Apples or Pears, Elevators or Stairs The Ying and Yang balance of reason and intuition, explored with neuroscience and psychology

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Apples or Pears, Elevators or Stairs The Ying
and Yang balance of reason and intuition,
explored with neuroscience and psychology
From RSA Animate Iain McGilchrist
AnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnndCreativity!!!
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Apples and Pears, Elevators or StairsExercising
Judgementfor Leadership and Innovation

• Next Step Associates
• Understanding how Decisions are made
• Thinking about Thinking
• In context

Slide 3 of 28
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Some basic background

• Thinking happens to you, in you, but only for a
  tiny bit of it are you in control

Decisions are events in your head which you
watch, if you are paying attention
Most of the events are beyond your
attention The events are like traffic in Paris
in the rush hour, lots of accidents happen The
events are the judgements which create decisions
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Not Paris
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Apples or Pears

• Reason says.........................

But the focus on reasoning meant....
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Fortunately
All events are judgements happening in your mind
But you have may some influence on the traffic,
the flow and strength of the judgements

• Even though the traffic always has final control
  of events

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Corpus Callosum

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Types of thinking

• Creative Synectics, TRIZ, Lateral Thinking, etc
  etc etc etc etc

Reasoning The Cheap Calculator added on to the
brain to rectify errors - focus
Intuition Prone to whims but good in a crisis
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Focus
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Mindfulness

• I think Mindfulness might be trying to develop
  these 3 types of thinking BUT

It's very easy for people pushing the
fun/feeling part and not developing the other bits
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Types of thinking

• Creative Synectics, TRIZ, Lateral Thinking, etc
  etc etc etc etc

Reasoning The Cheap Calculator added on to the
brain to rectify errors - focus
Intuition Prone to whims but good in a crisis
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Types of thinking 2

• Creative The What if? Thinking,
• - including What if not?

Reasoning What does what where and why/how?
Intuition Why? What value What goal What
aspiration What level is the end solution and
through all the parts to it?
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Synecticsone approach to try

• Now SynecticsWorld.com, the company started early
  1960s, Boston USA

Creativity tools e.g. President's Idea
Evaluation tools, e.g. NAF rating
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The NAF process

• You take a whole bunch on ideas

You get people to privately rate them out of 10
for Novelty, Appeal and Feasibility
People altogether mark up what they have written
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The NAF processwhy it works so well

• The reasoning brain wants Feasibility to be high,
  but Synectics fans know they don't care about
  this score

What you want is Novelty to be 10/10, this is
where the passion lies
With passion you might be able to solve any
problem
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The NAF process

• Appeal?
• You train people to find appeal in
• Novelty, gently!

What the process is doing is disrupting the
normal Judgement/Evaluation process
So new ideas can win through
Slide 15 of 28
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And NowTypes of Context

• Complexity especially look at Thomas Jordan,
  Skillful Engagement with Wicked Issues

Competitive vs Collaborative
Risk, catalytic or progressive
Project Stage, - Early middle late -
completion
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What does not work
Reasoning is poor when complexity is high and
decisions are risky and urgent (ie project stage
is near completion) or catalytic (project stage
might be at collapse)

• Intuition is poor when motivational bias is
  unstable, e.g. Love, Death, Ego driven, Id driven

Creativity is poor when projects are urgent or
close to completion
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What works

• Practise!
• Checking reason with intuition, and creativity
• Checking creativity with reason and intuition
• Etc
• Checking reason with reason, and .
• Checking intuition with intuition and .
• Adding creativity to creativity, IFF!

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Summary

• Understand what you can and can't do in your head

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Summary

• Review Context in relation to the traffic
  management of thinking

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Summary

• Engage thinking processes using necessary checks
  with one thinking system against another

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Summary

• To see the traffic flows, you need to be at the
  'necessary distance'

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Summary

• To see the traffic flows, you need to be at the
  'necessary distance'

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Summary

• To see the traffic flows, you need to be at the
  'necessary distance'

Slide 26 of 28
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And Smile

• It works

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Just 3 of my Books

• How to Invent (Almost) Anything
• TRIZ, Synectics and Psychology
• Judgement Day
• Discussions about how the brain works
• How to advise the President
• Judgement, Thinking, Context and Decision Making
• Search on Amazon for 'Graham Rawlinson'

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Additional notes

• For more reflective thinking these notes have
  been added

Slide 29 of 51
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Consider Context

• But
• Managing traffic lights and roundabouts and
  overpasses and subways and.... takes up a lot of
  time

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Consider Context 2

• Reviewing and checking context is a time saver If
  and Only If
• If you check context using creative and intuitive
  thinking, and reasoning

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Is the balance right?
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Consider Context 3

• The more you understand and practise using
  context to decide on how you manage the thought
  traffic the better you get at doing it
• Don't forget to leave your arrogance on the table
  at home

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Will power
Is back in Fashion Baumeister Turney 2011
Willpower, Penguin Books

• The traffic moves through Paris on its own
  energy, but you use energy managing the Traffic
  Systems

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Will Power 2

• When the batteries run down traffic lights all
  stay red or all stay green or all keep switching
  or all switch off
• And, the express way lane management is a free
  for all

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Will Power 3

• Recharging batteries, glucose is good!
• The more you use the batteries the more they
  store
• Drain all power and recovery takes much longer

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Will Power 4

• Reasoning is a cheap calculator and uses lots of
  power
• Bias created when power drops as rote memory not
  affected, so machine reverts to economy mode
• Compromised 'compromised' by low power
• Irrational decisions, including postponement are
  energy saving devices the system uses

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Judgement and Decision Making

• The Judgements are being created by the traffic
  flow around the neurons in your head
• You can manage some of the flow
• You can stop all traffic for a while
• You can let some traffic through as priority

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Judgement and Decision Making 2

• The Decision Making you can do is the management
  of the judgement process
• The Decision Making you can't do is the creation
  of outcomes, that is done by the traffic, the
  judgements as events created by the movement of
  the traffic

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Types of Context

• Complexity
• Competitive vs Collaborative
• Risk, catalytic or progressive
• Project Stage, Early, middle, late, completion

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Types of thinking

• Creative
• Intuitive
• Reasoning

Remembering that there are 3 types is a decision
you can take!
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Example 1 Crime

• Complex, collaborative, progressive, low risk
  (mostly)
• Need
• 1. Multiplicity thinking, good guys are also bad
  guys and vice versa, often, not all minds play
  out.
• 2. Abandonment of reason, crime is not a reasoned
  act, mostly, and almost never simple.
• 3. To Walk in the shoes of the criminal,
  metaphorically.
• 4. Use toolkits to map the multilevel and
  multi-mind nature of crime.

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Right minded thinking!
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Employment

• Low risk/slow change, collaborative, complex
• Need
• 1. Emphasis on creative and intuitive, take time
  to get it right.
• 2. Keep asking with personal interest Are
  things getting done? Who is deciding if they
  are the right things?
• 3. As change is slow, working on Eco Mind Sets is
  where long term progress will be made.
• 4. Unknowns become knowns after the fact.
  Learning is by exploration into new territory.

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Summary

• Understand what you can and can't do in your head

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Summary

• Review Context in relation to the traffic
  management of thinking

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Summary

• Engage thinking processes using necessary checks
  with one thinking system against another

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Summary

• To see the traffic flows, you need to be at the
  'necessary distance'

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Summary

• Always remember, it is the thinking traffic that
  creates the outcomes
• - you only nudge the control mechanisms

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And Smile

• It works

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Just 3 of my Books

• How to Invent (Almost) Anything
• TRIZ, Synectics and Psychology
• Judgement Day
• Discussions about how the brain works
• How to advise the President
• Judgement, Thinking, Context and Decision Making
• Search on Amazon for 'Graham Rawlinson'