Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy

Dev Patnaik is the founder of Jump Associates. He and his team help companies see what they can't see themselves in regards to their customer's needs. He also teaches at Stanford University. From the minute I started reading this book I could tell Dev Patnaik is a natural teacher. He also was given a lot of good advice on his initial manuscript which makes the book very polished and easy to read. His editor must be highly talented! I've rarely seen a book written this well. What is especially intriguing about this book is the way the information is presented. Mostly stories are told about famous companies and how they reached a place of ultimate success. You will learn about Nike, IBM, Mercedes, Pixar, Target, Netflix, Harley-Davidson, Spalding, Smith and Hawken, Microsoft, Kodak and OXO. The story about OXO Good Grips was especially interesting to me as I love to cook and have several of the items they sell. I especially love the lemon zester and peeler. Some of the stories in this book also explain how some companies don't get it. There are mistakes being made that could be corrected with the right philosophy. Dev Patnaik drives home the point that you should see the world the way your customers do. Therefore you can serve them better and keep them loyal. This book makes you say: "Yay, finally someone is saying what needs to be said." I felt the writing style in this book was very fluid and easy to comprehend and process. You will learn so many valuable things about life. It helps you understand how life really works. I enjoyed reading the sections on reciprocal altruism and open book management. Wired to Care is a book business owners everywhere should be reading and applying to real-life situations. This book teaches business leaders how to show empathy and really listen to their customers. Highly Recommended! 100 Stars. I live to find books this good!!! ~The Rebecca Review

Empathy is the core skill a UX professional needs to succeed. It’s also a core skill humans need to excel personally. Therefore, "Wired to Care" is a recommended read for anyone who wants to be a better person. I’ve been teaching User Experience design for the past few months and realized that really what I’m teaching is empathetic observation/information-gathering and empathetic storytelling. The key word here is empathetic. This is an attribute I’ve taken for granted - I mean, we as humans are born with a mirror neuron system so duh, aren’t we already fully empathetic at birth? Turns out there’s quite a few folks out there that have their empathy-meters turned way down or even turned completely off and they are in dire need of classes, training and examples of what empathy is and how to develop it. Whew - thank goodness I came to the rescue huh? :) Thank goodness Dev Patnaik wrote “Wired to Care” too! The book is written as a series of business case studies examining why certain products or companies failed pre-empathy, learned how to develop and implement empathy in their daily work and then demonstrates the transformative power of empathy in these businesses. Key Takeaway: Investing in empathy has a tangible effect on your bottom line and provides a rapid ROI. So invest in it Overall the book is well researched, provides a plethora of resources to act on and memorable stories. I have recommended this book over and over to my students and colleagues and will continue to evangelize this as a “primer on empathy in the modern world”. Hats off to you Dev Patnaik and thanks! (read this review on my blog: http://lalithac.com/post/95225357675/required-reading-for-ux-professionals-wired-to-care)

If you have any position of responsibility at any organization in the world, (including a family) you should read this book. As a business book, it is probably one of the best ever written. There are plenty of reviews telling you what the book is about... lemme instead tell you what the book will do for you. ---IF you read and interpret analytical reports for your company you ABSOLUTELY need this book.--- It tells you how the numbers can lead you down the garden path to cluelessness. Reading it opened my eyes to why some institutions work and others just don't. I've always looked at my business as solving problems for people and wondered why so few companies do this. This book explains it. Most organizations have simply lost sight that there is a human out there trying to use their product. The book gives dozens of case studies on how intelligent, well meaning people get 'bubble disease' (my term) and lose track of the people and the world around them. Now when I see this in people or in institutions, I have a better understanding of how they got that way. And more importantly, how to make sure I never do. For example, although the author was notably apolitical in the book, it explains why so many politicians are so clueless... They have no idea how real people have to live with the stupid nonsensical laws they create. They are in their isolated world and how no idea how to run a small business or do anything except collect a government paycheck. (we all know this of course but the book really removes all doubt) It also explains how some climate scientists have been quoted as saying the Sun can not change our climate. These poor folks are so mired in academia and detached from the real world, they think their spreadsheets are more important than the Sun! They spend their lives 'studying' our world yet have lost sight of it. --- Mind you the book doesn't SAY any of this and that is exactly the point. It instead gives you to tools to know when your institution (or your competition) is losing its way. OK so if this book is so important, why only 4 stars? Toward the end, the author sorta rambles. The first half the book is incredibly tight, the last 25% seems a bit wordy. BUT it is absolutely worth the read. I'm nit picking here. Lemme give you more more thing that should absolutely convince you to buy this book. The author has spent a lifetime helping some of the world's largest companies improve. He's got dozens of years of experience and has spent hundreds of hours forming that experience into practical, actionable lessons for business people. In effect, you are getting the sum total of his life's experiences for 10 bucks and 3 hours of your time. That's an incalculable bargain. Now I kinda feel bad about that last star.

More often than it would seem possible, I'll read one book, only to have another book come into my hands which so wonderfully complements the first that I couldn't have done better if I had tried. That happened with "Wired to Care"...this book came on the heels of my reading Daniel Pink's "A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future" and I can heartily recommend reading them both, in that order. Pink makes the case for the need for six traits (right-brain or whole-minded traits) that will be essential for workers who want to thrive in "the conceptual age". Those traits are: design, story, sympathy, play, meaning AND empathy. "Wired to Care" concentrates on one of those traits, empathy. Patnaik uses experiences from his work at Jump Associates and his academic appointment at Stanford University to populate his book with compelling and relevant examples of what empathy looks like when it's translated into a business maxim. He shows how Detroit's car industry problems are related to a lack of empathy, how a political race (Bush, Sr. vs Clinton) was impacted by the empathy (who had it and who didn't), how Harley-Davidson resurrected itself and how Clorox gained insight that helped it define new directions to take by using empathy. Empathy helps the bottom line - because it helps companies reach, understand and provide exactly the kind of goods and services their customers want. Empathy can have added benefits - it can give employees a powerful reason to come to work every day. "Empathy," says Patnaik "helps transform jobs into careers and careers into callings." He notes "A job will deplete you, a calling will energize you, and a career is somewhere in between." A culture of empathy also results in a more ethical business/company/corporation. "Widespread Empathy" can be "an effective way to ensure the morality of a large institution, more so than any rulebook or code of conduct," according to Patnaik. Having an empathic environment within a corporation makes the ability to tell right from wrong a whole lot easier: "organizations that have real sympathy for the people they serve can be governed by the simplest law of all: the Golden Rule." One would wish that this book could be made required reading for all CEOs, Wall Street bankers, politicians and leaders of industry. On the Jump Associates website is the following: "The Harvard Business Review is currently hosting a fascinating debate on how to fix business schools. Jump's Dev Patnaik is now a featured commentator in the debate, and his first post cuts to the root of the problem: maybe we have selfish business leaders because business school rewards ruthlessness?" Someone please put this man in charge of business school curriculums...with an approach like Patnaik's, how much of the current financial and ethical meltdown could have been avoided if the lessons he teaches had been instilled in the current crop of head honchos? They didn't get this kind of ethical guidance; maybe we can do better with the up-and-coming generation. Read Patnaik and envision how ALL companies could be...read Patnaik and know how much better your company can be with empathy as a cornerstone.

I got this book free in some deal in Amazon , and i started reading this book and i got stuck with this book. There are many reasons why you will not like to keep this book down . First there are so many examples from Zildjian (400 year old company) why it is successful ? Why Micorsoft xBOX defeated playstation But Zune Failed ? Mercedes expermiement in Jump Start . Londons Farmers Market Success story . Why world follows the Londons Tube Map example ? How Harley Davidson is survived and going so strong in bad market/economy .But Ford and GM failed. Why Bill Clinton win and Bush lost in election ? Author did a experiment with Wheel Chair ( Very interesting - for me it was something eye opening ) The Bilogical Limbic system - how it works ? Dale Carnegie references Steelcase Corporation - how it figured out why they were successful ? yes the survey result was very interesting. A recession is when the guy next door loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours. (it's an awesome quote from the book) How Target and Netflix create customer empathy. Why Smith & Hawken employees have gone out to dig in the garden ? How Mahatma Gandhi could win the support in India ? Why OXO designs are so great ? There is great example of CISCO about ethics . There is example of Patagonia apparel maker and NORTHWEST airlines about comminication to employees . There is very good example of San Francisco's Joie de Vivre hotel group House keeping Staff. There is a example how Disney came with Animal Kingdom idea . So i would say overall this book is filled with lot of real world example and interesting facts. I liked it very much.

A mix of psychology, action items and interesting ideas for how you could transform your organization into an open empathy organization through real-life examples from big-name brands who did it right, this is a quick, fun read that could turn things around in your company's culture. It's not necessarily new to hear about open empathy organizations and how all levels and positions in a company can get ahead by getting in the heads of their customers. As the author would say, companies who get outside of their own walls to connect and walk in the moccasins of others have a competitive advantage to serve customers better, which could make all of the difference in the passion, success and bottom line for that business. What makes 'Wired to Care' stand out above the rest is that Patnaik shows they WHY but expertly couples this with the critical HOW to slowly integrate this type of mindset into your company's walls while giving examples of how companies like Nike and Cisco did the exact same thing. Now the shift in corporate mindset that many already know could be a game changer feels more like a graspable reality than a far-fetched fantasy... More: http://marketingthroughmayhem.com/

In the month, three different people have asked me a question that boiled down to -- "how can I create a culture of customer empathy?" And in all three instances, I recommended that they read Wired to Care. At the very foundation of a company's ability to serve and connect with its customers is employees' capacity to empathize with their customer. This book shows practical examples for how to do this. It demystifies the fuzzy idea of empathy and shows pragmatic ways to cultivate it and turn it into a competitive advantage.

This is the first book I read with my new Kindle 3. Not only that this is a really well written book that kept my attention high, this is a must reading for any one that work in a consumer oriented company (any other type?). Kindle is smart to make so many books free to read, and introduce customers to a new reading experience which is so much better than using your monitor. Congratulations. Victor

I stopped reading this book, it could be me but most of this is common sense and a lot is wishful thinking. Anyway, not a bad book but I would not hesitate to re-sell.