Herrmann's Core Idea: Whole Brain® Thinking

Herrmann's Core Idea:
Whole Brain® Thinking

Everybody thinks differently, but few organizations are able to leverage cognitive diversity as a strategic advantage.

Whole Brain® Thinking is a scalable framework which provides a lens for improved understanding and insight. It acknowledges that different tasks require different mental processes, and different people prefer different kinds of thinking. Whole Brain® Thinking helps organizations get better results when they can strategically leverage the full spectrum of thinking available.

The ways individuals think guide how they work. The ways groups of individuals think guide how the teams they form work. The ways that groups of teams think (and work) make or break the companies they work for.

To put it plainly, the success of a business depends on the ability of its management teams to drive communication, innovation, and productivity within and across functions. In 35+ years of working with Fortune 100 clients, we've found that understanding thinking is the key to business-level success.

The Whole Brain^® Model (below) is our time tested framework to decode and harness the cognitive diversity of individuals, teams, and organizations.

Thinking forms the Building Blocks of Business

Our application suites help your team leverage thinking to add velocity and effectiveness at scale.

Individual Thinkers

Thinkers are the first to onboard to the Whole Brain^® model using our digital self assessment and learning apps. Internalization of Whole Brain^® Thinking at the Individual level sets up the organization to realize the most business value from Herrmann. To emphasize the role that individual thought process plays in defining that business value, we refer to individuals as thinkers. All of our applications are for thinkers in various contexts.

Thinker Pairs

While individual Thinkers are essential to forming Pairs, it's not until the pair level that the need to collaborate, communicate, and align emerges as function for business value improvements. Thinker Pairs can be anything from a manager and a direct report to a salesperson and a prospect. Wherever two individuals need to deliver more than either can alone, our digital applications and guides are ready to empower self-diagnostic and optimization.

Teams

For most organizations, teams drive goal attainment. Management, being the goal owners, are therefore responsible for the output of their teams. We work directly with management, providing team and sub-team dashboards to measure effectiveness and identify obstacles. Beyond that, application suites apply at this level to align work processes towards increasing velocity and business value output.

Organizations

The organization can do only what its teams are capable of. Which is why we begin at the individual level and scale up. Building the internal capabilities to innovate, produce, engage employees, and realize business synergies in pairs and teams means that a Herrmann-powered organization will have those same capabilities - without the need for consultant support. More importantly, deploying the Whole Brain^® Model at the organizational level means the you'll gain

What Customers Are Saying about Whole Brain® Thinking:

I have been using Whole Brain® Thinking for my entire career, across many lines of business in different corporations, with leaders from many parts of the world. I have found it be to immediately enlightening and interesting for serious business people. For most, Whole Brain® Thinking applies quickly to business situations to diagnose [challenges] and plan for improvement.

Katie Sterrett

Sr. Director, Leadership Development

Herrmann’s approach to idea generation works because it takes us out of ourselves and our comfort zones and away from how we normally see our brands. And among [the] wacky ideas, some genuine nuggets and a few real gems have appeared for us.

Michael McShane

GM Asia-Pacific

Increased individual responsibility and new leadership competencies are a necessity in our current business environment, and we need to be able to rely on a globally integrated team to get the best business results. Our BBNL program makes management a competitive advantage for IBM - and it's powered by Herrmann.

Rich DeSerio

Manager, Global Design Team

The world’s largest organizations trust Herrmann. Will you?

Nearly 6 million people from 97% of Fortune 100 companies have used Whole Brain® Thinking to improve productivity, innovation, collaboration, and inclusion.