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Foreword

AFTER working for twenty-five years in the communications and public affairs arena, and after spending the last twenty years looking at absolutely every dimension of public opinion imaginable, both out of curiosity and on behalf of many clients, I have learned one truth that transcends all other truths I’ve ever learned, and that is this: It’s the simplest things that are the most profound and the most likely to make a difference in whatever we’re trying to accomplish.

Brady Wilson and his business partner, Alex Somos, have found, and implemented, some simple and central truths about the workplace. That was clear to me when I first met them and it’s even clearer to me today, now that I have read this book.

I was very excited, a few years back, when they asked me to do some public opinion research among employees in the workplace. For lack of a better metaphor, I was “juiced” by their assignment. I instantly grasped, from their spirit and their questions, the simplicity and profundity of their approach to work and life.

In my world you can ask 100 questions and then sit and look at data tables at least 300 pages thick and be no farther ahead than when you started. Unless, that is, you know three things: the story in the data, be it of romance and adventure or challenge and inspiration or anything else; the context, without which the data will not make sense; and concrete examples that anchor and illustrate the findings.

Brady and Alex provided me with these three essentials. They showed me that in a world of bits and bytes of information, zipping and zapping around from e-mails and videoconferences and pod-casts and Web streaming, the most important element in the workplace and beyond had been lost: conversations between human beings.

And when we stop to think about it, we all know that the empathy of human relationships and the ability to motivate people have been sucked out of almost every dimension of the workplace as technology has made it easier and faster for us to communicate our thoughts and information.

Anyone who works in the workplace today can relate to this. Managers and people involved with clients in service relations can, if they choose, hide behind their computer screens, and elude the office with their BlackBerries, almost all day (and night). They can communicate without ever being heard or met – or understood. Ours has become a push-key world in which commands and ideas are pushed out and onto people, with the human touch so diminished that workers and others argue over whether or not e-mail phrasing can have a personal tone.

The following pages are profound and incredibly energizing because they say to managers and workers alike that engaging with others in a very simple, contextual, and human way in the workplace can produce extraordinary results. This book is backed up with numerous examples and written so that once you start reading it you won’t put it down until you’re done. Through it, Brady Wilson provides the way to navigate, nurture, and necessitate the most productive relationships possible.

If the Tom Peters maxim of “managing by wandering around” drove the workplace a step further than Peter Drucker’s views on workers and motivation, then this book signals the next leap forward in human-resource productivity, for a world that has changed inextricably with the advent of the Internet and the explosion of technology. Brady Wilson takes you back to the basics of relating to workers, gives that process context and meaning in today’s nanosecond setting, and shows how it can be made to work in any workplace environment.

I have no doubt that this book will juice you to greater insight, creativity, and intelligent energy. Just watch what happens the next time you enter your place of work.

JOHN WRIGHT

Senior Vice President,

Ipsos Reid