A Whole New Mind or a Balanced Old One?

Recently, I attended a marketing conference session where the presenter asked his audience to raise their hands if they had read A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink. Two hands went up: his and mine. I predict that if he asks the same question a year from now he will get a very different response. Most hands will wave enthusiastically in the air.

You just have to love a writer like Pink who has the intellectual chutzpah to announce that we are moving from the Information Age and heading to a new one he has termed the Conceptual Age. His fundamental premise is that pathways to success in the old Information Age required left brain dominated forms of thinking that are linear, sequential, analytical, and fact driven. Success in the Conceptual Age will require A Whole New Mind, one that Pink calls “high concept” and “high touch”. These aptitudes are located in the brain’s right hemisphere, one that synthesizes the big picture, recognizes patterns, and discerns emotions.

Pink asserts that the Conceptual Age is being ushered in by three forces: Abundance, Asia, and Automation. He illustrates the first by comparing back to school shopping when he was a kid to those of his own kids. Growing up in Ohio, going to a JCPenney in a climate-controlled mall was a big deal for Pink. Today, his kids can choose from any number of mega shopping sites featuring the likes of Target, Staples, and Best Buy. Not only are the clothes and school supplies found there bountiful, they are also high quality and inexpensive. He observes that for most of history, and indeed still in many parts of the world, human existence was defined by scarcity. But, in the US and may parts of Europe and Asia, it is now defined by abundance.

Second, many Information Age intellectual tasks like computer programming can be done far cheaper in Asia. While it may be controversial, outsourcing jobs to destinations like India will make many white-collar Information Age skill sets obsolete.

Third, Automation has put information at our fingertips. As a consequence, Information Age knowledge workers will need to make adjustments much like blue-collar workers did in past generations. They will need to learn to produce value that computers cannot offer better, faster, or cheaper.

Abundance, Asia and Automation are the three driving forces behind this new Conceptual Age, one that will require six essential intellectual skills:

1. Design – Because of abundance product features will no longer differentiate. That will be left to product design, which will become the key to what is bought and sold.
2. Story -- As Seth Godin (All Marketers Are Liars, 2005) points out, facts alone don’t sell. Stories do.
3. Symphony -- To excel in the Conceptual Age, thinkers will need to be able to connect the dots to create something new. Or as comedy genius Sid Caesar puts it, “The guy who invented the wheel was an idiot. The guy who invented the other three, he was the genius.”
4. Empathy -- Left hemisphere knowledge workers used to demean anything that was “touchy-feely”. (Hell, they still do.) Pink gives hope that there will be a chance for payback because empathy -- the ability to feel what the other party is feeling -- is one of the six essential intellectual skills for the Conceptual Age.
5. Play – My daughter provides play therapy for her clients -- a phrase that lots of left-brain thinkers have trouble grasping. But, pardon the pun, think about it, most of our social skills are acquired through play. Pink makes the case that many Conceptual Age intellectual skills come from play as well.
6. Meaning – The Information Age saw to it that our material needs were not only met, they were met in abundance. Pink proffers that as a society we will look to climb Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and then seek greater meaning in our lives.

Everyone will benefit from reading Pink’s provocative book. But for those of us familiar with psychological type, there is a special pearl in between the covers of A Whole New Mind: The differences between left- and right-brain thinking align very closely with Jung’s theory of personality types as explicated in the MBTI.

Fundamentally, L- Directed Thinking (linear, sequential, analytical, and fact-driven) is very much like the thinking done by Sensing-Thinking types in Jung’s theory. Conversely, R- Directed Thinking (big picture, recognizes patterns, and discerns emotions) lines up very closely with the way Jung’s Intuitive-Feelers reason. Indeed, Pink’s summary phrases of “high concept” and “high touch” well describe Intuition and Feeling, respectively.

In the table below, I have listed words used to describe the different hemispheres along with the Jungian mental functions they appear to match.

Put in SST or MBTI language, L-Directed thinking, the kind that has been most common in business, is ST or Sensing-Thinking. Pick up nearly any business communication, whether it be a marketing brochure or pitch book, and analyze the messages therein. Almost exclusively they are ST (L-Directed), emphasizing the facts and logic to buy. The intellectual themes that are often neglected are those relating to NF or Intuitive-Feeling (corresponding to R-Directed Thinking) like the big picture and positive impact on people.

Those of you familiar with SST know we put an emphasis on Balancing communication -- preparing messages that appeal to all styles of thinking (Sensing, Intuition, Thinking, and Feeling). Pink’s message is very similar. Success in the Conceptual Age will require both hemispheres of the brain. Indeed, left hemisphere thinkers (Sensing- Thinking types) should prepare for pay-backs because Wired magazine proclaims that A Whole New Mind, explains “Why right-brainers will rule the future.”

The article that follows was written in 1998. It outlines the way different personality types would approach Preparing Holiday Turkeys. You might have some fun with it anew through a L- & R-brain lens.