Creative Solutions
In today’s incredibly challenging world publishers and salespeople are constantly looking for creative solutions to difficult problems. It begins with how we think. Are we utilizing our entire brain capacity to come up with innovative ways to thrive in a time of chaos? I think you’ll find this article to be useful. For more information on how to apply these concepts to increase sales, contact
ksimonsen@mediagrowth.com, 530-268-4717.
The Conceptual Age
By: Ed Simonsen
I’nst it inrtseenitg taht, eevn tgohuh the mldide lttrees in msot of the wrdos of tihs sceentne are mxeid up, it is sltil psibosle to raed and usrdtenand the mgsasee qilukcy and wtuohit too mcuh tburloe.
Though it might appear that the proofreading for this article was outsourced to a developing country using English as a second language, that’s not what’s happening here. You’ve just been encouraged to solve a problem by using a portion of your brain that is not normally associated with the ability to read - the right hemisphere of the cerebrum. As long as the first and last letters of each word are in the correct position, and the words form an intelligible sentence, the right hemisphere can see beyond the details and use context to help the left hemisphere decode the message. Was the process easy for you, or did it hurt?
Pain not withstanding, it could be in the best interest of your career to focus your right
hemisphere on forces that may be reshaping business success today, all around the world.
A few decades ago, innovative workers in America avoided an economic disaster. Realizing they couldn’t compete with cheaper factory labor from overseas, they embraced change, re-tooled their skills and introduced the Information Age. This creative class of knowledge workers applied its own brand of creativity and produced technological innovations that propelled the nation to record employment and profit levels in the late 1990s. Engineers, programmers, financiers, educators, attorneys and business leaders revitalized the country’s threatened economy. What will we do to meet today’s dramatic changes?
Daniel H. Pink’s book, A Whole New Mind, asserts that it was the computer-like creativity of the left hemisphere (Left-directed thinking) that produced the jobs, wealth and abundance of the Information Age. Americans must now shift to Right-directed thinking, which will result in products and services that consumers desire. It’s a popular misconception that people are either “right-brained” and creative, or “left-brained” and logical. Actually, the two hemispheres work in conjunction, with the collaboration directed by one side or the other. Thinking directed by the left hemisphere is logical, linear, and analytical, functioning best in the realm of detail - words, numbers and time. Thinking directed by the right hemisphere is intuitive, holistic and simultaneous, dealing best with the big picture – context, emotion and space. Research indicates we each operate somewhere on a continuum between R- and L-directed functioning and that we are not locked in place, but can strengthen our capabilities in either direction with attention and practice.
Pink explores the need to design products for significance and not just utility, the power of telling stories, the effectiveness of looking for connections between seemingly unrelated ideas to create totally new ones, the value of intuition and the understanding of what another is feeling, the use of laughter and fun to increase productivity, and the ability to elicit joy in others by providing purpose and meaning. He predicts that many Americans will apply R-directed thinking in ways like these and be rewarded for it in what he calls the Conceptual Age.
Professor Gwen Amos of California State University, Sacramento says. “We all begin life as very creative, right-brain thinkers, but we don’t get the practice that we need to develop. Our education system has been oriented to the aptitudes of the left-brain, designed to be orderly and neat while creativity is messy and often appears to be out of control. According to Amos, design should be a required course in school because it teaches visual literacy. “The design process requires that we look at every problem from at least five or six different points of view, and that we don’t pass judgment or make decisions too quickly,” she says.
R-directed thinking enriches facts by presenting them in a meaningful context that
communicates the big picture. Lists of facts can be manipulated by a computer or by a
technician in another culture – that’s L-directed. But the value of putting those facts into
a context, delivered with emotional impact that can help convince someone to hire
someone else – that’s another story entirely.
R-directed thinking can also be exercised to combine seemingly unrelated facts and ideas to come up with something entirely new. It sees relationships, discovers patterns and makes analogies. Telling stories is a great way to use the right brain.
Dr. Jerry Estenson is a content coordinator for an executive leadership-development program. He is interested in using creative environments to foster learning. “...We provide environmentally challenging situations such as mountain emergency rescue training, high ropes courses or sculling races to get them to listen to the input of others and to think differently about their specific situations.” Estenson is concerned that too many American workers are not seeing the need to constantly be pushing their skills to the next level.
Professor Amos worries that sellers of the creative product are often too L-directed. “Many don’t understand how designers work and hesitate to climb out on the limb where we like to be,” she says. “They think we’re having too much fun. They fear the risks, the mistakes, the frustrations – all the things that lead to solutions, the fruit. We’re working to change this. MBA people, especially, will benefit from learning to develop their R-directed creativity.”
Of course, all this emphasis on R-directed thinking is not meant to imply that any direction from the left side is undesirable. Jerry Estenson is quick to say that the answer is found, not in the extremes, but rather, in balance. “Competent leaders must balance the aesthetics and the numbers. But considering the left-leaning nature of education and
business, it can be extremely valuable “to rethink what you know and stop being a prisoner of ‘used to do’.”
It is almost cliché to talk about how the world is changing and what we must think and do to keep up with or get ahead of the wave. A few years ago a famous computer ad encouraged us all to “Think Different”. In order to return to a profitable balance in American business, an update of that slogan for the years to come just might be, “Tnhik Rhgit”.
Left Hemispheric Right Hemispheric
Functions: Functions:
Controls right side Controls left side
of the body of the body
Deals with inputs Integrates many inputs
one at a time at once
Processes information in a Processes information more
linear and sequential manner diffusely and simultaneously
Deals with time Deals with space
Does logical and analytical Does intuitive and holistic
thinking thinking
Responsible for verbal Responsible for gestures, facial
expression and language movement and body language
Recognizes words and Recognizes faces, objects and
numbers music
The seat of reason The seat of passion and dreams
Computer engineers, writers Artists, counselors, craftsman,
accountants, doctors musicians, designers
Sousa, D. R. (1995). How the Brain Learns. Reston, VA: NASSP
R-directed suggestions from the experts…
1. Practice writing/telling very short stories.
2. Occasionally re-examine what you know to be true.
3. Make different and more creative mistakes.
4. Take responsibility and stop blaming.
5. Develop oral communication skills.
6. Try to embrace the differences of others.
7. Say Thanks. Gratitude works.
8. Get along with others on the team.
9. Balance WIIFM with others’ goals.
10. Always have a skill development goal.
Gwen Amos, Jerry Estenson, Lynn Marks, Daniel Pink, Helen Scully
A Quick Measure of Your Hemisphere Dominance
The total number of the following statements that apply
to you will place you on a scale from 0 (quite L-directed) to 15 (quite R-directed).
1. You’re often running late for appointments.
2. You’ve always preferred essay over multiple-choice tests.
3. You have “hunches” and act on them when making decisions.
4. You feel comfortable multi-tasking.
5. You were better at Geometry than Algebra in school.
6. You explain by giving the main point first than filling in the details.
7. You don’t have “a place for everything and keep everything in its place.”
8. You read the instruction manual as a last resort.
9. You usually got the right answer in math but couldn’t explain how.
10. You’re usually excited and not frightened by major life changes.
11. You respond less to the words and more to how something is said.
12. You do your best thinking walking or lying down – not sitting.
13. You’d have trouble talking if you couldn’t gesture with your hands.
14. You don’t begin reading a magazine on page one, but skipped right to the most interesting page.
15. You have difficulty telling how much time has gone by without a watch.
Dr. Carolyn Hopper, Middle Tennessee State University
Author