Striving towards Excellence

-Karthik Gurumurthy

On my train ride back home, I was reading an entertaining book "Whole New Mind" by Daniel Pink. The author has forecasted a subtle shift in the mindset of future leaders. According to Pink, three factors are quietly driving a huge change. These are well known and have been commented upon widely.

The first is the fact of abundance in western societies. Consumers have all that they want. Lately, they have been shifting from seeking material wants to seeking meaning in life.

The second is the rise of Asia where there is a surge of knowledge-hungry, prosperity-seeking young people. They yearn to improve their lot in life and can do all sorts of tasks at a fraction of the cost of their ' ageing, overpaid' counterparts in the West.

The third is the breakthrough in automation. Information of all kinds is available with far greater ease to every knowledge worker, thus changing forever the basic nature of job description and tasks.

After the above exposition, he forecasts a tectonic shift in the evolution of the 'ages'. We have learned in the past that agricultural age giving way to the industrial age, then to the knowledge age. According to Pink, Human society is in transition to the conceptual age currently.

In this conceptual age, the fulcrum of thinking will shift subtly from L(left) brain thinking to R (Right) brain thinking. Their relative importance will change: the two brains will not per se become more or less important. Most managers are products of the L-brained approach: analytical, logical and reductionist.

What is the R-brained approach? Creative and empathetic rather than logical and rational.  According to Pink, R-brained thinkers are more influenced by design, empathy, story, play, symphony and meaning and he goes on to describe these terms in the book.

What I understand from the reading is, we do not use one or the other brain at any point of time. Our brain switches between the left and right hemispheres automatically and our decisions and actions are based on where the fulcrum of the balance is. We have to recognize that the two hemispheres of our brain do exist and have different functions. All that we can do by becoming aware is to develop habits and skills that freely allow migration between the hemispheres.

To succeed in anything worthwhile, requires successful execution. Execution needs the involvement of three core processes.: the people process, the strategy process, and the operation process.

People process involves knowing the people and selecting your core team with care.  Strategy process is about setting the strategic direction and making sure your core team is aligned in that direction. The operations process is about having regular review of the whole process where the questions for forward movement gets asked and keeping an openness in moving forward.