2015 WORKPL ACE T R E N D S I WHOLE BRAIN THINKING: SKILL SETS FOR OUR NEW CONCEPTUAL AGE Thomas Stat, Innovation Strategist, Founder, Partner at Eleven Consulting Group Why are start-up companies able to do what many more established companies struggle to achieve? Why do some people seem more creative than others? What do play, failure and refrigerator doors devoid of middle school art have in common? The answers to these questions rest in a deeper understanding of a few core human competencies that we seldom teach, rarely exercise and are only beginning to fully understand. In the new connected world, we are drowning in seas of unactionable data and grasping for meaning. Big data holds the promise to provide new levels of understanding and generate fresh insights into past and current behaviors. But, in our search for new inspiration, how can the sheer volume of data provide insights into the future and stimulate the imagination that powers what’s truly next? The answer lies in how we process the world and what we do with that data. But it is also about a few fundamental and very human skills that are emerging as the new currency for revolutionary innovation and transformational growth. The exponential growth of the past few decades has had its own inflection points — “step changes” or revolutions that shatter the prevailing paradigms and profoundly alter the game. Ultimately, incremental and evolutionary growth has given way to massive disruption created by new-to-the-world offerings and the transfiguration of entirely new markets. But why and how have these game changers happened? Contrary to popular belief, the kind of revolutionary changes that are the foundation of revolutions — that take us from new to next — are rarely the brainchild of the lone genius, seldom the result of a divine epiphany and hardly the consequence of being hit by lightning. Great intention and gifted leadership notwithstanding, innovation is almost always about collective imagination, creative “failures” and “accidents,” and a remarkable shift in perspective. With the benefit of hindsight, disruptive innovation is almost always inspired by a deep, empathic understanding of the human condition, derived from a new perspective of what has always existed and powered by a counterintuitive combination of dissimilar elements. The fuel of innovation seems to be made up of three devoutly human proficiencies: empathy, pattern recognition and synthesis. These three competencies are emerging as not only “curriculum worthy” in a rapidly evolving education system but also highly coveted and sought after by the most 44 | 2015 Workplace Trends Report The fuel of innovation seems to be made up of three devoutly human proficiencies: empathy, pattern recognition and synthesis. aspirational of companies. They have become a new currency in the increasingly competitive workforce and workplace. With new business imperatives focused on sustainable success metrics, the value of mining big data, the promise of open innovation and the power of social media are literally transforming the nature and style of work. As work environments evolve to support new levels of collaboration, organizations and corporate cultures are undergoing their own revolutions. And fundamental to these revolutions are the underlying skills, capabilities and experiences that employers expect their employees to bring to the workplace. There are endless criticisms and commentaries on the inadequacies of today’s education system and how unprepared many young people are to join the workforce to make a meaningful and immediate contribution. With historically dated curricula, antiquated teaching methods and a clear decline in social skills, it is no surprise that many employers find it difficult to find the talent and mindsets they seek in new employees. The current focus on STEM education becomes even more of a relevant and valuable solution when infused with invaluable soft skills. Primitive creativity is rarely tolerated much past the 5th grade when refrigerator doors are often stripped of grade school deliverables that somehow shift from “cute” to “bad art.” And as less tangible and more virtual connections seem to dominate the free time of most students, the lessons of artful play, playful art, real teamwork and the benefits of live collaboration have become things of the past. Many extracurricular activities that traditionally highlighted teamwork, have also been severely limited or eliminated as students spend more and more time being tutored to gain some advantage in standardized tests. Granted, many of the more traditional curriculum elements and pedagogies are built around problem analysis and problem solving, but these rarely © Sodexo 2015 EQ + IQ = SQ EMPATHY SYNTHESIS PATTERN RECOGNITION TIONAL QUOT O IE EM T N ) (EQ SYNCHRONIZED QUOTIENT (SQ) GE (I Q EL ) INT LI NC E Q U O TIE NT CREATIVITY WORK EFFECTIVENESS INNOVATIVENESS 2015 WORKPL ACE T R E N D S are anchored in real world phenomenon. And while the more soft skills and capabilities are ever more attractive to most potential employers, organizations increasingly report that even the best and brightest candidates seem to be missing basic communication, social and creative skills. Curricula, educational assessment, hiring criteria and workplace evaluation seem completely out of synch and at a tipping point. Sir Ken Robinson, author of “Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative,” and an international thought leader on education, advocates for far greater sensitivities to learning methods and for far more integration of soft skills into all curricula. As civilization made its inevitable progression from the agricultural age to the industrial age to the information age, the roles of the skilled worker evolved from that of a farmer to a factory worker to a knowledge worker (See Figure 1). At the same time, as Pine and Gilmore so wonderfully captured in their manifesto, “The Experience Economy,” we expanded from a focus on produce to one of production and ultimately to productivity. Now, as we evolve from the information age and the service-based economy on which it is based, to the conceptual age, where “design thinking” is the new capability and the design of experiences are the new imperatives and outcomes, an entirely new set of competencies and aptitudes are required. It is important to note that our economies have expanded, rarely abandoning the prior focus. With new emphasis on the information, services and concept economies, the agricultural and manufacturing economies will remain ever more vital. Figure 1. Progression of the Skilled Worker INFORMATION AGE Synchronized Quotient may be somewhat malleable and may increase over time with training and with the benefit of life experience. ability to discriminate between different emotions and to use emotions to direct thinking and behavior. While the value of the guiding genius and visionary leader in today’s hyper-competitive, meta-entrepreneurial, “innovate or die” business environment is still widely recognized, IQ and EQ are not, in and of themselves, innovation drivers and have never been guarantors of success. The “genius” of Steve Jobs was less in his vision and persistence and more in his “SQ” or “synchronized quotient” — his cross hemisphere, lateral and more holistic design thinking. The Macintosh, Apple OS, iOS, iPod, iTunes and iPhone were not merely lucky anomalies. Each and every one of these game-changing, industry-disrupting innovations was the result of seeing uniquely through the lens of consumers, understanding their unmet and unexpressed needs, finding inspiration in the emergent behaviors of extreme users (hackers and digital music pirates in the case of iTunes/ iPod), and combining existing technologies in novel ways (the original iPod contained no new technology). IQ has been used for many years to predict a person’s success, educational achievement, special needs, job performance and income. EQ can forecast a person’s success or challenges in interacting with the world (work, home, virtual). SQ (“synchronized quotient”) adds experiential/design thinking to the analytical and social thinking inherent in IQ and EQ. In many ways, SQ is an amalgam of both IQ and EQ with the addition of specific abilities and strengths that are the foundation of design thinking. In short, SQ may be at the core of creativity and the basis upon which most, if not all, sustainable innovation occurs. INDUSTRIAL AGE AGRICULTURAL AGE WHAT ARE IQ, EQ AND SQ? IQ (intelligence quotient) is considered to be the measure of an individual’s cognitive ability to solve problems, understand concepts, and process information. EQ, or “emotional quotient,” is far less studied or assessed and refers to an awareness of one’s own and other people’s emotions, the 46 | 2015 Workplace Trends Report SQ includes three primary drivers that power work effectiveness, creativity and innovativeness. What are the three primary drivers? Empathy – to be empathic, to walk in another person’s shoes or see through another person’s eyes, to be the empath — to compassionately and unconditionally understand, identify with, take on, channel and/or assume another person’s point of view, experience and reality in context. Pattern Recognition – to see patterns, to assemble a new vision, to disambiguate the meaning, to intentionally © Sodexo 2015 WHOLE BRAIN THINKING Figure 2. Elements of a Synchronized Quotient INNOVATIVENESS ONAL QUO OTI TI E EM PATTERN RECOGNITION T N INT EMPATHY EN (I Q L IG ) EL SYNTHESIS NT CE Q U OTIE blur one’s vision to see what others cannot see, to be the cryptography genius in the Oscar award-winning movie “A Beautiful Mind” — the ability to make connections between like and disparate things, similar and non-conforming and even conflicting data, attitudes, behaviors and facts. To see the needle in the haystack AND the patterns across many haystacks. To see something familiar in an entirely new way. To distinguish signal from background noise, to go beyond statistical analysis and algorithms designed to identify the norm or show the trend, to see the extraordinary rather than merely identify the trend, to see a bigger picture, gain a broader perspective and make new, intuitive and often counter-intuitive associations and connections. Synthesis – to be the resourceful chef, the brewer, the fabricator capable of creating value out of an assembly of found objects. To be the person who can turn lead into gold. To be the alchemist who has the magic ability to create entirely new compounds out of known and even unknown elements. To imagine something entirely new based on new associations and connections. To make entirely new things, concepts and experiences out of diverse and previously disassociated components. To create coherence out of incoherence, to create elegant systems out of what may seem to be chaos. Much like IQ and EQ, there are underlying environmental and hereditary factors that may largely determine a person’s SQ level. But research has also shown that training and exercising one’s working memory may increase IQ and EQ scores. The same may be true for SQ. SQ may be somewhat malleable and may increase over time with training and with the benefit of life experience. There is not yet an assessment that’s focused on testing SQ. If an assessment did exist, it could be used to formulate new curricula and test the effectiveness of teaching or exercising one’s SQ. Of course, there will always be questions about whether SQ is innate or learned, but it seems clear that exercising one’s SQ can © Sodexo 2015 WORK EFFECTIVENESS ) (EQ SYNCHRONIZED QUOTIENT (SQ) CREATIVITY help hone and refine the capability. Effective SQ evaluation methods could be used as recruitment criteria, to assemble effective teams and to guide strategic thinking. Ultimately, as human-centered design becomes more integrated into our work methods and workplaces, SQ could be explicitly leveraged to create what’s “next.” WHY IS SQ SO IMPORTANT IN THE NEW CONCEPTUAL AGE? The famous science fiction author Isaac Asimov once said, “The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that almost always heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka, I found it!” but “Hmm, that’s interesting.” The power of empathic observation and ethnographic understanding are central to the principles of human-centered design. In our new conceptual age and in almost every industry and field where the quality of experience is a fundamental objective, the skills inherent in SQ have become fundamental to meaningful and sustainable innovation. HOW DO THESE UNDERLYING QUALITIES AND CAPACITIES CONTRIBUTE TO CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION? The famous physicist James Maxwell once said, “Thoroughly conscious ignorance is the prelude to every real advance in science.” The comedian George Carlin once quipped that humor was an advanced state of imagination that had its roots in what he called “vuja de.” Unlike déjà vu, which is the strong sense that an event or experience currently being experienced has been experienced in the past, “vuja de” is when something or somewhere that should be familiar is suddenly seen in a very different light or understood in a very different way. This ability to “blur” the known, in deference to Published by Innovations 2 Solutions | 47 2015 WORKPL ACE T R E N D S exposing the unknown, is also critical to pattern recognition and the disambiguation so important to creative and innovative thinking. WHY ARE EMPATHY, PATTERN RECOGNITION AND SYNTHESIS SO IMPORTANT, IF NOT FUNDAMENTAL TO DESIGN THINKING IN THE NEW CONCEPTUAL AGE? Thomas Edison was well aware of the power of alchemy and making something out of nothing when he said, “To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.” Indeed, the ability to synthesize something very new out of a collection of known parts and unrelated pieces is also at the core of design thinking and innovation. Leveraging and integrating them into the workplace requires awareness and acceptance. Established companies will forever attempt to improve, optimize or value engineer what they already have in incremental ways. Entrepreneurs will endlessly seek to solve known problems and commercialize their solutions. Evolutionary and disruptive innovation requires the different set of skills embodied in SQ. If the significant innovations of the past few decades share any common factors it is that they rarely if ever were solely about solving a problem. People were quite satisfied with a 50-cent cup of coffee before Starbucks delivered the “third place,” a welcomed alternative to home and office. Significant innovations were also rarely the result of asking consumers what they wanted. No one was desperate for a new search engine before Google reimagined search and leveraged an established business model in new ways. Significant innovations seldom required entirely new-to-the-world technologies, materials or business models. Amazon and eBay simply capitalized on the Internet in remarkably new ways, leveraging the power of human and social interaction. Facebook leveraged the compelling nature of social interaction and some may say the habit-forming nature of narcissism in a new and virally addictive way. And designing and delivering a compelling user experience is common to all disruptive innovations. There were a number of MP3 players on the market before Apple’s iPod and iTunes changed the way people acquired and interacted with music. Beyond all these common qualities, while many of the innovations by these companies were credited to the visionary leaders and founders, they were ALL conceived, designed and built by diverse teams of design thinkers, empaths, pattern recognizers and synthesizers. 48 | 2015 Workplace Trends Report So while internal and external stimuli will always guide innovation, simply having more data does not always mean generating better insights. The promise of “big data” is that the sheer volume of data can have its own value. But the real value of data, large and small, lies in the meaning that can be extracted from that data. And, at least for the foreseeable future, while elegant algorithms will automate a certain amount of logic and reason and find signals in the noise, devoutly human skills will be essential. To turn big data into big meaning and to gain the insights that fuel the future and inspire what’s next, the humanness of empathy, pattern recognition and synthesis will be critical. Every company desires to get to next just slightly ahead of its regularly scheduled time. The path to next requires that companies exercise everyone’s ability to immerse themselves in another world and walk in someone else’s shoes. Along with the rigor and conventionality of today’s corporate cultures, make sure that people are un-focusing and changing their perspective on a more regular basis. Rather than seek more resources, leverage the power of what you already have and empower your empaths, pattern recognizers and synthesizers to turn insights into inspiration and inspiration into gold. n KEY INSIGHTS & IMPLICATIONS §§ SQ (Synchronized Quotient) is an amalgam of both IQ (Intelligence Quotient) and EQ (Emotional Quotient) with the addition of three specific abilities and strengths that are the foundation of design thinking: empathy, pattern recognition, and synthesis. §§ In our new conceptual age, the skills inherent in SQ have become fundamental to meaningful and sustainable innovation, work effectiveness, and creativity. §§ In spite of the promise of “big data” to generate value, to turn this data into meaning and to gain the insights that fuel the future and inspire what’s next, the humanness of empathy, pattern recognition and synthesis will be critical. §§ Organizations should leverage the power of what they already have and empower their empaths, pattern recognizers and synthesizers to turn insights into innovation. LINKING TO SODEXO’S QUALITY OF LIFE DIMENSIONS §§ Personal Growth: Employees who wish to be more innovative and effective at work will develop skills associated with SQ, and organizations will increasingly seek out workers with these types of capabilities. © Sodexo 2015