A recent HBR IdeaCast podcast profiled Howard Gardner , author of the new Harvard Business School Press book Five Minds for the Future. Renowned for his work on multiple intelligences, he is now focusing on the cognitive abilities (minds) that will demand a premium in the years ahead. These are minds that are:
- Disciplined
- Capable of Synthesis
- Creative
- Respectful, and
- Ethical
I especially enjoy the notion that to succeed in the future we will need cognitive abilities that synthesise all the information that is available to us. I'm reminded of the awesome work Daniel H. Pink has done in his book A Whole New Mind and how he speaks of us living in an age of abundance. It is an age where there is an abundance of information. Information is ubiquitous. This means that our attention and where we choose to focus our attention is of real value.
The synthesising mind "takes information from disparate sources . . . and puts it together in ways that make sense to the synthesiser and also other persons . . . the capacity to synthesise becomes ever more crucial as information continues to mount at dizzying rates".
And so, having the ability to synthesise all that is around us is of paramount importance if we are to respect our attention. Pink argues that in this age of abundance, the use of story is critical in capturing people's attention.
I beleive that what Pink and Gardner have to say provide substantial support for the use of narrative in our lives. Why? Well, because I believe that narrative and story provide a mechanism for building a cognitive capability to synthesise. By nature, narratives are complex and carry with them amazing levels of inherent information.
There is also research that suggests we process our reality, cognitively, through narratives. Narrative then provides a natural tool that allows us to make sense of our world through synthesis.