#Future-fit leaders dance between left and right brain thinking
Future-fit leaders increase their cognitive, emotional and energetic complexity to be more of a match for the complexity of the world and the business situations it serves up. In this series, we are exploring the channels along which that inner development occurs. This channel is about transcending the tendency in business to over-rely on left brain thinking, especially when making decisions that have a far-reaching impact.
Here’s an oldie but a goodie by Oliver Wendell Holmes. He said:
“I would not give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity. But I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.”
That's what this particular aspect of being a future fit leader is about. It's about being complexity fit: being able to work with the complexity and through the complexity to the clarity and the simplicity on the other side. Not the kind that belies complexity by narrowing it down into a manageable channel of concern, but the kind that can also look at the interconnected, constantly evolving whole.
Left brain over right brain. That’s our current business culture. Analytics, logic, straight-line thinking and a focus on creating controls and measures. That’s what we privilege in business today. It’s a way to dumb down complexity to something more manageable, which is completely understandable, but has obvious drawbacks. Take the scientific method, for example. To use the scientific method the first thing you do is to narrow your focus. You must exclude things and not just a few. You must exclude a whole lot of things to apply this kind of structured, linear, cause and effect exploration. There’s nothing wrong with this, as long as it’s not the only kind of thinking we count as valid when we make business decisions. When we do, we can somehow convince ourselves that putting a nuclear power plant on the beach on an earthquake fault line is a good decision, as we did with the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan. Without considering the whole, a specialty of the right brain, we make devastating business decisions.
In most businesses we let right brain thinking in, but usually only for innovation initiatives, marketing, and other “creative” endeavors. For our whole-world-connected context, for our day and age, we need to “and” it. Left brain and right brain. Both are needed, especially among leaders whose business decisions often impact the wider world.
Much of our thinking about the left brain functions being located physically in the left hemisphere meat of the brain and the opposite for the right turns out not to be so. The features, functions, capabilities, and limitations of each are physically scattered throughout the brain. Left and right brain are participants in both analytical and imaginative thinking. Where they differ greatly is the data set they can work on.
The left brain works by reducing complexity down to a narrow data set to analyze something we already know is important. It can create great precision and even strive toward perfection, but only in the realm of the known knowns. The right brain works with an unbounded data set by sensing, tasting, feeling, looking at everything about the topic and everything in the interconnections around the topic. It is able to detect the slightest wobble in working relationships. It can work with metaphor, imagery and envisioning a never-before-seen future. It is vigilant to detect anything that is not expected or consistent with the context. The left brain narrows, the right brain connects. The best thinker I know of on this subject is Iain McGilchrist. He has a short animated video on exactly this.
Once upon a time, I wrote a book. At the outset of that endeavor, an author friend of mine gave me some advice. He said, “Never let your writer and your editor be in the room at the same time.” He was, of course, referring to the writer and the editor inside me. At the same time, I got introduced to the idea of ultradian rhythms. Blood circulation, hormones for digestion and your pulse are examples of ultradian rhythms. So is mental performance. The rhythm of performance is about 90 minutes “on” and 20 minutes “off.” If you start tracking this, you may find this is true for you. It was for me. When I sat down to write, I tracked how long I could write before my eyes started to glaze over or before I started to lose my train of thought. It was about 90 minutes. I could power through the 20 minute recovery period but I quickly found this was foolish. I was just not sharp enough to write well during the recovery time, so I learned to rest. The rest was often a nap. During the nap, I learned how to use breath and body work to help my brain switch to the kind of thinking I would need for the next 90 minutes – was it the narrow focus left-brain editor or the free thinking right-brain writer? It turns out that the brain also has an ultradian rhythm. There is a natural alternation between the left and right hemispheres of the brain that occurs in cycles of 90 - 200 minutes during the day. One takes the lead. I was able to use the 20 minute ultradian healing period not only to rest and restore, but also to set my brain up for the type of mental acuity I needed next. Breath and body work to activate different parts of the brain is ancient wisdom being supported by modern science.
It is possible to be in a conscious dance with left and right brain thinking. It is possible to set your brain into the mode that will best benefit the upcoming task. At the very least, it is beneficial to take note of the 20 minute troughs of performance and rest rather than power through. This is an important part of daily healing that we often do not allow ourselves, and that contributes to disastrous thinking and decision making. Just that rest will expand your ability to become more conscious of the dance and the need for both kinds of thinking.
Back to complexity. Left to its own, the natural world is already complex. With the information boom and exponentiality of technology, our human-made world is becoming more complex every day. It's true that we have created an enormously complex world for ourselves to live in and operate businesses in. Add to this the pace of change, which is also on an exponential curve. I have heard it said that the pace of change will never be slower than it is today. Buckle up. We are in for quite a ride. It seems that we leaders need to step up our right brain game pretty quick.
Picking up the beauty of a confoundingly complex world,
seeing it through the eyes of wholeness,
expressing it in art, music, poetry,
allowing it to penetrate us
as it informs us
and then moves us to something new from some unexpected connection.
That's the power of right brain thinking.
If that poetic moment is a little too esoteric we can back off a bit. Let's just look at the benefits of right brain thinking to bring that out of the box breakthrough, the one that bursts forth from the box we put ourselves in via left brain thinking.
The power and the benefit of right brain thinking to see the interconnections between related and seemingly unrelated items to inform a brand new option. To witness the smallness of our own thinking and expand our minds to take in more, as much as we possibly can. In short, to work with WHAT IS rather than narrowing it to what we think we can handle. These are the hallmarks of right brain thinking.
Left brain and right brain thinking.
The two together may deliver us to the simplicity on the other side of complexity.
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