My content on the site has been a little light the last couple of weeks – it will pick up soon. I’ve been much more active reading, speaking, and working the previous month, affecting the blog. Though the content is down now, my mind is racing with content for the next few weeks, so be sure to stick with me.
Herd
IMHO, Herd may have had a shot of being the most essential business book to read this year – except that I think Mark succumbs to some of his theories and conclusions. Mark is described on the jacket as
One of the world’s foremost communications practitioners and a leading thinker about brands, marketing and consumer behavior.
In Mark’s book, I find evidence that Mark takes a cynical view of organized religion and right-wing politics. We’re supposed to avoid these topics in business, but Mark’s topic of changing mass behavior could not speak to two topics that are more patterned after the herd. Rather than touching on each in-depth, Mark threw a couple of cynical comments in and left it at that.
I had difficulty digesting the rest of the book because of this. That’s unfortunate – and may point to why I spent so much time with the book. Mark had so much incredible information that I had to force myself to look for great info and ignore the shots here and there.
The Political Herd
The second conclusion to the book is that Individuals are unreliable (if not largely irrelevant) witnesses. However, in the same chapter, Mark sets this conclusion; he takes a shot at Curious George and the 2004 election won by George Bush. The electoral college was a brilliant decision devised by this country’s forefathers to ensure that the popular vote didn’t always make a president and speaks to Mark’s concerns about behavior, risks, and rewards associated with herd mentality.
If the United States had a popular election that determined the presidency, 90% of the United States would have been left behind. At the same time, our friends in Washington only paid attention to the largest cities. The electoral college provides a balance that requires our government to pay attention to more than just the majority… they have to pay attention to the states. Indeed, the election was won in Florida and Ohio, but without the Electoral College, those states would have had no say.
Mark’s book would have been better served if he discussed the balance of the popular vs. the representative voting requirements of the United States and how it adds to the American Dream by providing everyone with a right to pursue happiness, not just the most populous regions.
The Religious Herd
Another shot I noticed in the book was this one towards the end,
we now know that the earth is like a ball which, far from being the centre of our solar system as the Roman Church once taught…”
Of course, the Roman Church taught that! It was a common belief at the time and needed to be disproved. That takes time, and when it was, science was rewritten.
Conclusion 4 speaks to being more humble and talking to the individual. Why did Mark reference the Church in his sentiment? Did it matter that it was the Church? For those who recognize the value of Churches today and centuries ago, we should all acknowledge that, through its faults and ignorance, the Church built the foundation of our current schools. As with Churches of yesteryear, in the future, we’ll find out that we’re learning things today that are wrong as written by our most intelligent scholars. We should be more humble.
The Environmental Herd
Wrapped up in both Politics and Education is our understanding of the Environment. Mark comments that it’s a foregone conclusion that the Oil industry is causing harm to the environment. This is subscribing to the Herd. The science community has some doubt that this is the case.
Taking a side on each of these areas instead of genuinely studying the science behind how they are impacted is a disservice and needs to be analyzed with as much detail as Mark does with all the other topics in the book. Once again, I found this book invaluable – but I think Mark could have taken a more judicious view of these areas and had more of an impact.
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