The cognitive dissonance inside Murray's head must be deafening.

Deborah Solomon interviewed Charles Murray, of the Bell Curve infamy:

DS:What do you make of the fact that John McCain was ranked 894 in a class of 899 when he graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy?

CM:I like to think that the reason he ranked so low is that he was out drinking beer, as opposed to just unable to learn stuff.

DS:What do you think of Sarah Palin?

CM:I’m in love. Truly and deeply in love.

DS:She attended five colleges in six years.

CM:So what?

DS:Why is the McCain clan so eager to advertise its anti-intellectualism?

CM:The last thing we need are more pointy-headed intellectuals running the government. Probably the smartest president we’ve had in terms of I.Q. in the last 50 years was Jimmy Carter, and I think he is the worst president of the last 50 years.

Jason Kottke's response: The cognitive dissonance inside Murray's head must be deafening.

American Exceptional-ism and the fixed mindset

Roger Cohen writes in the New York Times about how Alexis de Tocqueville defined the United States as

"a nation unlike any other with a special mission to build the “city upon a hill” that will serve as liberty’s beacon for mankind."

He relates this to the nomination of Sarah Palin, who expressed at a rally in Nevada,

“We are an exceptional nation.” Then she declared: “America is an exceptional country.” In case anyone missed that, she added: “You are all exceptional Americans.”

Cohen remarks,

"American exceptionalism has morphed into the fortress of those who see themselves threatened by “one-worlders” (read Barack Obama) and who believe it’s more important to know how to dress moose than find Mumbai.
That’s Palinism, a philosophy delivered without a passport and with a view (on a clear day) of Russia."

Cohen believes that there is something disheartening behind Palin's exhortations of the exceptional:

"Behind Palinism lies anger. It’s been growing as America’s relative decline has become more manifest in falling incomes, imploding markets, massive debt and rising new centers of wealth and power from Shanghai to Dubai.
The damn-the-world, God-chose-us rage of that America has sharpened as U.S. exceptionalism has become harder to square with the 21st-century world’s interconnectedness. How exceptional can you be when every major problem you face, from terrorism to nuclear proliferation to gas prices, requires joint action?"

This reminds me of the same exceptional Americans whose criticism of cultures from the mid-east starts with the point that mid-eastern countries could not face up to their own problems. Their leaders were covering up social and economic problems with demagogic rationalizations about outside threats, hostile to their culture's purity.

Sound familiar?

The limbic center of our brain insures that we are wired to protect our world view as we see it. If evidence is presented contrary to what we believe, we are still likely to defend our point of view, with emotion and conviction. Once we've committed ourselves to this point of view, a different point of view is hostile to our very existence. This is a classic example of a fixed mindset. What if we refined our definition of exceptional away from defending ourselves, to include testing and challenging ourselves with ideas that don't originate from where we come from. How can we balance our need to feel emotionally secure with the need for awareness to our modern day challenges?

Is this a case of the Big fish in small pond vs. small fish in big pond?

Who swims stronger?

A string quartet that Senses the Balance

Seth Godin says, "Probably Not Stupid"

Godin writes that there is a big difference between being uninformed, and being stupid.
He writes:

"Every person makes decisions based on their worldview and the data at hand. If two people have the same worldview and the same data, they'll make the same decision, every time (unless they're stupid.) Changing worldviews is very difficult and requires quite a bit of will. Changing the data at hand is a lot easier, and that's where marketing can really help. If you, as a marketer, can package data in a way that people with a certain worldview can accept, you move the conversation forward far more quickly than if you merely dismiss the non-customers or the doubters as stupid."

Godin again:

"In my experience, a closed-minded worldview ("I can't read that book, I disagree with it") is the most difficult hurdle to overcome. But a closed-minded worldview doesn't mean you're stupid, it means that you are selling yourself and your colleagues and your community short. The easiest way to grow is to sell to people who share a worldview that endorses your position. The most effective way to grow bigger than that is to inform those that disagree with your position--more data in a palatable form. And, unfortunately, it turns out that the best way to change the world is to open the closed-minded."

Another argument for leading with empathy to encourage the Growth Mindset.

The Frontal Cortex : Buffett senses the balance?

Jonah Lehrer writes about how little time and information Warren Buffet needs to pick stocks.
The Frontal Cortex : Buffett
Considering Buffett's amazing record of success and the cool ease he displayed while using $5 billion to prop up Goldman Sachs, his decision matrix deserves some more attention. Why not from the neuroscience perspective?
As I have written in this blog, when an artist senses the balance, continued deliberation over more and more information actually serves as distraction to an innate understanding of how systems operate. I'm not advocating for the idea of becoming Deciders, either (as in the 43rd president). I would define a Decider as someone who makes rash decisions with certainty, without the sensitivity to the conditions which help one sense the balance.
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More on the Empathy Gap - Its not the issues?

Michael Lerner posted an interesting piece in Tikkun that continues the line of thinking I've put forward about framing issues and the empathy gap.

"Once again I've started hearing Blue Staters responding with horror and shock that Obama has not shot McCain out of the water. "How can it be," they ask, "that after 7 years of war, the dramatic and scary economic collapse, growing ecological crisis, and undermining of human rights and civil liberties that Americans are not overwhelmingly rejecting McCain who supported most of the destructive policies of the past and shows no signs of changing them should he be elected? Americans," they go on to say, "must either be stupid, extremely militaristic or racist."

Racism is certainly part of the answer. But these same blue-staters were equally startled when lily-white Senator Kerry lost in 2004, and they had the same response of denouncing the stupidity of the American public. Something more is in play, and it's something that the Democratic Party and many liberals and progressives are unable to understand.

If Obama understood how to answer these blue-staters and their all-too-ready-contempt for the Americans who don't agree with them, he'd have a far greater chance of winning this election. Unfortunately, many of Obama's own supporters have bought into the "It's the economy, stupid"reductionist view of human needs that gives them no alternative way of understanding. Because if all that people care about is their own material well-being, they reason, then they must be irrational to even consider supporting McCain. But that's not the whole story of who we are as Americans."

Lerner writes about the "fear factor" and the "hope factor" as greater influences in many voters minds. Lerner continues:

"For a large sector of Americans, the issues are not the issue in a presidential campaign. So they can easily agree with the liberal or progressive candidates on the issues, and hence in any polling appear to be closer to the Democrats than the Republicans, yet in the polling booth it is not those issues that determine their vote. Instead, what shapes the consciousness of Americans are two psychodynamic issues: the level of their fear vs. the level of their hope, and the degree to which they feel recognized and respected by those who are seeking their vote. One of the terrible problems with the people who have pushed Obama to present himself as more "centrist" is that they don't understand how their role in pushing the candidate away from his own deepest truths has undermined his campaign and made him appear less authentic and hence less trust-worthy. So lets explore these issues.The level of fear is never static. Though most of us have been subjected to an intense barrage of messages that tell us that we are surrounded by people who only care about themselves, and a world filled with terrorists who seek to destroy us, and that the only path to safety for ourselves or our country is to dominate and control others before they dominate and control us, we've also been exposed to a different set of experiences in which we've learned to recognize that many people who seem hurtful or scary can sometimes be moved by our acting in a sensitive and caring way toward them, and that love and generosity generate more security than attack and attempts to manipulate others.Truth is that both of those voices are always in most of our heads, and that while our individual psychological history may determine that one or the other holds greater weight, at any given period a set of circumstances (e.g. 9/11 for fear or the collapse of the Soviet Union for hope) may shift social energy more in one direction than another. For that reason, static analyzes that focus on whether a given person grew up with a more patriarchal/domination oriented family or a more nurturing and cooperation oriented family are inadequate, because they fail to notice the way people can transcend their previous conditioning and move in a new direction if the fear or the hope, the domination or the love/generosity aspects of their consciousness are most effectively touched. Reinforcing the voices of hope inside us is the most important task of progressive politics, and that doesn't happen simply by saying "lets be hopeful."

In the vein of "hope" Lerner recommends a few Limbic resonating ideas. (Limbic, as in the emotional center of the brain)

1. The economic crisis is not going to be solved solely by new economic policy wonks -- because the basic cause of our economic meltdown is the selfishness and materialism that has been fostered by a politics that says our highest obligation is to "look for number one." We need a new ethos in our economy, and institutions that will enforce that ethos, based on the notion that we have a responsibility to care for others.

2. Saving the environment is not an optional choice but a pressing need, both because our biblical mandate (Lerner is a Rabbi) to care for the planet is being undermined by Republican policies that give priority to the rich and the corporations, but also because our future and the future of our children is being undermined at this very moment by polluting our waters, our air, and the products we consume.

3. We not only need to give better pay and attention to teachers, smaller classrooms, and better facilities, but we need to give equal attention to building a new curriculum in our schools that teach how to care for others and the environment, how to communicate in a non-violent way, and teach basic values like generosity, gratitude, responsibility, respect for others, forgiveness when we've been hurt, and how to respond with awe and wonder to the grandeur and mystery of the universe are miseducating our youth.

4. We need to reject the voices in the Democratic party and in the liberal and progressive world who do not adequately understand the legitimate hunger of people for meaning and purpose in their lives that can transcend the materialism and selfishness of the competitive marketplace.

Lerner posits that a large group of Americans feel disrespected at work and disrespected in many of the encounters they have with others. They can feel that the Republicans are telling them their own truth--that militarism and self-interest are the key to a good world, but that Democrats are not telling their truth--that love and generosity are the key to a good world--because the Democrats disrespect them so much that they feel that "ordinary Americans" couldn't possibly respond to their message if they told it straight.

Finally:

"So it comes down to this: recognizing that our well-being depends on the well-being of everyone else on the planet, affirming that love and caring are not "soft" but powerful ways of living as individuals and as a nation, rejecting fear-based ideologies (that people will always only care about themselves), and developing respect rather than dismissive elitist attitudes towards those with whom we disagree politically."

I have written about use of the narrative to digest the multitudes of information we are bombarded with in our daily lives. The limbic, emotional centers of our brains react quite powerfully to the themes of hope, and fear. Responding with real empathy to these feelings in people is an important catalyst for the development of relationships at a very visceral level. In many cases, a lack of awareness to how influenced we are by these emotions (hope/fear), leads us to act in ways that may be counter-intuitive. "Against their best interests" to many baffled outsiders. Perhaps this is what people have in mind when their answer for a choice they make about someone, is "It just feels right." At this deeper, emotional level, what feels right can be very different things than what one thinks is right.

It may be worth noting that awareness of one's emotions may be one of the conditions that needs to be present when sensing the balance.

Developing structure and style with the Growth Mindset

My close friend, Ben Tanzer, has taken on the self-obliged pursuit of writing novels. Ben and I have known each other in Chicago for a dozen or so years. Our friendship developed over hours of running together while training for and running the Chicago marathon in the late '90's. Ben had already settled into the life of a happily married man, while I was still experiencing life as a bachelor. Combining my predisposition for introspection and a desire to express the reflection of my experiences , (no blogging in 1996) Ben ended up on the receiving end of what I imagined were a lot of monologue-ish conversations. Thankfully, he's an excellent listener.

I imagine that I wasn't the only person benefiting from Ben's exquisite listening skills - it leaves me curious how much his broadband listening inputs have channeled him into a life of writing.
Ben's early efforts at writing short stories got him published in venues like online 'zines which eventually led him to publish his first novel, Lucky Man in 2007. Lucky Man weaves a tale of 4 young adults who are trying to sort out their uniquely dysfunctional lives. I might also mention that Ben's education is in social work. Anyone in Ben's orbit knows about his possession of a singeing wit, whose observations can leave any of his friends (or those who he feels emotionally stout enough to take it) scorched with uncomfortable truths. The growing pains of his writing in Lucky Man exhibited both his desire for these uncomfortable truths, as well as his own guilty need to protect those he wished to spare. I have shared with Ben a thought that I can perhaps articulate better in writing. His desire to protect people from the darker thoughts in his writing represented a fixed mindset where he was defending a certain point of view. Was this from his background as a social worker, faithful husband and loving father? To me, the effect of his protective mindset obscured/prevented his deeper thoughts from reaching the page. The underlying paradox of exposure and protection combined with a writing style nascent in its development created a work which very much resembled the characters he was writing about. Plenty of interesting dysfunction, not much clarity about what it means. Perhaps the stylistic disconnect of Lucky Man was emblematic of Tanzer giving himself permission to write about themes he desperately needed to explore on paper. Stylistically, his writing sounded a lot like hearing Ben speak in person. Insightful dialog sometimes needs more form before it translates well to the page.

Ben and I now each have families with kids, and haven't gone running together for years. We do get out occasionally for a beer. About 8 months ago, Ben described to me the feeling of liberation from his artistic shackles. He went on to describe that he is writing more freely than ever. Producing articles and a book has gotten his flow going. Getting critiqued can be freeing as well. I hadn't had any more thoughts on Ben's artisitic euphoria, except that I was happy for him. Sometimes it is such a personal journey.

A few weeks ago, I attended an opening (watch Ben read selections) for Tanzer's second novel, Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine.
It is a joy to watch the growth of an artist, who feels the pain of criticism of work put forth, and emerge with a dynamically improved product. Hearing Ben read from Most Likely, he is no longer defending his moral universe in his fiction. He's letting his darkness and light rip, and cultivating his writing structure, as opposed to writing it down as he hears it. (quite the turn of events) For an artist to grow, and to stake their claim to validity, one must stop defending their point of view as they want to be seen in the world (fixed mindset) and work to express what really makes them tick as they confront the world. It means not using your own moral universe to edit your own writing. This makes for some scary going, but moves one into the growth mindset category.
Most likely explores some of the same subjects as Lucky Man, but has shed some of self imposed permission to write. Instead of using uncomfortable subjects as the emblem, and permission to write as the underlying theme, Most Likely uses uncomfortable subjects as the device to express deeper feelings about unresolved relationships and infidelity. Tanzer's writing style reflected the deeper layers of meaning in Most Likely, with longer expressions of intellectual and emotional intimacy. In musical terms, his style has progressed from short staccato phrases, to longer deeply breathed expressions. It is in these longer phrases that begin to show what is on Ben's mind. His humor has provided a tension breaking counter to these longer musings, and gives the reader a glimpse at Tanzer's evolving integration of ideas. More readers will start to understand what makes him such an interesting friend. After all these years of listening and providing insightful reflection to his friends, Most Likely has listened to Lucky Man, and is helping him grow.

Rhythm as structure in Families

I continue to think about the empathy gap which Judith Warner blogged about in the NYT. I'm curious to understand families who espouse conservative values and look at more left leaning families as too permissive with their (out of control) kids, observing children who behave disrespectfully. I don't know if social research bears out how true this statement is, though I think it is besides the point. The chasm may lie in the derivation of the values. Families who value structure their daily lives from a point of certainty tend to be conservative. Perhaps this certainty is from their religious values that spell out how and where they should live, or from a deeply embedded culture that specifies how they do things. Families who have less well-defined roles generally do not share these cultural values with the strictly adherent. When the groups interact, a culture clash is inevitable. The cultural divde, however is not so cut and dry. Plenty of culturally liberal families adhere to structure. It is just that the structure of their daily life may be of their choosing, rather than from a source of authority and certainty.
This reminds me of how I teach music. Rhythm is the framework for all music that I teach, and is the structure from which one hangs the notes (melody). Anyone who studies music with me must first learn about and have a command of the rhythmic structure of a piece they are working on before they play a single note. How one interprets the notes of the melody has plenty of room for interpretation, once the rhythmic structure is understood.
Metaphorically speaking, families (or businesses) who create a meaningful structure for how they operate are often able to function well. Perhaps the conversation between the cultural divide can be expressed with more empathy. One group structures their lives one way, the other group takes their cues from another direction. The two groups may not agree, but the relationship between the divide may grow more civil.

The Empathy Gap

Judith Warner, author of Perfect Madness, the book about the culture clash between working moms and stay at homes moms, (spilling over to the maelstrom of mixed feelings about contemporary motherhood in general), posted a blog about the folks who came out to cheer Sarah Palin in Fairfax, Virginia. She was hoping to have a good laugh, but came away with a very different feeling.
Warner discovered feelings in the crowd supporting the Republican ticket that amounted to intense feelings of being disrespected.

I heard a lot more talk that day about the need for respect – and about arrogance and selfishness and about Democrats and liberals who think way too highly of themselves.

Businessman Scott Maclean on the Democratic Party: “Their attitude is: you don’t get it and they don’t expect you to get it because they’re smarter than you – and I hate that.”

Warner muses about some of the archetypal yearnings of the crowd:

“Palin Power” isn’t just about making hockey moms feel important. It’s not just about giving abortion rights opponents their due. It’s also, in obscure ways, about making yearnings come true — deep, inchoate desires about respect and service, hierarchy and family that have somehow been successfully projected onto the figure of this unlikely woman and have stuck, or those of us who can’t tap into those yearnings, it seems the Palin faithful are blind – to the contradictions between her stated positions and the truth of the policies she espouses, to the contradictions between her ideology and their interests. Warner brings up Jonathan Haidt, an associate professor of moral psychology at the University of Virginia, who argues in an essay this month, “What Makes People Vote Republican?”, that it’s liberals, in fact, who are dangerously blind.
Haidt has conducted research in which liberals and conservatives were asked to project themselves into the minds of their opponents and answer questions about their moral reasoning. Conservatives, he said, prove quite adept at thinking like liberals, but liberals are consistently incapable of understanding the conservative point of view. “Liberals feel contempt for the conservative moral view, and that is very, very angering. Republicans are good at exploiting that anger,”

Judith Warner concludes her post with the idea of empathy, which, for my money is the key to communicating with those you may disagree with. Warner:

Perhaps that’s why the conservatives can so successfully get under liberals’ skin. And why liberals need to start working harder at breaking through the empathy barrier.

The Empathy Gap.

Gingerly jumping into that maelstrom of gender politics, the Empathy Gap makes perfect sense to me. I don't claim to be a master of these issues like Borat's cousin, Simon Baron-Cohen, author of The Essential Difference: The Truth About the Male and Female Brain. Baron-Cohen hypothesizes that "the female brain is predominantly hard-wired for empathy."

From Wikipedia:

Baron-Cohen postulates that there are three basic brain types:

• E-type – a predominantly female brain (empathizing is stronger than systemizing)
• S-type – a predominantly male brain (systemizing is stronger than empathizing)
• B-type – a balanced brain (equally strong in both traits)

His work shows that not all men have the S-type brain and not all females have the E-type brain but, on average, this theory holds true.

It is with great irony that the people who understand and exploit this gap are Republicans, who are traditionally thought of as immune to the soft, bleeding heart feelings that respond to those who need help.

I have been perplexed at the numbers of Hillary supporters who would rather vote for someone whom they disagree with on all the issues, because of their feelings of anger about sexism et al.
Is it possible, that empathy is what they are crying out for?
Bill Clinton may have been mocked for "feeling your pain". His political wisdom on this may have been underestimated.

For undecided voters, the issues may swing your vote if you are an S-type, feelings may sway your vote if you are an E-type.
George Lakoff, linguist and political strategist, writes about how framing ideas with powerful language can make seemingly incontrovertible concepts very fluid: Up may be down, black might be white. If a group gains the upper hand on the framing of issues, and the upper hand on the empathy quotient with voters, the facts don't stand a chance.

The balance of the relationship between client and vendor

How does one sense the balance in a professional relationship, where underlying social norms are not entirely established? (Politeness and cordiality notwithstanding)
What if the client in the relationship is the dominant financial provider for the vendor's business, and both sides of this relationship are keenly aware of this? Against its wishes, the vendor's culture (the way it goes about its business) is strongly influenced by the client, and is looking to change this, for the benefit of both sides, without losing the relationship.
The balance lies in how the vendor wants to approach the relationship. Does the vendor do whatever the client asks, in order to keep the business? If both client and vendor see the vendor's value as solely serving the client's needs (whims), the underlying social norm will permeate this dynamic at every level.
How does the vendor create value, positively influencing the client's culture, so that the vendor's contributions become about how to help, rather than how to serve?
This transformation is about creating a proactive stance in the relationship, rather than a reactive stance.
The client needs to be prepared for this as the relationship develops. It is not as simple as telling them, "That's the way its gonna be." The relationship between vendor and client starts with an exploration and assessment of mutual value that is brought to the relationship from the parties, and what both hope to achieve. Equally important, is an explicit discussion of of how they intend to achieve this goal, and rules for h0w the two sides interact in this process. It is in this process, where the art of listening makes a profound impact. Perhaps the client is not such a great listener. The vendor can use their listening skills to persuade the client that the client's desires are clearly understood, and deeply considered. This develops a trust and empathy that flows in both the direction of the client and the vendor. If an environment is developed of proactive contribution and proactive listening is established, the relationship flowers. If the relationship becomes reactive to the needs of one side, the relationship sours for both parties.

Cognitively framing voters' minds

I was reading a post in Tikkun about how to win elections in national politics. It is not necessarily about the realities of the issues that inform voters' decisions. In The Reality of the Political Mind, George Lakoff writes that,
"Election campaigns are primarily about the realities of voters' minds, which depend on how the candidates and the external realities are cognitively framed. They can be framed honestly or deceptively, effectively or clumsily. And they are always framed from the perspective of a worldview."
Lakoff gives a very poignant analysis of how Republicans shrewdly appeal to swing voters through metaphor.
He writes that,
"(The)Palin nomination is not basically about external realities and what Democrats call issues, but about the symbolic mechanisms of the political mind-the worldviews, frames, metaphors, cultural narratives, and stereotypes. Her job is to speak the language of conservatism, activate the conservative view of the world, and use the advantages that conservatives have in dominating political discourse. Conservative family values are strict and apply via metaphorical thought to the nation: good vs. evil, authority, the use of force, toughness and discipline, individual (versus social) responsibility, and tough love. Hence, social programs are immoral because they violate discipline and individual responsibility. Guns and the military show force and discipline. Man is above nature;"
Lakoff writes that Pallin embodies this metaphor.
"Palin is the mom in the strict father family, upholding conservative values. Palin is tough: she shoots, skins, and eats caribou. She is disciplined: raising five kids with a major career. She lives her values: she has a Downs-syndrome baby that she refused to abort. She has the image of the ideal conservative mom: pretty, perky, feminine, Bible-toting, and fitting into the ideal conservative family. And she fits the stereotype of America as small-town America. It is Reagan's morning-in-America image. Where Obama thought of capturing the West, she is running for Sweetheart of the West."

Lakoff argues that these metaphors form an archetype that has been embedded in working-class culture through repetition. The uber- motivational speaker, Anthony Robbins would call this neuro-linguistic programing on a very large scale.
The script will sound familiar. Lakoff predicts:

"Palin will appeal strongly to conservative populists, attacking Obama and Biden as pointy-headed, tax-and-spend, latte liberals. The tactic is to divert attention from difficult realities to powerful symbolism."

I have previously written in this blog about how narrative is a powerful tool to help us process the complex amounts of information we encounter in our lives. If the multitude (and magnitude) of issues facing undecided voters harbours confusion, a narrative crafted with an accute sense for the cultural gestalt of these target voters will prove eminently persuasive.

I don't want this post to give readers of this blog the impression that I am escaping the responsibility of answering my own question, How does the artist sense the balance?

I will start by describing my bafflement at how differently people have reacted to McCain's choice of Sarah Pallin for VP. I exist in social and professional circles that are full of people who reacted one way to her political emergence. It is inconceivable to anyone in these circles to understand why anyone could feel differently. I read blogs, newspapers, hear television and learn that an equal, opposite reaction has occured with other people in this country. Using the lens of my interest in the intersection of different social worlds, I want to know what we can mine from the gridlocked collisions of these competing cultural frames. Is there another (third?) narrative that can compassionately listen to the competing metaphors from the left and the right, and create something new? I hope Barack Obama remembers his message from the 2004 Democratic convention, talking not about red states, or blue states, but United States. My sense here, is that the balance for undecided voters lies with candidates who can listen to all sides of a cultural divide, establishing a connection via compassion, which is the bridge to developing the legitimacy to speak for everyone.

The Artist Senses the Balance

I've come across the idea that innovation and creativity come, not from some otherworldly wellspring, but from the intersection of different social and cultural worlds. I posted recently about John Grant's Innovation Manifesto arguing for coherent complexity in brands. He recommends finding ideas outside of the realm of one's industry and re-contextualize them to use for your own.
The concept of using an idea from somewhere else and applying it to your situation is in the same vein as ideas put forward by Nicholas Negroponte and Ronald Burt: Negroponte writes that, "To build a nation of innovators, we should focus on youth, diversity, and collaboration."
Negroponte proposes that as a culture, we should tolerate the failure of ideas, as part of the process of innovation. He speaks (again) to the idea of mining ideas from the collaboration of disparate social fields.
Negroponte:
A very heterogeneous culture, breeds innovation by virtue of its people, who look at everything from different viewpoints. America, the so-called melting pot, is seen by many as having no culture (with either a capital C or a lowercase c). In rankings of students in industrial countries, U.S. high school students come across as average, at best, in reading, mathematics, and science. And unfortunately, the nation is unrivaled in gun-related crimes among young people. Yet, looking back over the past century, the United States has accounted for about a third of all Nobel prizes and has produced an unrivaled outpouring of innovations-from factory automation to the integrated circuit and gene splicing-that are the backbone of worldwide economic growth.Our biggest challenge in stimulating a creative culture is finding ways to encourage multiple points of views. Many engineering deadlocks have been broken by people who are not engineers at all. This is simply because perspective is more important than IQ. The irony is that perspective will not get kids into college, nor does it help them thrive there. Academia rewards depth. Expertise is bred by experts who work with their own kind. Departments and labs focus on fields and subfields, now and then adding or subtracting a domain. Graduate degrees, not to mention tenure, depend upon tunneling into truths and illuminating ideas in narrow areas.The antidote to such canalization and compartmentalization is being interdisciplinary, a term that is at once utterly banal and, in advanced studies, describes an almost impossible goal. Interdisciplinary labs and projects emerged in the 1960s to address big problems spanning the frontiers of the physical and social sciences, engineering, and the arts. The idea was to unite complementary bodies of knowledge to address issues that transcended any one skill set. Fine. Only recently, however, have people realized that interdisciplinary approaches can bring enormous value to some very small problems and that interdisciplinary environments also stimulate creativity. In maximizing the differences in backgrounds, cultures, ages, and the like, we increase the likelihood that the results will not be what we had imagined.

Ronald Burt, a sociologist from the University of Chicago, writes that
''The trick is to get an idea which is mundane and well known in one place to another place where people would get value out of it. People who live in the intersection of social worlds are at higher risk of having good ideas. Those with cohesive social networks, whether offices, cliques or industries, tend to think and act the same. In the long run, this homogeneity deadens creativity. People who reach outside their social network not only are often the first to learn about new and useful information, but they are also able to see how different kinds of groups solve similar problems."

I say to this: Beware.
Anyone reading this blog would quickly get the point that I am an advocate of interdisciplinary thinking. I caution, however, that interpreting the ideas of Burt, Negroponte and Grant with the idea of quickly manufacturing innovation would be missing their points.

Trying to execute the intersection of different ideas from different disciplines can lead directly to rhetorical and proverbial mud.

It is one thing to post facto deconstruct creative work, and then apply a formula to this process, attempting to repeat the success of the work. Setting up conditions, however, that can influence the likelihood of innovation happening is different. The conditions I propose require a cultural awareness of how you interact with your colleagues.

To start:

1. Actively seek out different points of view with people whose ideas and gestalt differ from one's own comfort level. Implicit in this is the skill to listen while not trying to define or judge the idea or the messenger. Holding back one's own internal judgement is quite a mental ju-jitsu, whose difficulty shouldn't be underestimated.

2. Listen with empathy. This creates a dynamic the grows trust in relationships. It also promotes and grows these qualities within others.

3. Take in ideas, and let them marinate.

Finally, develop a sense for balance - In A Whole New Mind, Dan Pink writes about thinking with coordinated right and left hemisphere of our brains. He persuades that we are comfortable thinking with our logical, sequential left brains. He challenges us that we are a little out of shape when it comes to using our non-linear right brains, where we think in abstract, less understood ways. I believe that to interact with the conditions I propose here, one must develop and use their non-linear right brain. With that in mind, I want to explore this concept:

It is the artist within us that senses the balance to discover when an idea is good. You can feel it.

I will use this as jumping off point to explore what it means to sense the balance, and how we can develop this quality in ourselves, and in the cultures we exist and interact within.

It is the artist in us that senses a coherence from the complex disparity of our universal soup.

Coherence in brand experience

I was reading in John Grant's Brand Innovation Manifesto about the idea of coherent marketing for businesses. He rails against advertising that stresses consistency in brand, which emphasizes repeating the same mantra over and over again (perhaps disguised in clever variations), until the target audience gets the message (loud and clear). Grant's idea is that a brand should have a molecule of related ideas, reinforcing the cultural gestalt of that brand, so that it becomes memorable in a way that fits people's lives. He believes that complexity is not a bad thing in advertising, if the complexity creates a coherent richness - something like a picture telling a thousand words. It is implicit that the picture creates coherence, the organizing factor of all related details. He uses Starbucks coffee as an example. They're serving good coffee, but they're also selling a community of sophistication their cafe, reinforced with WiFi. While you are having a pleasant, sophisticated (connected) and hip experience, check out the other things in Starbucks that reinforce this experience: specially selected books and CD's that will make you feel even more sophisticated and hip. Go ahead and cosume them - they'll give you that same Starbuck's feeling! After awhile, your default judgment is to trust that whatever you buy in your local Starbucks will only further reinforce your visceral identification to that elusive place.
You thought they were selling coffee.
They've succeeded in transforming coffee into a rich experience called Starbucks, and figured out how to further that brand with things that have nothing to do with coffee. They do have everything to do with the Starbucks brand, however.
I remember reading about Jeff Beezos of Amazon.com in the New York Times Magazine in 1999, laughing at the idea of Barnes and Noble seeing him as competition to be the biggest 21st century bookseller. He knew then that it was not about being a giant bookstore. He was creating the internet commerce site that you could trust. Books were were the easiest thing for him to sell in the '90's to demonstrate how good an internet shopping experience could be. Think of how the One-Click shopping experience has changed your consuming habits. Amazon has been selling practically everything for years now.
Another brand whose coherence dwarfs them all: Oprah. Think of the number of planets in her orbit that bring you self empowerment.