A WHOLE NEW FIND INSIDE A WHOLE NEW MIND
Books abound but time does not. So much to read yet so little RAM. Welcome to my world.
As sad as that reality is, occasionally you come across a book that is a true standout. A book that moved you when you first read it and it continues to move you today. Such has been the case with Daniel H. Pink’s book, A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age (New York: Riverhead Books, 2005). I read the book when it was first published, but I find myself constantly rereading it. So much of exactly what we see societally, technologically, economically, commercially, nationally, globally, institutionally, demographically, dynamically, culturally, and relationally continues to play itself out as Pink articulated 13 years ago. My excitement over Pink’s book during my first read is only exceeded by the excitement of my recent rereads.
My contention is that Pink’s book captures the foundational blueprint of where our world is today and where it must go. If you are willing to read the book, you will position yourself and your organization for greater success in the challenging and exciting future we face. Understanding the trends of the future allows us to participate in that future.
While I can in no way do justice to the writings of Pink, I would like to offer some words of review, response, and recommendation that might inspire you to give it a read yourself. This article will give you the key points of the book. Nevertheless, don’t allow this to rob you of the joy of reading the book in all its depth for yourself.
Seismic Shifts Underway
In studying who we are as a people, Pink describes 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, computerlike 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.” (pp. 1–2)
I resonate with Pink’s thesis, especially because I have had the privilege of engaging in both the hard science and technology world and in the soft creative, holistic, artistic, and philosophical world. I believe that people who want to remain on the cutting edge of their field must maintain an awareness of both worlds. Although many have imposed immoveable boundaries between the two, much insight and appreciation arises when we can erase that boundary.
Very much related to the above, Pink discusses classical left-brain thinking versus right-brain thinking. Some people are very gifted with their left-brain talents and thereby remain extremely proficient in technical fields. Other people are very gifted with their right-brain talents and thereby remain extremely proficient in the arts and related fields. No harm exists here because people are excelling in their areas of interest and capability.
What I love about Pink’s thesis is the challenge that we recognize the seismic shift under our feet today. I see it as a professional and societal redemption. I have seen too many folks in the left-brained arena alienate the right-brained arena, and vice versa. My position has always been that both sides are needed and both sides bring much value to the table. The tragedy happens when one side continually excludes the other.
Science and technology alone, as massively important as they are, will never serve humanity optimally in isolation. The arts and softer sciences alone, as massively important as they are, will never serve humanity optimally in isolation. In fact, some of the most exciting projects I have ever seen are those in which we experience a marvelous melding of the two worlds. That seems to be happening with increasing frequency, and it confirms the seismic shift about which Pink talks. I say, let us keep it going!
Time To Change Drivers
In discussing left-brain thinking versus right-brain thinking, Pink explains the legitimacy of both. He further clarifies that our society has elevated left-brain thinking at the expense of right-brain thinking, but the pendulum is about to swing in the opposite direction:
“Of course, we need both approaches in order to craft fulfilling lives and build productive, just societies. But the mere fact that I feel obliged to underscore that obvious point is perhaps further indication of how much we’ve been in the thrall of reductionist, binary thinking. Despite those who have deified the right brain beyond all scientific evidence, there remains a strong tilt toward the left. Our broader culture tends to prize L-Directed Thinking [left-brain thinking] more highly than its counterpart, taking this approach more seriously and viewing the alternative as useful but secondary. 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.” (p. 27)
Pink is right. We do need both types of thinking to achieve balance in our world. Nevertheless, for too long we have sanctified the empirical at the expense of the sensing and the feeling. While not in any way degrading or minimizing the empirical, we absolutely must restore the sensing and the feeling to its rightful place. This means in our personal lives, our professional lives, our business lives, and our institutional lives.
As I reflect upon my life, which originally began very heavily immersed in the scientific community, I recall that I absolutely loved being around likeminded people. Unfortunately for me, this congregating sometimes occurred at the expense of broadening and deepening my knowledge from some other right-brained perspectives. Slowly, I began to realize that some of my greatest intellectual insights and personal and professional growth moments happened when engaged with a right-brained thinker.
In a similar manner, Pink is urging us to embrace equally both sides of the human brain. We need to embrace fully the left-brain approach to knowledge and we need to embrace fully the right-brain approach to knowledge. Only in so doing will we maximize our communal knowledge.
Pink takes this a step further by correctly affirming the right-brain thinking has some overdue exposure coming. If we miss that opportunity, then we will all suffer. Moreover, not only is all that true, claims Pink, but he further asserts given our current position in knowledge evolution, we absolutely must embrace this future.
I buy into Pink’s argument. Not only do I buy into it, I find it assures me of a marvelously exciting future because I am one who is willing to make the needed transitions. How about you?
Our Search For Meaning Continues
In developing his thesis, Pink shares some extremely relevant ideas about the age in which we live. We are, in fact, living in an age of abundance. Automation, technology, and prosperity have taken us to the place where it is never a matter of finding an electric toothbrush. It is instead a matter of deciding which one to choose.
As wonderful as the creature comforts are, the age of abundance reveals a hidden stress. Physical or financial abundance do not translate to personal fulfillment or a sense of life purpose as Pink elaborates:
“The paradox of prosperity is that while living standards have risen steadily decade after decade, personal, family, and life satisfaction haven’t budged. That’s why more people—liberated by prosperity but not fulfilled by it—are resolving the paradox by searching for meaning.” (p. 35)
On the most fundamental, philosophical level, your spiritual or religious convictions and beliefs should sustain you in this search for meaning. These things drive us and support us at the core of our being. I know that mine certainly work for me. If yours are not working for you, then a reexamination of them is dearly needed.
Beyond that, on a human business level, these search-for-meaning dynamics powerfully come into play. That is exactly what Pink is saying to support his larger argument. Everything about how we do business, run our companies, and design our products and services must reach out to this core human need for meaning:
“In an age of abundance, appealing only to rational, logical, and functional needs is woefully insufficient. Engineers must figure out how to get things to work. But if those things are not also pleasing to the eye or compelling to the soul, few will buy them. There are too many other options. Mastery of design, empathy, play, and other seemingly ‘soft’ aptitudes is now the main way for individuals and firms to stand out in a crowded marketplace.” (p. 34)
I predict that some companies are going to capture Pink’s message and fundamentally change the way they do business. Some companies already have made the shift. I also predict that some companies will reject Pink’s message. In so doing, they will encounter their undoing.
Just as every “buy” decision is emotionally based, so too, every company that builds that quality into its products and services will find more buyers. For those parties, the age of abundance will continue and so too, will a sense of meaning.
We Will Adjust
Pink references business globalization’s irreversibility as part of the larger canvas upon which he paints his picture of the future. Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age is happening partially because of business globalization’s irreversibility. Although some have denounced this development as purely an attack upon American jobs, Pink views it as a natural order of positive progression. It is not that America will just lose jobs, but more importantly that the nature of American jobs will evolve with the times and the technologies. Some jobs will disappear, but they will be replaced by other jobs more suited to newer technological opportunities:
“Much of the anxiety over this issue outstrips the reality. We are not all going to lose our jobs tomorrow. Outsourcing is overhyped in the short term. But it’s underhyped in the long term. As the cost of communicating with the other side of the globe falls essentially to zero, and as developing nations continue to mint millions of extremely capable knowledge workers, the working lives of North Americans, Europeans, and Japanese people will change dramatically. … Just as … factory workers had to master a new set of skills and learn how to bend pixels instead of steel, many of today’s knowledge workers will likewise have to command a new set of aptitudes. They’ll need to do what workers abroad cannot do equally well for much less money—using R-Directed abilities [right-brain thinking] such as forging relationships rather than executing transactions, tackling novel challenges instead of solving routine problems, and synthesizing the big picture rather than analyzing a single component.” (pp. 39–40)
Just as moving from the agricultural age to the industrial age meant that the nature of work changed for most people, so too, as we move from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age, the nature of work must change. Moreover, it is the nature of this upcoming change that makes the future so exciting. That is one of Pink’s main points. The nature of work will demand more right-brain thinking. It will reward those who are able to manage the big picture to see business goals achieved.
Think about it this way: With few exceptions, if you could magically transport yourself into a workplace 500 years ago, or 100 years ago, or 30 years ago, or three years ago, would you not have a strong preference for the most modern timeframes? The reason is generally speaking, technology and communal knowledge all produce a more comfortable, enjoyable, and fulfilling workplace with greater opportunities for growth and development. (Again, I am taking the global view here. We can always find specific examples of horrific working conditions or situations in 2018.)
Ultimately, the key is for every professional to seize personal responsibility for his or her own skill acquisition. Other than me, I cannot force anyone to acquire new skills. That is a direction we each must engage. Some of us do better than others and some of us do worse, but that does not deny the point that it remains our own individual responsibility.
Changes in technology and the labor market are not always easy to navigate. Nevertheless, it can be done and thereby create a better future. We will adjust.
Program Your Future Or Be Programmed Out
Because we are indeed moving from the Information Age into the Conceptual Age, Pink contends we must assess our employment opportunities accordingly. The very nature of technology is rendering certain human skills obsolete while creating demand for different skills. I love the example Pink offers from computer programming:
“Last century, machines proved they could replace human backs. This century, new technologies are proving they can replace human left brains… . A small British company called Appligenics has created software that can write software. Where a typical human being … can write about four hundred lines of computer code per day, Appligenics applications can do the same work in less than a second. The result: as the scut work gets off-loaded, engineers and programmers will have to master different aptitudes, relying more on creativity than competence, more on tacit knowledge than technical manuals, and more on fashioning the big picture than sweating the details.” (pp. 44–45)
This example powerfully illustrates the ongoing need we have to reinvent ourselves at strategic moments in our careers. Just because I have certain skillsets with which I started my working life does not guarantee that those skillsets will sustain me productively for my entire working life. With all the technological quantum leaps and the corresponding sweeping changes in industry, no one can ever afford to grow complacent.
Unfortunately, that is exactly what has made the last couple decades of economic and employment change so difficult for so many. The baby boomers along with some additional demographic segments have been so accustomed to an older economic and employment model, that complacency was almost the norm. These sweeping changes caught many by surprise, resulting in tremendous personal and professional devastation. The good news is we do not have to stay there. We must commit to moving forward productively and ethically. Thomas Friedman, in his seminal work, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006), affirms it this way:
“The great challenge for our time will be to absorb these changes in ways that do not overwhelm people but also do not leave them behind. None of this will be easy. But this is our task. It is inevitable and unavoidable.” (pp. 46-47).
By becoming more proactive about how we approach our careers—and help others to approach their careers—we can see the labor force make great strides forward. Will it be easy? No. Will it do the best service to the labor force for the long run? Absolutely. And that is what we must do.
Living In A New Age
Central to the book’s premise is the progression of the last few centuries of human working history. Pink describes a movement from the Agricultural Age (1700s) in which we needed farmers, to the Industrial Age (1800s) in which we needed factory workers, to the Information Age (1900s) in which we needed knowledge workers (the left-brainers), and finally to the Conceptual Age (2000s) in which we need creators and empathizers (the right-brainers). Pink observes that as we have progressed through each of these ages, we have enjoyed a commensurate rise in affluence, technology, and globalization.
Like it or not, we are living in a new age. The affluence, the technology, and the globalization are synergistically creating a new age that places entirely new demands upon us. To look at it any other way is to be the proverbial ostrich with its head in the sand. According to Pink, the bottom line is that as professionals or as business owners, we must ask three key questions about our livelihoods:
“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?” (p. 51)
As we consider those questions, we come to realize Pink is right. Because he is right, we are moving:
“to a society of creators and empathizers, of pattern recognizers and meaning makers.” (p. 50)
I completely agree. We absolutely must embrace the new age of work and all its ramifications. If you do not want to be involved, then no need exists for you to embrace it. However, I think most serious professionals and business owners want to remain involved. The future is simply too exciting to ignore.
A Degree Of Design
As we move from the Information Age (and the corresponding need for left-brain thinking) into the Conceptual Age (and the corresponding need for right-brain thinking), Pink points out how higher education and corporate recruiting are changing:
“A master of fine arts, an MFA, is now one of the hottest credentials in a world where even General Motors is in the art business. Corporate recruiters have begun visiting the top arts grad schools—places such as the Rhode Island School of Design, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Michigan’s Cranbrook Academy of Art—in search of talent. … With applications climbing and ever more arts grads occupying key corporate positions, the rules have changed: the MFA is the new MBA.” (p. 54)
I love what Pink is asserting. Business skills are always important, but they will do more harm than good if misapplied. On the other hand, when someone can channel the business skills through the grid of the arts, design, and perceptions, then we have the opportunity to maximize our products and services. We will not just be producing products and services that speak to the bottom line. Instead, we will be holistically creating products and services that so effectively speak to the human bottom line that the corporate bottom line benefits too. Talk about a win-win solution—this is it!
Industry trends further mirror these realities, as Pink cites:
“Since 1970, the United States has 30 percent more people earning a living as writers and 50 percent more earning a living by composing or performing music. Some 240 U.S. universities have established creative writing MFA programs, up from fewer than twenty two decades ago. More Americans today work in arts, entertainment, and design than work as lawyers, accountants, and auditors.” (p. 55)
Our world will always need left-brain thinking. The important matter to remember though is that increasingly, left-brain work is being done cheaper and faster by overseas labor or stateside computers. Add to that the universal need for all people to maintain a sense of meaning, and the need for right-brain thinking is crystal clear.
Pink is correct. We increasingly need the pattern recognizers, the creators, the synthesizers, the storytellers, the empathizers, and the meaning makers. These skillsets help everyone to tie it all together. These skillsets keep us from being deluged in information yet starved for knowledge.
Let’s face it. Everyone loves a good story, and we have a marvelous one to tell.
The New Money
Pink emphasizes that a new currency has debuted:
“Baby boomers are entering the Conceptual Age with an eye on their own chronological age. They recognize that they now have more of their lives behind them than ahead of them. And such indisputable arithmetic can concentrate the mind. After decades of pursuing riches, wealth seems less alluring. For them, and for many others in this new era, meaning is the new money.” (p. 61)
I believe meaning should always be more important than money. It is especially true as we enter the Conceptual Age. Intrinsically, people do not just want to work for a wage. They want to perform work that has meaning that also happens to pay a wage. This is the ideal. It happens when your skills, interests, and passions collide with opportunity. Moreover, it has never been more important than it is today.
Indeed, meaning is the new money. I genuinely hope you are extremely rich.
The D Word
Not everyone will be successful in the Conceptual Age. It all depends on the aptitudes you bring into it. Pink identifies and defends six aptitudes that we must master to be successful in the Conceptual Age. They are:
- Design
- Story
- Symphony
- Empathy
- Play
- Meaning
Pink explains the importance of the first one, design:
“Design is a high-concept aptitude that is difficult to outsource or automate—and that increasingly confers a competitive advantage in business. Good design, now more accessible and affordable than ever, also offers us a chance to bring pleasure, meaning, and beauty to our lives.” (p. 86)
I agree with Pink’s assertion and I understand how design fits into his overall argument that we are moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age. We are more than just the data we accumulate. We need to make sense of the data and decide how it best fits into our world and how it makes our world a better place. That is where design becomes indispensable. It seems to me that moving into this new Conceptual Age, it will be those persons with design skills who will add the most value.
The good news is you do not have to be a designer to think like a designer. You can look for design opportunities in every aspect of your current role and in strategizing your future roles. Organizations can renew their emphasis on design above data. After all, it will only be those persons and those organizations who adopt design’s power who will then persist and prosper in the Conceptual Age.
Do you want to live long and prosper? Then think like a designer.
Everyone Has A Story
The second aptitude Pink says we must master to be successful in the Conceptual Age is story. Considering story, here is what I would offer.
Everyone has a story. Everyone has a story because everyone has a past. When I say everyone has a story, my implication is we have an obligation to hear that story. Failing to do so brings no good to anyone.
The greatest gift you can give to any person is to listen to his or her story. By listening to a person’s story, you are demonstrating respect, interest, concern, and affirmation. It builds relationship and connection, which are desperately needed today.
More than just listening to a person’s story—as important as that is—responding to that story is even more important. Sometimes it can be too easy just to listen without responding. That can send the wrong message. To that point, I deeply appreciate Pink’s observations involving research studies about how doctors interact with their patients:
“[About 40 years ago], when researchers videotaped doctor-patient encounters in an exam room, they found that doctors interrupted their patients after an average of twenty-one seconds. When another set of researchers repeated the study [a little over 15 years ago], doctors had improved. They now waited an average of twenty-three seconds before butting in.” (p. 110)
These are sad statistics. The good news is the latest trends are now moving in a more positive direction. This is especially important for success in the Conceptual Age:
“At Columbia, all second-year medical students take a semester in narrative medicine … [where] they learn to listen more empathically to the stories their patients tell… . The goal is empathy, which studies have shown declines in students with every year they spend in medical school. And the result is both high touch and high concept. Studying narrative helps a young doctor relate better to patients and to assess a patient’s current condition in the context of that person’s full life story.” (p. 111)
Every person has a story. Every person loves to share it. In the Conceptual Age, all of us will love to listen too.
Let’s Do Symphony
Considering symphony, another Conceptual Age proposed aptitude, here is what I would offer. A musical symphony involves many musical instruments synergistically playing to create a result that is bigger than what any individual instrument could create alone.
Symphony means while we constantly give full attention to all the minutia of the individual pieces, we do so with an overriding passion and focus toward the big picture and the composite result. Pink describes the concept of symphony this way:
“What’s in greatest demand today isn’t analysis but synthesis—seeing the big picture and, crossing boundaries, being able to combine disparate pieces into an arresting new whole.” (p. 66)
Pink further explains this aptitude against the backdrop of right-brain thinking as opposed to left-brain thinking:
“Symphony … is the ability to put together the pieces. It is the capacity to synthesize rather than to analyze; to see relationships between seemingly unrelated fields; to detect broad patterns rather than to deliver specific answers; and to invent something new by combining elements nobody else thought to pair.” (p. 126)
I believe that from the perspective of leadership opportunity, symphony’s validity is opening up remarkable new doors. Fundamentally, a large portion of leadership responsibility has always been helping your team to navigate the diverse pieces of the puzzle to achieve organizational success. With the ongoing, exponentially increasing change we face, symphony has never been more important. In fact, its importance will only increase, and that means leadership opportunities will only increase. Andy Serwer, when he was the managing editor of Fortune, expressed serious concerns about our increasing difficulties with just keeping up with technology’s growth and in particular just keeping up with the unanticipated consequences of technology’s growth (“Waiting for Datapocalypse” February 24, 2014, p. 8):
“First, the rate of change here—and by ‘here’ I mean the amount of our data and the number of our transactions occurring online—is increasing lickety-split. And second, our ability to understand and control the consequences of this increasing change is not keeping up. The consequence gap is proving highly problematic.”
Precisely because the big picture is getting bigger, we need more big-picture thinkers. Precisely because diverse disciplines and subdisciplines are arising, we need more connection makers. Precisely because technologies, demographics, cultures, and societies are creating new entities, we need more boundary crossers.
We will always need the violinist. We will always need the pianist. We will always need the drummer. That is because we will always need the experts. The experts have always remained and will remain important. Nevertheless, more than ever in the past, today we especially need the conductors—the people who truly can do “symphony.”
Let’s look for opportunities each day to do symphony. Our future success depends on it.
Seeking An Enduring Empathy
Another essential aptitude to success in the Conceptual Age is empathy. Considering just empathy, here is what I would offer. People do not care how much you know until they know how much you care. Although knowledge is power, that knowledge can never be unleashed to its full power if the receiver is not open to it. A lack of empathy will block knowledge reception.
In today’s society, as cliché as it might sound, people want to know that other people care. People need people. The best personal and professional relationships always have a strong element of empathy to them.
Pink points out that certain healthcare components can be outsourced or computerized. That is not necessarily a bad thing either. For example, medical doctors following a system of diagnostic rules help ensure treatment consistency, speed, and effectiveness, as Pink explains:
“Rules-based medicine builds on the accumulated evidence of hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of cases. It helps ensure that medical professionals don’t reinvent the therapeutic wheel with each patient. But the truth is, computers could do some of this work. What they can’t do … is to be empathic.” (pp. 162–163)
Empathy cannot be outsourced or computerized. Therefore, healthcare providers have a vital need to develop and generously offer their skill of empathy. This is not just a “feel good” strategy; something to say because it sounds nice. Rather, it derives from the intangible patient-doctor bond and it translates to a powerful force within the human soul:
“All other things being equal, [in clinical studies] a patient was more likely to get better with an empathic doctor than with a detached one.” (p. 164)
Granted, some people are more skilled or gifted at empathy than others. Nevertheless, that does not excuse any one of us from recognizing its value as we continue to shift from the Information Age into the Conceptual Age.
Playtime
When I was a kid, I believed that play, fun, and humor were things that kids should enjoy, but it was somehow wrong for adults to enjoy them. While adults might find some occasional joy in play, fun, and humor, the unspoken understanding was that doing so somehow took away from an adult’s standing. You might have your “adult card” revoked if you became involved in play, fun, and humor. Therefore, as a kid growing into adulthood, I carried this distorted awareness that I should squelch my play, fun, and humor. After all, I was destined to become a bona fide adult.
Fortunately, that spell did not last very long.
The reality of play, fun, and humor is undeniable. Play, fun, and humor bring intangible benefits to everyone involved. This is true informally among our friends and associates, but it is equally true in formal contexts. Think about how much more meaningful a business meeting was that included something fun. Some psychotherapists are now specializing in “laughter therapy” because they recognize the power of laughter to invoke healing of the mind and body.
As our rapidly changing, increasingly technological world continues to evolve, taking us relentlessly into the Conceptual Age, play will be an aptitude we absolutely cannot afford to lose. It will be what keeps us human. It will challenge our intelligence in a playful way while refreshing our soul in the process. It will bond our teams in deeper ways than any organizational chart can. Pink affirms the terrific power of play:
“Humor can be a cohesive force in organizations—as anyone who’s ever traded jokes at the water cooler or laughed over lunch with colleagues understands. Instead of disciplining the joke-cracker, as [Henry] Ford did in the last century, organizations should be seeking them out and treating a sense of humor as an asset. It’s time to rescue humor from its status as mere entertainment and recognize it for what it is—a sophisticated and peculiarly human form of intelligence that can’t be replicated by computers and that is becoming increasingly valuable in a high-concept, high-touch world.” (p. 191)
Keep playing, I say. Keep playing!
When Meaning Goes To Work
People want to go to jobs in which their full personhood is recognized. Meaning, purpose, and spirituality are affirmed when this happens. Just doing a job—any job—without a passionate sense of purpose, becomes very mundane and stressful very fast.
Pink cites a report published in 2000 by Ian Mitroff (professor at University of Southern California, Marshall School of Business) and Elizabeth Denton (independent consultant) entitled, A Spiritual Audit of Corporate America. The report chronicles insights about spirituality and meaning in the workplace based on interviewing almost 100 corporate executives. On one hand, executives did not want to offend employees and customers by not maintaining a tight leash on how people experience and express meaning in their work. On the other hand, the more employees are affirmed as holistic individuals, the more effective organizations operate:
“Executives were so understandably concerned that the language of spirit in the workplace would offend their religiously diverse employees that they scrubbed their vocabulary of all such talk. Meanwhile, Mitroff and Denton discovered, the employees were hungering to bring their spiritual values (and thus their whole person rather than one compartment of themselves) to work, but didn’t feel comfortable doing so. … You can almost picture a river of meaning and purpose being dammed outside of corporate headquarters. But here’s the kicker: if that spiritual tide had been released, the companies might have been better off. Mitroff and Denton also found that companies that acknowledged spiritual values and aligned them with company goals outperformed those that did not. In other words, letting spirituality into the workplace didn’t distract organizations from their goals. It often helped them reach those goals.” (pp. 214–215)
This is one of my convictions. When you allow people to bring the very best of themselves, in all its diversity, into the workplace, then the organization will become its very best. Yes, I recognize we must still operate the workplace in such a manner that diversity principles and best practices are fully supported. Simultaneously, within whatever wiggle room an organization might have, encouraging those expressions of personal meaning and purpose by every employee will add to the individual’s sense of fulfillment. When that occurs, then the organization and its customers will benefit.
A WHOLE NEW MIND—FINAL THOUGHTS
Early in his tome, Pink challenges us with three incredibly important questions concerning livelihood:
“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?” (p. 51)
The implications of these questions were played out in numerous scenarios throughout Pink’s analysis. As I see it, the demographics and trends, the increasingly changing technological world, business globalization’s irreversibility, and the fundamental needs, wants, and desires of people and companies require that we address these questions with our eyes wide open.
Some people will like the answers and others will not. Whether you like the answers or not, that will not change the realities of the world we live in today. The Conceptual Age is upon us. It is not going away. Its strength and significance will only grow with each passing day. Pink summarizes it this way:
“These three questions will mark the fault line between who gets ahead and who gets left behind. Individuals and organizations that focus their efforts on doing what foreign knowledge workers can’t do cheaper and computers can’t do faster, as well as on meeting the aesthetic, emotional, and spiritual demands of a prosperous time, will thrive. Those who ignore these three questions will struggle.” (p. 233)
You and I need a whole new mind if we are serious about maximizing our success and our organizations’ success in this new Conceptual Age. I meet people every day who do not want that new mind because for whatever dysfunctional worldview or ill-conceived business plan they embrace, their world does not include this kind of change. I, with Pink, predict those are the people who surely will struggle the most.
On the other hand, I meet people every day who are just as thrilled, excited, and energized as I am and as Pink is and as millions of others are. That is because we understand the truth of the Conceptual Age. I encourage you to be one of them.
Many things exist we cannot control. Nevertheless, we can control how we respond to those things. I believe the Conceptual Age will play well for those who know how to respond to it.
One way or another, the future is going to be extremely exciting. You can decide on which side of that excitement you want to be. Let’s embrace a whole new mind to choose the right side!
