(Thought for the day... And possibly week)
Do you think enough about how you think? I know that sounds slightly ridiculous but
it's quite important.
There's a lot going around the blogosphere about how and
why humans need to rediscover being human.
This is because, as a race, we've now created our own competition in the
form of artificial intelligence (clever humans). Listen to experts like the recently passed
Stephen Hawkins and the real-world manifestation of Ironman that is Elon Musk
and you would be encouraged to believe we've finally invented something that
can erase us from the planet. Perhaps,
perhaps not, but robots and AI definitely have the potential to break the
economic rule that says growth in the productivity of economies leads to
increased wages and therefore more spending power to drive consumer spending.
The other thing we know robots can definitely do better
than humans are repeatable, tedious tasks; you know, like the hundred or so ones that people do in the office, like
populating forms, crunching data in spreadsheets, producing legal papers and
writing articles like this one. Funny
thing is, you don't actually know whether it was me who wrote this article or
whether I had Encanvas produce it.
And while all of this automation and computing is going on, Otto Sharmer and 'guru's like him are tearing up the conferencing circuit waking executives up to the fact that they don't habitually take in those sparkly fresh ideas with an open mind.... Nope. Most of us are way too quick to 'download' new thinking only to put it into a familiar box. Sharmer argues that those businesses in need of transformation require someone at the helm that does something more than just drop new ideas into old boxes. Afterall, the boys and girls in the fresh fruit markets can sort oranges and apples into the most appropriate box! You're not exactly leadership material nowadays if that's all you know.
As a consultant I'm often speaking to clients about single loop and double loop learning - what the remarkable knowledge management 'guru' Dr. Martin Vasey described as the difference between 'doing things better' and doing better things'. With double-loop learning you really do need humans that bounce ideas around the room (or stick them to walls with PostIt Notes) and are prepared to look beyond how processes work. There was a time for LEAN - when most manufacturing firms really were shoody at repeatedly making products of a high quality. It's now past. If you can't make a decent produce at a market ready price, you're either dead or dying. That's not a watering hole you want to stick around for too long! Yep, douple-loop learning is where it's at, and to do that you need people that think differently.
Naturally, when for decades society has tried really hard to drive the creative types and people with Asbergers (who really do think differently) to the very back of the class, pasting stickers on the back of their shirts like "Here sits an idiot that doesn't follow rules", suddenly these weird - rare kids- have become the nerdy saviour of man-kind. And it's not because they've suddenly learnt how to think linial. No, it's because he or she is a creative thinker that's always comfortable to take risks, question the norms, strive for perfection, because they've never fitted in and so it doesn't feel any different.
So how do you think?
There's actually a name for it... you know, the act of thinking about thinking. It's called metacognition (yup, you can genuinely learn something new everyday).
'Course, Albert Einstein has been misquoted about a million times for saying something like, 'We can not solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.' And he's right.
It's a really useful skill to be able to apply different kinds of thinking, new patterns and shapes to the way we absorb information and rationalise it. Bear in mind, I'm not saying I can do it.
I describe myself as a curvy thinker. I know a lot of straight line thinkers (and boy gosh, they're useful when you need to map a process or step through a problem one step at a time!). but they're less useful when you need off-the-wall thoughts (nice lyric, Michael Jackson). Most people are too constrained by their environment and their education to do anything else but linial thinking. Businesses need all sorts of thinkers - but in a world of transformation and AI robots, it's the creative thinking of humans that sets us apart. Robots are GREAT linial thinkers.
Having the ability to adapt how we think, to NOT think in a linial way, could be the main reason why humans retain a role in the workplace.
So grab your mouse and click on metacognition and see where it takes you. A new idea perhaps?
Ian
