Focus on TUSD - March 2008

New Reality Is Upon Us
A Whole New Mind: Will Right-Brainers Rule the Future?
In 2005, Daniel Pink, the former speech writer for Vice President Al Gore, burst onto the literary scene by writing "A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future." The book quickly became a sensation, vaulting to the top of the New York Times Bestseller charts. The fact that this was Pink's first major publication only added to the element of surprise.

Pink's book is both a psychology manual and rumination on the future of leadership in the United States. Very simply, Pink states that western corporations have been run by individuals who have excelled at "left-brain" thinking. That is, our leaders have been logical, analytical, linear-thinking, and obsessed with numbers. But in the future, much of this will change. CEOs and presidents of corporations will inevitably become more artistic, intuitive and empathic.

There are several reasons for this, Pink believes, in particular the influence of Asia and automation on the U.S. economy. Many of America's left-brain jobs have recently been outsourced to India and China. And those that have not been outsourced have been vaporized by the recent wave of computer automation in the corporate world. This leads to the question: are we preparing our next generation of professionals for jobs that will no longer exist on America's shores?

Pink believes that it is vital that we train our next generation of leaders in the "soft skills" that have previously been ignored by the business schools of American universities. The skills of persuasion, mediation, and intuitive problem solving, will become vital to our future success and survival. The MBA will become replaced by the MFA. Poets and architects will be seen as our new leaders and visionaries. If this viewpoint seems hyperbolic, one need only recall that Plato in his "Republic" suggested that the ideal leader would be a "philosopher king," not a politician. If America is to avoid a depth-spiral into wrongly preparing its future leaders for obsolete jobs, then, Pink insists, it must guide its future leaders into a right-brain mind set.

If this is the case, what can we do to prepare ourselves for this new age of conceptual thinking? Pink suggests that we educate our children in such areas as "empathy" and "symphony." Empathy, of course, is the capacity to look at matters through another's eyes -- hardly one of the renowned strengths of America's CEOs. Even more interestingly, he suggests a skill called "symphony," the ability to look at the big picture and (as a symphony conductor would) pull disparate pieces together into an impressive harmony.

Is all of this feasible? Or are these merely attractive sentiments that make for enjoyable reading but would never translate to the real world? Daniel Pink would suggest that the new reality is already upon us. Asia is on our shores. And computers have "cannibalized" what were once our most envied jobs. The best preparation for this new world is, it appears, to develop a whole new mind.

-- By Robert Padilla
Executive Director of the Educational Enrichment Foundation

Photos in the March issue by Jes Ruvalcaba of Communications & Media Relations, unless otherwise noted.

The deadline to submit material for the April Focus is Friday, April 11. The Focus will be published Monday, April 21. Email submissions to Chyrl Hill Lander or Sharon Dunham in the Communications & Media Relations Department or use the online Tip Sheet.