About the book

The book’s main purpose is self-discovery.  With it you will understand both yourself and other people.  You become able to see through the eyes of the people you relate to.  You learn the emotional motivation behind someone else's actions and discover the emotional integrity behind what may have seemed to you to be obstructive, or even hostile, actions.

The Humm Handbook is 192 pages long and is divided into three parts.

1. Part 1, The Seven Components, describes the Humm technology. 
2. Part II, The Emotionally Intelligent Manager, works though each four stages of emotional intelligence: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness or empathy, and relationship management using the Humm technology.  The reader then learns how the Humm technology can help you as a manager succeed in a number of areas such as team building, management style and leadership.
3. Part III, The Art of Decision Making, comprises the five case studies:  Antigone, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, King Lear and Death of a Salesman.  After a plot summary, the main characters in the play are analysed using the Humm technology.  Did they succeed or fail and if so, how and why?  Then the book looks at the key decisions made in each play and what it reveals about the emotional drivers of the various characters.  Finally each case study concludes by drawing some business lessons from the characters and the play.

I again have to thank Charles Handy For Part III.  The Art of Decision Making was a course organised by Charles at the London Business School that ran in the early 1970s.  Each week we would study a classic such as King Lear where we would engage in Socratic debate what the play would teach us as future managers.  I still remember many of the lessons and regard it as the best course I have ever done. 

Using literature for management case studies is not a new idea.  The reason is simple.  In so many management books the examples soon tire.  The heroes of the business world quickly pass.  While some companies still bear their founder’s name such as Ford, few us know about the personality and history of the founders of many companies.  Even the names of recent CEOs are soon forgotten.  On the other hand the classics live on, and their lessons and characters are timeless. 

 One example of this approach is The Classic Touch—Lessons in Leadership from Homer to Hemingway by Clemens and Mayer (Dow Jones Irwin 1987).  Another is Will Power!—Using Shakespeare’s insights to transform your life by Weinburg and Rowe (Hodder & Stoughton 1996).  Harvard Business School Press recently published Questions of Character—Illuminating the Heart of Leadership Through Literature by Professor Joseph L. Badaracco, Jr.  Badaracco begins with Death of a Salesman and finishes with Antigone.  Of the three books, Badaracco’s is the best but all three books suffer from the same problem, none have a consistent framework of analysis.  The secret for case studies is not to read the case and then guess the lessons.  Rather it is first learning a framework, then applying it to the case study, and then asking what lessons you can deduce.

 This is the approach taken in The Humm Handbook which considers five plays: Antigone, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, King Lear and Death of a Salesman. After a plot summary, the book discusses the main characters in terms of their dominant components.  Did they succeed or fail and if so, how and why?  Then the book looks at the key decisions made in each play and what it reveals about the emotional drivers of the various characters.  Finally each case study concludes by drawing some business lessons from the characters and the play.