A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future (9 page)

W
HAT DOES
all this mean for you and me? How can we prepare ourselves for the Conceptual Age? On one level, the answer is straightforward. In a world tossed by Abundance, Asia, and Automation, in which L-Directed Thinking remains necessary but no longer sufficient, we must become proficient in R-Directed Thinking and master aptitudes that are high concept and high touch. We must perform work that overseas knowledge workers can’t do cheaper, that computers can’t do faster, and that satisfies the aesthetic, emotional, and spiritual demands of a prosperous time. But on another level, that answer is inadequate. What exactly are we supposed to do?

I’ve spent the last few years investigating that question. And I’ve distilled the answer to six specific high-concept and high-touch aptitudes that have become essential in this new era. I call these aptitudes “the six senses.” Design. Story. Symphony. Empathy. Play. Meaning. And it is to helping you understand and master these six aptitudes that I devote the second part of this book.

INTRODUCING THE SIX SENSES

I
n the Conceptual Age, we will need to complement our L-Directed reasoning by mastering six essential R-Directed aptitudes. Together these six high-concept, high-touch senses can help develop the whole new mind this new era demands.

1.
Not just function but also
DESIGN.
It’s no longer sufficient to create a product, a service, an experience, or a lifestyle that’s merely functional. Today it’s economically crucial and personally rewarding to create something that is also beautiful, whimsical, or emotionally engaging.

2. Not just argument but also
STORY.
When our lives are brimming with information and data, it’s not enough to marshal an effective argument. Someone somewhere will inevitably track down a counterpoint to rebut your point. The essence of persuasion, communication, and self-understanding has become the ability also to fashion a compelling narrative.

3. Not just focus but also
SYMPHONY.
Much of the Industrial and Information Ages required focus and specialization. But as white-collar work gets routed to Asia and reduced to software, there’s a new premium on the opposite aptitude: putting the pieces together, or what I call Symphony. What’s in greatest demand today isn’t analysis but synthesis—seeing the big picture, crossing boundaries, and being able to combine disparate pieces into an arresting new whole.

4.
Not just logic but also EMPATHY.
The capacity for logical thought is one of the things that makes us human. But in a world of ubiquitous information and advanced analytic tools, logic alone won’t do. What will distinguish those who thrive will be their ability to understand what makes their fellow woman or man tick, to forge relationships, and to care for others.

5. Not just seriousness but also PLAY.
Ample evidence points to the enormous health and professional benefits of laughter, lightheartedness, games, and humor. There is a time to be serious, of course. But too much sobriety can be bad for your career and worse for your general well-being. In the Conceptual Age, in work and in life, we all need to play.

6. Not just accumulation but also MEANING.
We live in a world of breathtaking material plenty. That has freed hundreds of millions of people from day-to-day struggles and liberated us to pursue more significant desires: purpose, transcendence, and spiritual fulfillment.

Design. Story. Symphony. Empathy. Play. Meaning. These six senses increasingly will guide our lives and shape our world. Many of you no doubt welcome such a change. But to some of you, this vision might seem dreadful—a hostile takeover of normal life by a band of poseurs in black unitards who will leave behind the insufficiently arty and emotive. Fear not. The high-concept, high-touch abilities that now matter most are fundamentally human attributes. After all, back on the savannah, our cave-person ancestors weren’t taking SATs or plugging numbers into spreadsheets. But they were telling stories, demonstrating empathy, and designing innovations. These abilities have always comprised part of what it means to be human. But after a few generations in the Information Age, these muscles have atrophied. The challenge is to work them back into shape. (That’s the idea behind the Portfolio section at the end of each chapter. This collection of tools, exercises, and further reading materials will send you on your way to developing a whole new mind.) Anyone can master the six Conceptual Age senses. But those who master them first will have a huge advantage. So let’s get started.

Four

DESIGN

T
he late Gordon MacKenzie, a longtime creative force at Hallmark Cards, once told a story that quickly entered the folklore among designers. MacKenzie was a public-spirited fellow who often visited schools to talk about his profession. He’d open each talk by telling students he was an artist. Then he’d look around the classroom, notice the artwork on the walls, and wonder aloud who created the masterpieces.

“How many artists are there in the room?” MacKenzie would ask. “Would you please raise your hands?”

The responses always followed the same pattern. In kindergarten and first-grade classes, every kid thrust a hand in the air. In second-grade classes, about three-fourths of the kids raised their hands, though less eagerly. In third grade, only a few children held up their hands. And by sixth grade, not a single hand went up. The kids just looked around to see if anybody in the class would admit to what they’d now learned was deviant behavior.

Designers and other creative types repeated MacKenzie’s tale—often over drinks, usually in a wistful tone—to show how little the wider world valued their work. And when MacKenzie related the story himself to large audiences, people would slowly shake their heads. What a shame, they would mutter. Too bad, they would cluck. But their reaction was, at most, a lament.

In fact, they should have been outraged. They should have raced to their local school and demanded an explanation. They should have consoled their children, confronted the principal, and ousted the school board. Because MacKenzie’s story is not some teary saga about underfunded art programs.

It is a cautionary tale for our times.

The wealth of nations and the well-being of individuals now depend on having artists in the room. In a world enriched by abundance but disrupted by the automation and outsourcing of white-collar work, everyone, regardless of profession, must cultivate an artistic sensibility. We may not all be Dali or Degas. But today we must all be designers.

It’s easy to dismiss design—to relegate it to mere ornament, the prettifying of places and objects to disguise their banality. But that is a serious misunderstanding of what design is and why it matters—especially now. John Heskett, a scholar of the subject, explains it well: “[D]esign, stripped to its essence, can be defined as the human nature to shape and make our environment in ways without precedent in nature, to serve our needs and give meaning to our lives.”
¹

Look up from this page and cast your eyes around the room you’re in. Everything in your midst has been designed. The typeface of these letters. The book you hold in your hands. The clothes that cover your body. The piece of furniture on which you’re sitting. The building that surrounds you. These things are part of your life because someone else imagined them and brought them into being.

Design is a classic whole-minded aptitude. It is, to borrow Heskett’s terms, a combination of
utility
and
significance.
A graphic designer must whip up a brochure that is easy to read. That’s utility. But at its most effective, her brochure must also transmit ideas or emotions that the words themselves cannot convey. That’s significance. A furniture designer must craft a table that stands up properly and supports its weight (utility). But the table must also possess an aesthetic appeal that transcends functionality (significance). Utility is akin to L-Directed Thinking; significance is akin to R-Directed Thinking. And, as with those two thinking styles, today utility has become widespread, inexpensive, and relatively easy to achieve—which has increased the value of significance.

“I think designers are the alchemists of the future.”

—
RICHARD KOSHALEK,

president,

Art Center College

of Design

Design—that is, utility enhanced by significance—has become an essential aptitude for personal fulfillment and professional success for at least three reasons. First, thanks to rising prosperity and advancing technology, good design is now more accessible than ever, which allows more people to partake in its pleasures and become connoisseurs of what was once specialized knowledge. Second, in an age of material abundance, design has become crucial for most modern businesses—as a means of differentiation and as a way to create new markets. Third, as more people develop a design sensibility, we’ll increasingly be able to deploy design for its ultimate purpose: changing the world.

I saw all three of these reasons converge one brisk February morning, half a block from Independence Hall in downtown Philadelphia, at a place that Gordon MacKenzie must be smiling down on from heaven.

I
T'S 10 A.M.
in Mike Reingold’s design studio. As soothing music is piped through the air, one student is posing on a chair that sits atop a table, while her nineteen classmates sketch her form on their large drawing pads. The scene is straight out of a tony arts academy, except for one thing: the young men and women sketching away are all tenth-graders, and most of them come from some of the roughest neighborhoods in Philadelphia.

Welcome to CHAD—the Charter High School for Architecture and Design—a tuition-free Philadelphia public school that is demonstrating the power of design to expand young minds, while also puncturing the myth that design is the province of a select few.

Before they came to CHAD as ninth-graders, most of these students had never taken an art class, and one-third read and did math at a third-grade level. But now, if they follow the route of those in the senior class, 80 percent of them will go on to two- or four-year colleges—and some of them will enroll at places like the Pratt Institute and the Rhode Island School of Design.

When it was founded in 1999 as the country’s first public high school with a design-centered curriculum, CHAD’s goal wasn’t merely to train a new generation of designers and to diversify a largely white profession. (Three out of four CHAD students are African-American; 88 percent are racial minorities.) The aim was also to use design to teach core academic subjects. Students here spend 100 minutes each day in a design studio. They take courses in architecture, industrial design, color theory, and painting. But equally important, the school marries design to math, science, English, social studies, and other subjects. For example, when they study the Roman Empire, rather than only read about the Roman water delivery process, the students build a model aqueduct. “They’re learning to bring disparate things together to a solution. That’s what designers do,” says Claire Gallagher, a former architect who previously served as the school’s supervisor of curriculum and instruction. “Design is interdisciplinary. We’re producing people who can think holistically.”

One student who has flourished in this whole-minded atmosphere is Sean Canty, a junior. He’s a smart, skinny kid who is as poised as a veteran designer, yet as gangly as a typical sixteen-year-old. When I talk to him after classes let out, he tells me that in his rough-and-tumble middle school, “I was the kid who always sketched in class. I was the kid who was always good in art class. But you’re always the oddball because the artistic person in the classroom is the weird one.” Since enrolling as a freshman, he has found his comfort zone and gained a range of experience unusual for someone his age. He interns two afternoons a week at a local architecture firm. He’s traveled to New York to design a poster with the help of an architect mentor he met through CHAD. He’s built models of “two cool towers” he’d like to see constructed one day. Yet Canty says the most important thing he’s learned at CHAD is broader than any particular skill: “I’ve learned how to work with people and how to be inspired by other people.”

“Good design is a renaissance attitude that combines technology, cognitive science, human need, and beauty to produce something that the world didn’t know it was missing.”