A_Whole_New_Mind[1]

Published by Soundview Executive Book Summaries, P.O. Box 1053, Concordville, PA 19331 USA © 2006 Soundview Executive Book Summaries • All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part is prohibited. Moving From the Information Age to the Conceptual Age A WHOLE NEW MIND THE SUMMARY IN BRIEF Lawyers. Accountants. Radiologists. Software engineers. That’s what our parents encouraged us to become when we grew up. But Mom and Dad were wrong. The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind. The era of “left brain” dominance, and the Information Age that it engendered, are giving way to a new world in which “right brain” qualities — inventiveness, meaning, empathy — predominate. That’s the argument at the center of this summary — a summary that uses the two sides of our brains as a metaphor for understanding the contours of our times. In the tradition of Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence and Marcus Buckingham’s and Donald O. Clifton’s Now, Discover Your Strengths, Daniel H. Pink offers a fresh look at what it takes for individuals and organizations to excel. Drawing on cutting-edge research from around the world, A Whole New Mind reveals the six essential aptitudes on which professional success and personal fulfillment now depend: Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play and Meaning. It also includes several hands-on exercises and examples culled from experts around the world to help read- ers sharpen the necessary abilities. This summary will change not only how we see the world but how we experience it as well. In addition, this summary will also show you: ✓ Why a seismic — though as yet undetected — shift is now under way in much of the advanced world. ✓ Differences between the left and right hemispheres of our brains. ✓ Why three huge social and economic forces — abundance, Asia and automation — are nudging us into the Conceptual Age. ✓ Why people who master high concept and high touch are setting the tempo of modern life. ✓ How six essential aptitudes can help you make your way across the emerging landscape. Concentrated Knowledge™ for the Busy Executive • www.summary.com Vol. 28, No. 5 (3 parts), Part 3, May 2006 • Order # 28-13 CONTENTS Introduction Page 2 Right Brain Rising Pages 3, 4 Abundance, Asia and Automation Page 4 High Concept, High Touch Page 4 Introducing the Six Senses Page 5 Design Pages 5, 6 Story Page 6 Symphony Pages 6, 7 Empathy Page 7 Play Pages 7, 8 Meaning Page 8 Afterword Page 8 By Daniel H. Pink FILE:SUCCESS/ CAREER TECHNIQ UES ® Introduction The last few decades have belonged to a certain kind of person with a certain kind of mind — computer pro- grammers who could crank code, lawyers who could craft contracts, MBAs who could crunch numbers. But the future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind — creators and empathiz- ers, pattern recognizers, and meaning makers. These people — artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, care- givers, consolers, big-picture thinkers — will now reap society’s richest rewards and share its greatest joys. There is a seismic — though as yet undetected — shift now under way in much of the advanced world. We are moving from an economy and a society built on the logical, linear computer-like capabilities of the Information Age to an economy and a society built on the inventive, empathic, big-picture capabilities of what’s rising in its place, the Conceptual Age. This summary is for anyone who wants to survive and thrive in this emerging world — people uneasy in their careers or dissatisfied with their lives, entrepreneurs and business leaders eager to stay ahead of the next wave, parents who want to equip their children for the future, and the legions of emotionally astute and creatively adroit peo- ple whose distinctive abilities the Information Age has often overlooked and undervalued. Six Senses There are six essential aptitudes—“the six senses”— on which professional success and personal satisfaction increasingly will depend: Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play and Meaning. These are fundamentally human abilities that everyone can master. A change of such magnitude is complex. But the argu- ment at the heart of this summary is simple. For nearly a century, Western society in general, and American society in particular, has been dominated by a form of thinking and an approach to life that is narrowly reductive and deeply analytical. Ours has been the age of the “knowl- edge worker,” the well-educated manipulator of informa- tion and deployer of expertise. But that is changing. Thanks to an array of forces — material abundance that is deepening our nonmaterial yearnings, globalization that is shipping white-collar work overseas, and powerful technologies that are eliminating certain kinds of work altogether — we are entering a new age. It is an age ani- mated by a different form of thinking and a new approach to life — one that prizes “high concept” and “high touch” aptitudes. High concept involves the capacity to detect patterns and opportunities, to create artistic and emotional beauty, to craft a satisfying narrative, and to combine seemingly unrelated ideas into something new. High touch involves the ability to empathize with others, to understand the subtleties of human interaction, to find joy in one’s self and to elicit it in others, and to stretch beyond the quotidian in pursuit of purpose and meaning. Two Hemispheres There’s something that encapsulates the change — and it’s right inside your head. Our brains are divided into two hemispheres. The left hemisphere is sequential, logical and analytical. The right hemisphere is nonlin- ear, intuitive and holistic. We enlist both halves of our brains for even the simplest tasks. But the well-established differences between the two hemispheres of the brain yield a powerful metaphor for interpreting our present and guiding our future. Today, the defining skills of the previous era — the “left brain” capa- bilities that powered the Information Age — are necessary but no longer sufficient. And the capabilities we once dis- dained or thought frivolous — the “right brain” qualities of inventiveness, empathy, joyfulness and meaning — increas- ingly will determine who flourishes and who flounders. For individuals, families and organizations, professional success and personal fulfillment now require a whole new mind. ■ A WHOLE NEW MIND by Daniel H. Pink — THE COMPLETE SUMMARY For additional information on the author, go to: http://my.summary.com Published by Soundview Executive Book Summaries (ISSN 0747-2196), P.O. Box 1053, Concordville, PA 19331 USA, a division of Concentrated Knowledge Corp. Published monthly. Subscriptions: $195 per year in the United States, Canada and Mexico, and $275 to all other countries. Periodicals postage paid at Concordville, Pa., and additional offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to Soundview, P.O. Box 1053, Concordville, PA 19331. Copyright © 2006 by Soundview Executive Book Summaries. Available formats: Summaries are available in print, audio and electronic formats. To subscribe, call us at 1-800-SUMMARY (610-558-9495 outside the United States and Canada), or order on the Internet at www.summary.com. Multiple-subscription discounts and corporate site licenses are also available. Soundview Executive Book Summaries® PHILIP SHROPSHIRE – Contributing Editor DEBRA A. DEPRINZIO – Senior Graphic Designer CHRIS LAUER – Senior Editor CHRISTOPHER G. MURRAY – Editor in Chief GEORGE Y. CLEMENT – Publisher Soundview Executive Book Summaries®2 The author: Daniel H. Pink is the author of the best- selling Free Agent Nation. He is a contributing editor at Wired magazine. His articles on business and technology have also appeared in The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and other publications. Summarized by arrangement with Riverhead Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. from A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink. Copyright © Daniel H. Pink, 2005. 260 pages. $24.95 Hardcover. ISBN 1-57322-308-5. Summary Copyright © 2006 by Soundview Executive Book Summaries, www.summary.com, 1-800-SUMMARY, 1-610-558-9495. knl http://my.summary.com Right Brain Rising Outside a gargantuan government building, a light May rain is falling. Inside, the author is having his brain scanned. To find out what direction our lives will take in these outsourced, automated, upside-down times, clues might be found in the way the brain is organized. So, the author has volunteered to be part of the control group — what researchers call “healthy volunteers” — for a pro- ject at the National Institute of Mental Health, outside Washington, D.C. The study involves capturing images of brains at rest and at work, which means he’ll soon get to see the organ that’s been leading him around the past four decades — and, in the process, perhaps gain a clear- er view of how all of us will navigate the future. The Belly of the Beast The stretcher he is on juts from the middle of a GE Signa 3T, one of the world’s most advanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines. It’s a huge piece of equipment, spanning nearly 8 feet on each side and weighing more than 35,000 pounds. At the center of the machine is a circular opening, about 2 feet in diameter. The technicians slide his stretcher through the opening and into the hollowed-out core that forms the belly of this beast. With his arms pinned by his sides and the ceiling about 2 inches above his nose, he feels like he’s been crammed into a torpedo tube and forgotten. After a half hour, they’ve got a picture of his brain. That initial brain scan was like sitting for a portrait, and the machine painted the picture. While science can learn a great deal from these brain portraits, a newer tech- nique — called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) — can capture pictures of the brain in action. Researchers ask subjects to do something inside the machine — hum a tune, listen to a joke, solve a puzzle — and then track the parts of the brain to which blood flows. This technique is revolutionizing science and medicine, yielding a deeper understanding of a range of human experience — from dyslexia in children to the mechanisms of Alzheimer’s disease to how parents respond to babies’ cries. The Right (and Left) Stuff Our brains are extraordinary. Yet for all the brain’s complexity, its broad topography is simple and symmet- rical. Scientists have long known that a neurological Mason-Dixon Line divides the brain into two regions. And until surprisingly recently, the scientific establish- ment considered the two regions separate but unequal. The left side, the theory went, was the crucial half, the half that made us human. The right side was subsidiary — the remnant, some argued, of an earlier stage of development. The left hemisphere was rational, analytic and logical. The right hemisphere was mute, nonlinear and instinctive — a vestige that nature had designed for a purpose that humans had outgrown. This view prevailed for much of the next century — until a soft-spoken Caltech professor named Robert W. Sperry reshaped our understanding of our brains and ourselves. In the late 1950s, Sperry studied patients who had epileptic seizures that had required removal of the corpus callosum, the thick bundle of some 300 million nerve fibers that connects the brain’s two hemispheres. In a set of experiments on these “split-brain” patients, Sperry discovered that the established view was flawed. Yes, our brains were divided into two halves. But as he put it, “The so-called subordinate or minor hemisphere, which we had formerly supposed to be illiterate and mentally retarded and thought by some authorities to not even be conscious, was found to be in fact the supe- rior cerebral member when it came to performing cer- tain kinds of mental tasks.” In other words, the right wasn’t inferior to the left. It was just different. Thanks to Sperry’s pioneering research and the advent of technologies like the fMRI that allow researchers to watch the brain in action, the right hemisphere today has achieved a measure of legitimacy. It’s real. It’s important. It helps make us human. No neuroscientist worth his or her Ph.D. ever disputes that. Yet beyond the neuroscience labs and brain-imaging clinics, two mis- conceptions about the right side of the brain persist. The Wrong Stuff These two misconceptions are opposite in spirit but similar in silliness. The first considers the right brain a savior; the second considers it a saboteur. Adherents to the savior view have climbed aboard the scientific evidence on the right hemisphere and raced from legitimacy to reverence. They believe the right brain is the repository of all that is good and just and noble in the human condition. Partly in response to the tide of inane things that have been said about the right brain, a second, contrary bias has also taken hold. This view grudgingly acknowledges the right hemisphere’s legitimacy, but believes that emphasizing so-called right-brain thinking risks sabo- taging the economic and social progress we’ve made by applying the force of logic to our lives. Alas, the right hemisphere will neither save us nor sabotage us. The reality, as is so often the case with reality, is more nuanced. 3 A Whole New Mind — SUMMARY Soundview Executive Book Summaries® (continued on page 4) PART ONE: THE CONCEPTUAL AGE The Real Stuff The two hemispheres of our brains don’t operate as on-off switches — one powering down as soon as the other starts lighting up. Both halves play a role in nearly everything we do. With more than three decades of research on the brain’s hemispheres, it’s possible to dis- till the findings to four key differences: 1. The left hemisphere controls the right side of the body; the right hemisphere controls the left side of the body. 2. The left hemisphere is sequential; the right hemisphere is simultaneous. 3. The left hemisphere specializes in text; the right hemisphere specializes in context. 4. The left hemisphere analyzes the details; the right hemisphere synthesizes the big picture. We need both L-Directed Thinking — sequential and literal — and R-Directed Thinking — metaphorical and contextual — in order to craft fulfilling lives and build protective, just societies. But the mere fact that this obvious point must be underscored is perhaps further indication of how much we’ve been in the thrall of reductionist, binary thinking. But this is changing — and it will dramatically reshape our lives. Left-brain-style thinking used to be the driver and right-brain-style thinking the passenger. Now, R-Directed Thinking is suddenly grabbing the wheel, stepping on the gas, and determining where we’re going and how we’ll get there. L-Directed apti- tudes — the sorts of things measured by the SAT and deployed by CPAs — are still necessary. But they’re no longer sufficient. Instead, the R-Directed aptitudes so often disdained and dismissed — artistry, empathy, tak- ing the long view, pursuing the transcendent — will increasingly determine who soars and who stumbles. It’s a dizzying — but ultimately inspiring — change. ■ Abundance, Asia and Automation Three forces are tilting the scales in favor of R-Directed Thinking. Abundance has satisfied, even oversatisfied, the material needs of millions — boosting the signifi- cance of beauty and emotion, and accelerating individu- als’ search for meaning. Abundance has produced an ironic result: The very triumph of L-Directed Thinking has lessened its significance. The prosperity it has unleashed has placed a premium on less rational, more R-Directed sensibilities — beauty, spirituality and emo- tion. For businesses, it’s no longer enough to create a product that’s reasonably priced and adequately func- tional. It must also be beautiful, unique and meaningful. Asia is now performing large amounts of routine, white-collar, L-Directed work at significantly lower costs, thereby forcing knowledge workers in the advanced world to master abilities that can’t be shipped overseas. One out of 10 jobs in the U.S. computer, soft- ware, and information technology industry will move overseas in the next two years and one in four IT jobs will be off-shored by 2010. According to Forrester Research, “at least 3.3 million white-collar jobs and $136 billion in wages will shift from the U.S. to low- cost countries like India, China and Russia” by 2015. And automation has begun to affect this generation’s white-collar workers in much the same way it did last gen- eration’s blue-collar workers, requiring L-Directed profes- sionals to develop aptitudes that computers can’t do better, faster or cheaper. Just as John Henry couldn’t beat the steam drill, or Garry Kasparov, now our modern John Henry, can’t beat Deep Blue, people can’t compete with machines when it comes to logic or calculation. We have to develop aptitudes that can’t be replicated by machines. ■ High Concept, High Touch To survive in this age, individuals and organizations must examine what they’re doing to earn a living and ask themselves three questions: 1. Can someone overseas do it cheaper? 2. Can a computer do it faster? 3. Is what I’m offering in demand in an age of abundance? If your answer to question 1 or 2 is yes, or if your answer to question 3 is no, you’re in deep trouble. Mere survival today depends on being able to do something that overseas knowledge workers can’t do cheaper, that power- ful computers can’t do faster, and that satisfies one of the nonmaterial, transcendent desires of an abundant age. That is why high tech is no longer enough. We’ll need to supplement our well-developed high-tech abilities with abilities that are high concept and high touch. How can we prepare ourselves for the Conceptual Age? In a world tossed by abundance, Asia and automation, in which L-Directed Thinking remains necessary but no longer sufficient, we must become proficient in R-Directed Thinking and master aptitudes that are high concept and high touch. We must perform work that overseas knowl- edge workers can’t do cheaper; that computers can’t do faster; and that satisfies the aesthetic, emotional and spiritu- al demands of a prosperous time. But on another level, that answer is inadequate. What exactly are we supposed to do? The answer can be distilled to six specific high-concept and high-touch aptitudes that have become essential in this new era. These aptitudes are “the six senses”: Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play and Meaning. ■ A Whole New Mind — SUMMARY 4 Right Brain Rising (continued from page 3) Soundview Executive Book Summaries® Introducing the Six Senses In the Conceptual Age, we will need to complement our L-Directed reasoning by mastering six essential R-Directed aptitudes. Together these six high-concept, high-touch sens- es can help develop the whole new mind this era demands: 1. Not just function but also DESIGN. Today it’s eco- nomically crucial and personally rewarding to create some- thing that is beautiful, whimsical, or emotionally engaging. 2. Not just argument but also STORY. The essence of persuasion, communication and self-understanding has become the ability also to fashion a compelling narrative. 3. Not just focus but also SYMPHONY. What’s in greatest demand today isn’t analysis but synthesis — see- ing the big picture and, crossing boundaries, being able to combine disparate pieces into an arresting new whole. 4. Not just logic but also EMPATHY. What will dis- tinguish those who thrive will be their ability to under- stand what makes their fellow woman and man tick, to forge relationships, and to care for others. 5. Not just seriousness but also PLAY. Too much sobri- ety can be bad for your career and worse for your general well-being. In the Conceptual Age, we all need to play. 6. Not just accumulation but a