B2B Marketing More Insight and Analysis

In his book, Herd, which takes the human tendency to follow the crowd and applies it to a business perspective, Mark Earls notes how the late economist J. K. Galbraith was disdainful of the cult of meetings. "Meetings" he says, "are indispensable when you don't want to do anything".

Earls makes a point of agreeing with Galbraith, suggesting that meetings serve only to provide a focus for what he terms "psychic testosterone".

Now, Earls may or may not be right about the psychological rationale, but the suggestion he makes is a seductive one. There is something very powerful about any book that plays on and appears to support our own prejudices.

If the reader's own thoughts are echoed, reinforced and backed up by authoritative opinion, the reader will come away believing that he or she must be an insightful person to agree with these points.

The book gives the reader copious chances to nod vigorously and agree with the points being made. For example: "People lie and cheat in politics and business." No kidding! "Meetings can kill creative thinking." Really?

I defy any reader not to agree with most of Earls' arguments. But I'm as difficult and argumentative as they come and if I can't find anything to argue with I have to question whether I've learned anything at all. I'd like to think this is because I'm a clever old so-and-so, but I know that this is simply because this is a very lucid, well written and comprehensive analysis of just how difficult it is to make sense of the world.

Paul Godwin, planning director, Positive Thinking

In the final line of the book Earls steals lines from Miranda in The Tempest:
"Oh Brave New World that has such people in it." He may have been better quoting Macbeth, who describes life as, "Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
godwin@positive-thinking.co.uk