Author Name: Andy Gibson

The building block of modern business is not the dollar, the yen, the pound, or the euro: it is the human being.

People are the ones who buy your products, deliver your services, manage your projects, and act as your accountants. They are your partners, colleagues, friends, and collaborators. Most businesses spend more money on people than they would on anything else; people are the foundation of your business.

Or to be more specific, people's minds are the foundation of your business. In a knowledge-based economy, the performance of any business depends on the performance of the minds of its workforce. Our businesses have become more analytical than mechanical; we utilize more brainpower and increasingly rely on human creativity to gain a competitive advantage. The human mind is our greatest asset and the primary factor in production.

Yet it's surprising that most companies seem to know little about the mind. We study very little about the mind in schools and universities, and we rarely talk about it at work. We rely on personal experiences and a little group psychology to guide us. This is bad for us and our companies alike.

The good news is that advances in neuroscience and psychology mean—perhaps for the first time in history—that we are on the verge of reaching some level of consensus about the fundamentals of how our minds work and what they need to perform optimally. Although this area of ​​scientific research is relatively new, controversial, and contentious, it is possible to draw some conclusions about how we work, and even how we can work better.

This book is about the way people work.