Our exponential world puts increasing pressure on our capacity to innovate and the speed and quality of idea flow. This dynamic coupled with the speed at which automation is likely to occur brings our right brain characteristics front and center. Creativity, imagination, big picture vision, emotional and social intelligence, empathy, and other human characteristics are critical to navigating in this emerging future. As automation accelerates, these human traits become even more critical. In a recent report by Citi on Technology at Work, the authors point to our propensity for social interaction, communication, and empathy being something machines can never replace.
Our skill profiles of the future will include many of these right brain characteristics. We will want explorers, problem solvers, dot connectors, continuous learners, and those not afraid to challenge the status quo. As our core belief systems are challenged by this rapidly emerging future, we must think differently. Do our organizations support this type of skills profile? Do our environments provide the support they need to leverage their skills? Can we retain this talent when they have so many options in entrepreneurial organizations? Does our education system nurture these skills? Are we comfortable when someone challenges the status quo, or do we hold onto the mentality that says we’ve always done it this way?
Shifting from our linear structures and thought processes will not be easy – nurturing our right brain characteristics is a critical step forward.
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If this is an insight, please help me understand what is different about this assertion from those similar assertions made for the last fifty years. I would go further and say that the wisdom found inthe Art if War mirrors this insight. Visionaries and leaders have always possed these traits. While analytical skills have been valued at lower levels in organizations, allegedly “right brain” skills are those that are rewarded in executive management.
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