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Didn’t Like It “I was really looking forward to this book, since I've always believed that understanding emotions is vitally for business. Adam Smith wrote about economics, but his first book was a theory of moral sentiments. There's no doubt emotions are central, not peripheral, to understanding human behavior,...” see full review » see other reviews » |
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“I was really looking forward to this book, since I've always believed that understanding emotions is vitally for business. Adam Smith wrote about economics, but his first book was a theory of moral sentiments. There's no doubt emotions are central, not peripheral, to understanding human behavior, as Hill points out. We are all a combination of the rational Dr. Spock, but also the emotional Homer Simpson. Economists have said for decades, if not longer, that we should watch what people do, not what they say, to determine what they really value. This casts doubts on the effectiveness of consumer surveys, focus groups, etc. Economists since the Marginalist Revolution in 1871 have posited that value is subjective, meaning emotional, not rational, highly dependent upon context and feelings. People feel before they think was learned long ago, yet Hill points all these out like they were some new revelation.
Ron B wrote this review Sunday, February 15 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
Hill does point out some useful information, as you'd expect from a $35 business book. One is that emotions are twice as important as facts in the buying decision. That just because emotions can't be measured, and thus managed, doesn't mean they aren't important. Which leads to his facial coding system. Based on research by Charles Darwin, and made popular by Malcolm Gladwell's book, Blink, we humans all have the same innate facial expressions, even those of us born blind. The face is far more revealing of our true feelings than body language. The face reveals seven emotions: Surprise; fear; anger; sadness; disgust; contempt; and happiness. Known as "micro-expressions" this research is being conducted by the FBI, CIA, Pentagon, DHS to determine behavior. Hill thinks companies are ignoring this insight at their peril, as it can reveal many things about customer, employee, and leader behavior. The rest of the book goes on to support this premise. Ideas like loyalty is based on a feeling, whereas CRM data cannot tell us what feelings that data conveys. That brands are based on emotions. That we'll take more risks if we're happy, angry or sad, as any gambler in a casino can attest. He cites Whirlpool's Duet line of washer/dryer, priced at $2,000. When consumers were shown this in focus groups, they said "I'm not sure about this" but their facial expressions were saying "this is pretty cool." The faces won, as the premium washer/dryer market has grown by 9%.
I don't doubt any of this. It's even quite useful. But the book is more of a commercial for the author's company, Sensory Logic, and its facial scoring system. This grates on the reader very quick. Too bad he doesn't have a web cam hooked up to folks reading this book, he'd see contempt and anger very soon. There are many other disturbing claims in this book, which are not at all central to his thesis, thus the book is probably 200 pages too long. He cites winning a creativity award for an ad campaign as proof of its effectiveness, but everyone knows that means nothing. He's way too found of Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence, even though there's very little scholarly research showing anything to this more than a new fad. IQ still dominates, as even he admits later on in the book. He claims companies don't tap into emotions, but then offers many instances where they do, contradicting himself. He has a section talking about the problems between ad agencies and their clients, where he says the solution is easy: "focus on the target market's belief system and the emotions related to that belief system." Wow, why didn't someone else think of that. Probably because it's incredibly simplistic, and not the real problem. The real problem is a misalignment of incentives, caused by the faulty compensation system of how agencies are paid (mostly based on inputs, efforts, costs, and activities, rather than output, results, and value).
Later on he cites that the middle class in the USA is shrinking. To the extent it is, it's because many people have moved into the higher income classes, but you wouldn't know that from Hill. Then he cites research that indicates that countries that have more income inequality have lower life expectancy rates. This is nonsense on stilts. Wet streets cause rain, too. Cause and effect is misunderstood, though I will agree with Hill that envy is divisive. And policies such as redistributive taxation meant to lower this inequality are all based on envy. Nor does he mention that countries with the highest life expectancies are those with the most economic and political freedom, and they also tend to have lower inequality of income.
His chapters on leadership and employee management are incredibly weak, full of cliches (work/life balance, diversity, etc), and didn't really contribute much to the book. He pleas for more women in leadership positions, as if diversity in genitals was more important than diversity in thought. He bemoans how few women are in leadership positions, but never explores why this might be so. By the way, most men aren't in leadership positions as well. He does admit that personality testing can be misleading, but his remedy (of course) is facial coding to determine real personality. And I have to ask: This is better than Briggs-Myer? What's the evidence. Very little is given, but there is wealth of evidence of how personality is not predictive of performance. He also discusses the annual performance appraisal, but there's an entire body of thought that this practice should be eliminated.
Despite how many blurbs are on and in this book, and that the Foreword is written by Sam Simon, co-creator of The Simpsons, and writer, director, and producer for Cheers, Taxi, and The Drew Carey Show, I found the book fall short of the expectations conveyed. Maybe that's emotional on my part, but as they say, value is subjective. I'd pass on this one.”
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