empathy for this customer niche, Patnaik assigned each team of two executives to a 20-something person. After 30 minutes of interviews, each team of two was given $50 and a city map with an assignment: purchase a gift for the person they just met. Some teams blew it (San Francisco mementos for people who lived in San Francisco), but other teams were able to experience life in their customers' shoes and bought very meaningful gifts. Patnaik's point: "a great product has to function like a great gift."

THE BIG IDEA. "...as companies grow larger and more prosperous," says Patnaik, "they start to look less and less like their customers. Airline executives stop flying economy class. The little tomato sauce company starts to attract Harvard MBAs who eat out all the time and never cook their own spaghetti. The lives of the people that the company employs become less and less like the lives of ordinary folks. Continued for too long, this gap can grow into an overwhelming gulf between the people inside of a company and everyone else."

After 50 pages of non-stop defining business stories, I knew this book was a keeper. After 100 pages, I couldn't stop reading the stories to my wife--a sign of a great book. It reminded me of the Tom Peters and Robert Waterman 1982 classic, "In Search of Excellence." You could call this one, "In Search of Empathy."

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Perspective on Wired to Care, October 23, 2009

By	Daniel Wolf (Traverse City, MI) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book presents a design-inspired exploration of empathy as a driver of business growth, sustenance and ethical behavior. It provides a practical body of work on the importance of empathy as it relates to customer connections and market engagement.

While the author suggests that empathy has been detached from modern capitalism and the contemporary organization by default, one sees the presence of empathy in several exemplary, large companies. Further, Patnaik gives reference to the common religious, cultural and philosophical roots of empathy that are met in the forces of neurophysiology to suggest that empathy is part of our make-up, our meaning and our human purpose.

A couple of slot-references in Wired to Care are especially useful and valuable to those who lead and manage growth strategy:

1.Getting Beyond Original Visions... organizations are evolving entities that must transcend what energies and inventions may have given them their rise. What founders gave, others must advance.
2.Getting a Deeper Sense of Meaning... companies are culture-sensing entities, and as such, people who lead and manage must have their "meaning-making" gears engaged to sustain themselves.

This book is a nice complement to Prepared and Resolved in terms of both orientation and strategic approach. Patnaik references thought leadership that includes Dale Carnegie, Mintzberg, Gandhi and the world's faith traditions as guideposts for creating widespread empathy. As strategists and researchers have noted for a long time, getting close to customers is a powerful thing. Patnaik and his team at Jump take this to a higher level of engagement, which is a more powerful thing. Drucker and others would agree as part of what we see as the social ecology mindset of business.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wired For Success, September 25, 2009

By	Ouija (Las Vegas, NV USA) - See all my reviews

This should be required reading for CEOs and business leaders. The author does a fine job of exploring a smart concept that one would think should be easy to implement, yet some CEOs just won't "get it," even though it is a common sense business strategy. The book is nicely organized and I especially enjoyed reading anecdotes and examples, which put it all into perspective. Wired isn't just for any single industry, but rather it is for every industry. Every business is engaged in customer service. If leaders would embrace it, they would surely see results.