Long Fuse, Big Bang: Achieving Long-Term Success Through Daily Victories

by Eric Haseltine

Overview

"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." --Henry Ford

As one part of your brain processes these words, another part of your brain is urging you to put the book down and focus on something more pressing. Get back to work on the budget due tomorrow. Answer e-mails growing stale in your inbox. Get off your rear and update that résumé.

We're all guilty of it, especially in the business world. From Fortune 500 CEOs to assistants, we work to solve the most urgent problems first. That's because evolution has hardwired our brains to focus only on the immediate future, a survival technique that worked extremely well when predators were lurking at every turn.

But that was then, this is now. In the modern world, where life expectancies are long and physical perils rare (at least for people who buy books), it's not only possible to build a strong tomorrow without sacrificing today, but to actually increase the number of here-and-now victories by pursuing distant wins.

That's where Long Fuse, Big Bang comes in--to help you work with that instinct to create and foster ideas that will lead to explosive professional results. Through proven case studies and personal experience, Dr. Eric Haseltine shows you how to neutralize the quick-fix way of thinking and actually use that desire to improve your chances of an enduring success. Rather than fight our most basic thought processes, this book will teach you how to work with your brain to light the long fuse, keep it smoldering, and ignite that "Big Bang" that will make history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781401396053
Publisher:	Hachette Books
Publication date:	07/20/2010
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	493 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Eric Haseltine is the President and Managing Partner of Haseltine Partners LLC. He has held the position of Director of Research at National Security Agency as well as Associate Director for Science and Technology and Director of National Intelligence. In 2001, Eric was the Executive Vice President of Walt Disney Imagineering and director of engineering for Hughes Aircraft. Eric has 15 patents in optics, special effects and electronic media, and authored more than 100 publications. Haseltine received his B.A. in economics and psychology from the UC Berkley and his Ph.D. in physiological psychology from Indiana University. He lives in Silver Spring, MD.

Table of Contents

Introduction Why You Shouldn't Buy This Book xiii

1 The Ancient Script 1

2 The Brain's Playbook 22

3 Pursuing the Distant Win 41

4 Blinkers and Blind Spots 56

5 Turning Others' Failures into Your Successes 77

6 Secret Weapons 84

7 Bringing Big Bangs Back From the Future 114

8 The Language of the Heart 137

9 Light Long Fuses and Leave 158

10 In Defense of Tribalism 180

11 Lighting Fuses as a Way of Life 204

12 Keeping Long Fuses Lit 223

Endnotes 243

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Narrator Kirby Heyborne reads with a sophisticated maturity that sneaks up on listeners. . . . It's a perfect vehicle for the gravitas of the writing." —-AudioFile

Editorial Reviews

Haseltine's studies of the brain have aided him in senior positions with the NSA, Disney Imagineering, and Hughes Aircraft and make this a scholarly, packed analysis. Relying on his own experiences and case studies of pioneering companies like IBM, Disney, and Wal-Mart, Haseltine makes a convincing case that our short-term, put-out-the-fire mentality makes us miss opportunities that come from long-term thinking. In compelling, well-researched examples from a number of fields, Haseltine demonstrates how the successes of today were once the dream projects of visionary leaders who broke their ideas down and organized them into daily increments that allowed them to be approached methodically. Walt Disney, Haseltine points out, understood that "speaking to the heart works much better than speaking to the mind," because our conscious mind is "a Post-it note" compared to the unconscious, which he likens to the "Library of Congress." It's not what we do on a daily basis, he argues, but how we do it.

Publishers Weekly

"Narrator Kirby Heyborne reads with a sophisticated maturity that sneaks up on listeners.…It's a perfect vehicle for the gravitas of the writing." ---AudioFile

From the Publisher

More than an achievement lesson, this outstanding book is a sweeping overview of how the brain’s ancient preferences for simple short-term payoffs can co-opt people’s efforts when they’re working toward large-scale change. The fascinating case studies cover a range from small ad hoc groups to whole nations and show that this type of change requires patience, creativity, and social finesse. The examples reflect a rich historical perspective as well as the author’s high-level assignments with the U.S. intelligence community and Disney Imagineering. Sounding fresh and youthful at first, narrator Kirby Heyborne reads with a sophisticated maturity that sneaks up on listeners. His tone is sober but never alarming or overwrought. It’s a perfect vehicle for the gravitas of the writing, especially when he’s delivering the slow-building narratives from business, medicine, international politics, and the author’s own experiences in the trenches. T.W. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine

FEBRUARY 2012 - AudioFile