I finally caught time on a plane to read Howard Gardner’s ‘Five minds for the future'. I wish I’d made time earlier, as it provides a useful big picture context to many of the Intersections debates. It’s the best book I’ve read for a long time.
The Economist calls Gardner ‘One of the most influential psychologists of his generation’ and the FT lauds him as ‘the man who changed our notion of what it means to be clever.’
He makes a cogent argument that the future demands ‘capacities that until now have been optional’. For example information recall used to be key skill, which near permanent access to Google has made less critical. While mounting quantities of information has made the ability to filter and integrate it an increasingly important skill.
The five minds of the title are his characterisation of these capacities, which are: the Disciplinary Mind, the Synthesising Mind, the Creating Mind, the Respectful Mind, and the Ethical Mind. It is the first three of these that I found the most enlightening.
The disciplined mind
The disciplinary mind refers to mastery of a major school of thought, like science or design, and at least one professional craft, such as graphic design. He estimates that it takes at least 10 years to master a discipline and a disciplined mind knows how to steadily improve understanding and skills.
Gardner makes a useful distinction between subject matter and disciplinary thinking, and contends that the two are mostly confused. Subject matter is the body of facts, figures, formulae and examples of a particular field, whereas disciplinary thinking is a distinct way of thinking about the world and addressing problems. For example scientists develop and test hypotheses, historians look for parallels in other times and places, and designers quickly generate multiple solutions to a problem and then evaluate them – design thinking, if you will. Another way of understanding this concept is to think of disciplinary thinking as the ‘habits of mind and behaviour of the professional’.
So how does this shed light on the concept of ‘design thinking’? While Gardner may not be familiar with this designland notion, he would recognise the concept. However, he would argue that it is a habit of thinking that is developed over years, if not decades of practicing a craft; and would probably question whether it can be taught to MBAs over the course of a project or two.
He concludes The Disciplined Mind chapter with the following:
‘Alas, a disciplined mind alone no longer suffices. More and more knowledge now lies in the spaces between, or the connections across, the several disciplines. In the future, individuals must learn how to synthesize knowledge and how to extend it in new and unfamiliar ways.’
The synthesising mind
The synthesising mind refers to the ability to ‘integrate ideas from different disciplines or spheres into a coherent whole and to communicate [it] to others.’ While being able to understand and evaluate disparate information and put it together in new ways has been valuable in the past, Gardner believes that the capacity to synthesise becomes ever more crucial as the volume of information mounts.
So while he asserts that ‘The ability to knit together information from disparate sources into a coherent whole is vital today’, he raises the difficulty of assessment raised in the ‘Yes, but is it any good’ post. Gardner explains that ‘we lack standards for determining when a productive synthesis has been accomplished’. Designers have always been synthesisers, but emergent areas such as design strategy/thinking and service design take it to a higher level, which goes some way to explaining why it getting harder to agree how to assess it.
Laser and Searchlight intelligence
Another distinction I liked was between types of intelligence best suited to synthesising. ‘Laser intelligence probes deeply into a topic, but ignores opportunities to cross-pollinate; it’s perhaps best suited to disciplinary work. Searchlight intelligence may not probe as deeply but is always scanning the environment and may therefore more readily discern connections across spheres.’
Interdisciplinary thinking
Gardner also has wise reflections on the concept of interdisciplinary work. In his view it’s a rare phenomenon, as it requires mastery of two of more disciplines. Just like we only call someone bilingual when they have mastered two languages, genuine interdisciplinary work integrates at least two disciplines and yields insights that could be reached by either of the parent disciplines. He calls most of what is mostly dubbed interdisciplinary work as ‘Multiperspectivism’ – clunky, but useful. By this he means an approach that recognises that different perspectives contribute to a better understanding of an issue.
I’ve over stayed my welcome on this post, so I’ll leave it here. Suffice to say that he believes that those with a Creating Mind will always stay one step ahead of super computers and robots!
Comments