Thread: NC-Wait until you see what’s in store for North Carolina

Wait until you see what’s in store for North Carolina
by Tom Campbell

February 11, 2010

Those attending this week’s Emerging Issues Forum got a glimpse into the future. For some it was exciting and filled with possibilities, while others were no doubt threatened by what they learned. The theme for this year’s event was Creativity, Inc. and while there were many outstanding presentations, one in particular caught our attention.

Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers will Rule the Future, mesmerized the audience talking about left brain, right brain thinking. We all use both sides of our brain but one side tends to dominate the way we operate our lives. Left-brainers are more analytical, sequential and task oriented. Those dominated by their right brain are more creative, empathetic, observant and open to possibilities. Pink says there are three reasons why the scales are tilting toward right-brain abilities: Asia, automation and abundance.

There are one billion people in India alone. In two months India will be the world’s largest English speaking country. Fifteen percent are easily capable of competing in the global economy with skills like accounting, operations and engineering. That’s 150 million people, more than the entire population of Japan and more than the current U.S. workforce of 139 million.

Routine physical labor like textile machine and furniture lathe operators moved from North Carolina and the United States years ago to where labor was cheaper. Now routine intellectual work is following the same path. Pink says a good engineer in America earns about 65,000 dollars per year. In India they earn 25,000. Capital will always move to the cheapest labor.

Then there’s automation. In the last century, machines replaced our backs and muscle. This century software is replacing our left-brain linear, rule-based thinking. No longer do we write letters by hand or with a typewriter. Last year 23 million Americans did their taxes using TurboTax instead of employing someone or filling out forms manually. We will continue to relegate routine work to software whenever possible.

We are a country of great abundance. 99 percent of us have color televisions, even most of the 13 percent in poverty. 85 percent have mobile phones. In fact, we discard 460,000 mobile phones every day in the U.S. Our standard of living is the highest in history and greater than the rest of the world.

To stay competitive we must maintain our leadership in innovation and creativity. Pink suggests three ideas to achieve this. We must begin measuring what matters in our schools and workplaces. Most schools measure left-brain skills. We must stop turning children only into vending machines that spout dates, figures, and processes, instead teaching them how to see and understand, to think outside the box and use arts to communicate and learn differently. We need scientists who think like artists as well as artists who can think like scientists.

Daniel Pink’s last suggestion was that we need to include arts in our schools. Eliminating them is a “fool’s errand,â€

Well guys, what do you think about this?

A major study by Kevin Ho, undertaken as part of his doctoral dissertation clearly shows that women are significantly more right brained than men.

http://www.virtual.co.nz/index.php/Stra ... nedThanMen

To make Daniel Pink's prediction come true, you better start thinking like women.


Personally, I don't think that is going to happen.

Dixie

Where does Mr. Pink get his 13% poverty from? Oh yeah he operates on a school campus, that is a pseudo perfect world where anything is possible.

These jerks used to be called things like frauds and charlitans. Talk about out of touch with the world around him.

Since I do some things like writing and artistic oreinted things left handed, and things that require physical strength I do right handed, so where does that put me? Since I use both side about the same. (none )

Originally Posted by Dixie

Well guys, what do you think about this?

A major study by Kevin Ho, undertaken as part of his doctoral dissertation clearly shows that women are significantly more right brained than men.

http://www.virtual.co.nz/index.php/Stra ... nedThanMen

Interesting post, vortex! Thanks for the reference, Dixie! The following is from your reference:


Women are significantly more right brained than men


Bruce Holland
Virtual Group NZ


Western business is dominated by the left brain (that's the part that's good at analysis) and weak in the right brain (the part that's good at creativity).

Herrmann's Thinking Preferences, as shown in the first chart, expands this into four quadrants according to how our brain is structured. The two left hand quadrants (A and B) are the left brain quadrants and the two right hand quadrants (D and C) are the right brain quadrants. The two upper quadrants (A and D) are the cerebral "thinking" quadrants and the two lower quadrants are the limbic "feeling" quadrants.

According to extensive research by Herrmann Asia, over 90% of large corporations in Australia and Asia have strong thinking preferences in the A quadrant (concerned mostly with facts, efficiencies, technology, performance, measurement and objectives) and the B quadrant (concerned mostly with form, methods, risk reduction, control, timing and policy). A much smaller percentage are as competent in the D quadrant (concerned mostly with innovation, new concepts, future, strategy, the big picture, competition, Vision and purpose) and very few are as competent in the C quadrant (concerned mostly with feelings, communicating, dealing with people, culture, values and people development).



Firstly, Western business is dominated by men. A major study by Kevin Ho, undertaken as part of his doctoral dissertation clearly shows that women are significantly more right brained than men. It would seem that women really are from Venus.

The study is reported in Ned Herrmann's book "The Creative Brain"; it was of 7989 individuals, approximately one third of whom were women. Ho was careful not to have any bias due to qualifications or occupations. The second chart shows the Herrmann thinking preferences for men (see the blue line) and women (see the red line).



Quadrant D is a measure of creativity and in Ho's study women scored an average of 79.1 compared with men at 73.9.

Quadrant C is a measure of people skills and in Ho's study women scored an average of 74.9 compared with men at 55.5.

When these two right brain sides are combined women have an average right brain score of 102.3 compared with men of 86.0.

The current scientific explanation about the difference between men and women focuses on the fact that men have evolved as the hunters. They had to concentrate on hunting the prey, a risky task that has required them to develop a sense for risk and aggression. While men hunted, the women collected food around the dwellings and organised activities around the home. Unlike the men, they moved between a number of activities. While men executed their task as hunters in silence, the women always had others around to share their joy, sorrow and problems. It is therefore self-explanatory that women could give vent to their emotions and communicate well with others.

Because of these beginnings, today, men demonstrate a preference for focus, precision, directness, logic, strategy and risk while the women have a preference for organising, strategy, feelings and empathy.

The second reason

The second reason why business is dominated by the left brain is our education system. At school, by the time we are 6 years old most of the creativity has been trained out of us. When children go to school they are like question marks, by the time they leave school they are more like periods ... with all the answers. We need to learn how to look for alternatives, "both/ and" solutions but we are taught mostly analysis and "either/or thinking". In a recent study of American 18 year old students it was found that on average they had completed over 2000 examinations requiring a right or wrong answer.

Want more evidence? Reflect on the early school report of Albert Einstein. "Albert is a very poor student. He is mentally slow, unsociable, and always day dreaming. He is spoiling it for the rest of the class. It would be in the best interest for all if he were to be removed from school at once."

Although I strongly believe in left AND right brain thinking, in practice because of the bias within the environment, I often find myself forced to work in ways that correct this bias. If you'd like to discuss these matters more fully phone on 0800 4 virtual.

The difference between left and right brain thinking and why it matters

In 1981 Roger Sperry received the Nobel Prize in Physiology "for his discoveries concerning the functional specialisation of the cerebral hemispheres". Sperry, his student Michael Gazzinga and the neurosurgeon Joseph Bogden, performed the first 'split brain operation', and can be credited with some of the most important insights we have of the physiology of the brain today. They found that the left side of the brain is concerned with language, words, analysis, and figures. The right side is concerned with patterns, relationships, art, and music.



The left brain is the clever part. The left brain is so clever it's taken us to the moon and developed our wonderful technologies. The trouble is it's so clever that if we're not careful it will kill us off. It's the part that has developed the nuclear bomb and is in the process of polluting the world.

It's the piece of the brain that's always scheming, it never stops. Its the bit that wakes you up in the middle of the night with this wonderful idea that in the morning never looks quite so good. This part of our brain is like a bossy manager who needs to be in control, demands to be heard and thinks he is the only one with any ideas. Indeed it so bossy that sometimes when it is scheming, worrying or thinking in the middle of the night, even the best strategies are insufficient to keep it under control and quiet. For example, sometimes I try to get back to sleep by counting down slowly from 20 to 0, relaxing more after each number, but unless I'm totally disciplined, in between the numbers my left brain will race off on to some new subject.

The left brain is a straight line calculator that deals in words and numbers, likes things in sequence and has a need to explain things rationally and a need to always be in control. It likes logic and things that are 100% correct. It has trouble dealing with ambiguity, partial truth and uncertainty. It needs to be right and it needs to be 100 percent right. If something is only partly right, even if it is only slightly wrong, the left brain is inclined to reject the whole notion rather than play with the idea and work with it to see what can be extracted from the good parts.

This is why it's so important to set up conditions and expectations in creativity sessions, so that things can be wrong or at least partly wrong, we need to change the inclination to reject the whole notion, by playing with ideas and using words like: "that's interesting".



Most religions are least partly based on trying to slow down and control the left brain. In essence this is the purpose of prayer and meditation. The act of creativity is largely based on practices which are designed to fool the left brain into slowing down or turning off. These include such things as non- dominant handwriting, analogue drawings, brain gym, telling stories, colour and drawing techniques, meditation, lateral thinking techniques, random word association and starting at the end and working back towards the start.

The right brain, on the other hand, has no need to be in control. It is an image processor, it deals with pictures and emotions, feelings and relationships. It is creative, intuitive, trusting. It is far better connected to the enormous power of the subconscious than the left brain. Compared with the subconscious, the conscious mind is very limited and yet this is where most of us try to solve their problems.

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