LETS KEEP THINGS SIMPLE

Yes but - and it’s a big BUT - be very careful. Our very human mind finds it appealing to create stories or conspiracy theories where none actually exist. It constantly tries to simplify and find neat patterns and answers.

 It does not appreciate the idea of things happening at “random” but likes to discover patterns and use simplifying devices like runes and rhymes. Here’s one about my book:-

“Just read this book and have no fear, it’ll help you think and change your career“

It’s strange but expressed like that it conveys a possibility of truth that the blunt “read this and get on” will not. The latter sells assertively, the former wraps up the thought in a kind of irrefutable, pseudo-biblical parcel.

Myers Brigg, a system strongly advocated by many does just that too. For those who don’t know about it it’s the Personality Checking System beloved of HR people. If you haven’t been Myers Brigged then you probably haven’t got a personality in the accepted sense of the word. Ironically it identifies around the same number of types of personality as the number of behaviours performed by the Mexican Green Lizard that have been identified by Californian PHD students. That’s 27.

Well I may be perverse but I think there are more than twenty seven personality types. I think it’s the diversity of people and their attitudes and behaviour that makes humanity so fascinating. So, yes, I am very cautious about oversimplification.

The more one studies the brain and the process of thinking the more inappropriate it seems to dumb down and pigeon hole the issues. The brain is so complex, so magical and so surprising that a bit of messiness in describing it seems not only right; it seems to capture the ability and indeed the need of the brain to juggle and dance in a bizarre way.

In fact Martin Sorrell who runs the advertising giant WPP nailed it when he said:- “The 21st Century is not for tidy minds.”

And now to demonstrate how untidy I can be I’m going off slightly, at a tangent, to advocate a principle about sticking to the obvious whilst not oversimplifying.

There are two so-called laws of psychology worth bearing in mind here.  “Occam’s Razor” which espouses simplification (in an acceptable way) in suggesting that it’s the simplest cause of an event that is likeliest to be the true one. Experience would tend to confirm this is generally the case, but with the proviso that the second law of “Occam’s Broom” doesn’t also apply which is the urge to sweep inconvenient evidence under the carpet that seems to disprove “Occam’s Razor”.

How to solve problems and make brilliant decisions. (Business Thinking Skills that really work) published by Pearson is coming out on November 12th 2014

WE KNOW LIKE NOTHING

That’s what a doctor said recently when I asked him about current knowledge on the human mind. He exaggerated of course. Like he always does when talking about diet and the amount one should safely drink.

Since I’ve started studying the subject prior to writing the book on thinking in business and how to think more effectively, I’ve realised this is true. If we knew as little about the body as we do about the human brain we would regard the heart as a no-go area  and the word bypass would be a term reserved exclusively in Transport circles.

US Journalist, Dan Hurley’s book “Smarter - The New Science of Building Brain Power” describes an attempt to discover whether we can and how we can improve our brain power. Perplexingly despite the number of professors and terribly clever people he talks to it is pretty well a journey into terra incognito.

That’s the bad news but here’s the good news.  It’s the top headline in everything but the tabloids. People are going on “good fats” as they seem to speed up the metabolism and make you smarter. Pundits like Brian Cox reflect there’s more going on in our head than there is in the Universe. Daniel Kahneman, Nobel prize-winning psychologist, at 80 years old bestrides the lecture circuit and does so to sell-out audiences.

Our knowledge about the way we think is improving, indeed compounding daily and people are beginning to realise you can neither judge a book by its cover nor a candidate by their A*s. We are looking for a complexity of intelligence and an ability to think fast, slow, empathetically, decisively, creatively and smartly. Understanding thinking has gone to the top of the business agenda. Get with it.

How to solve problems and make brilliant decisions. (Business Thinking Skills that really work) published by Pearson is coming out on November 7th 2014

THINKING

Over the next few weeks I’ll be writing a daily blog on “thinking” which reflects on some of the content of my new book which will be published in early November. A subject as vast as how we think which also considers how we can improve our thinking skills will inevitably provoke thought. Well, it’s certainly done that to me - hence these thoughts on thinking.

How to solve problems and make brilliant decisions. (Business Thinking Skills that really work) published by Pearson is coming out on November 7th 2014.