How To Connect and Compete In The New 21st Century

How Do We Connect and Compete in the New 21st Century?

That’s a great question. Seems to me that the ability to observe, listen and communicate are more crucial than ever. We are also really going to have to design a way to access and utilize both the right and left sides of our brains equally if we are to really compete out there in this new age.

I just finished reading Daniel Pink’s book “A Whole New Mind.” Pink is a frequent contributing editor at Wired magazine and has also been featured in Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, NY Times and Salon. He is also a former White House speechwriter.

Pink raises a lot of great ideas in his book, and one I have been reflecting on most is what kind of mind and set of skill sets are really going to excel and be profitable as we move from the rapidly evolving “Information Age” into “The Conceptual Age” of the imminent future?

A Revolution Right Before Our Eyes

We have really had a revolution going on right before our eyes and under our noses but I think most people today, including me, have not really been totally conscious of it and its implications, until now.

We have been rapidly accelerating in terms of our exposure to technology since the dawn of the computer, but there is something else that’s also been brewing under the surface that give us clues as to how we are going to need to adjust our thinking and our actions in order to truly compete in the 21st Century.

Keeping Up With Technology

Most of us have been not only just trying to stay caught up
technically, but also trying to understand and utilize all the new
social networking tools that are being thrust upon us and have now become a
business prerequisite.

While we adults of the Baby Boomer and Traditional worlds are distracted by trying to keep up with Facebook, Linked In, Plaxo and My Space, the young adults in the Gen X and Y have been watching a huge evolution of video games and telephone technology. The delightful and creative days of “Zelda,” “Mario Brothers” and “Roller Coaster Tycoon” have given way and rise to XBox360′s “World Of Warcraft,” “Grand Theft Auto I-IV,” “Gears Of War.” and “Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare.”

Now on your phone you can post everything you are doing and thinking and reading all day long on services such as “Twitter,” “Digg” and “Plurk,” not to mention putting a 24/7 satellite navigation on your body through your phone so your friends will literally always know exactly where you are at all times of the day. 

It is all happening so fast and we are being so bombarded with new ways of communicating technically, that I wonder how all this great high technology we see reflected in this rapidly accelerating “Information Age” is really serving us in terms of our ability to communicate truly effectively. 

Your Gaming Alter Ego

In his book, “A Whole New Mind” Pink gives lots of great perspective on many areas and the one I would like to highlight today is games. I am fascinated by both the gaming trends  and gaming degrees that are being offered by many of our esteemed universities.

 What does all this mean and what does it indicates about us and how we perceive ourselves.

When I watch my son play video games these days, I am amazed at how much more developed they have become in terms of their artistry and concept. Yeah most of them are pretty bloody and violent, but I am fascinated by the storytelling and the concept of creating a character who acts as a personal “virtual stand in” for my son and many other teens and adults.

Gamers are very attached to their characters who appear to act as a kind of alter ego for them to explore and play around with either by talking live into a headset while playing with other “virtual team members” or by typing dialogue onto a computer screen.

Which Is More Real: Your Life or a “Second Life” Online?

To some degree, I believe all the “Second Life” technology becoming prevalent today is a similar gaming concept for kids and now many adults of all ages to explore. While I wonder who has time to keep up with the demands of their own life let alone create a second one to have to manage, it is interesting that we are seeing a gaming trend that gives people the perception of a “more interesting life” than the one they have in “real life.”

I think this trend is also a reflection of many peoples deep fear of feeling that they are somehow not enough or of truly feeling unable to truly express themselves and communicate face to face.

These “Second Life” games such as “The Sims” and “Second Life” give people an opportunity to explore a different, underdeveloped fantasy or fun part of themselves that perhaps they are not able or willing to do in their current daily lives with real people.

Storytelling Skills Necessary For The New Age

Pink gives a very cogent analysis of games and the industry that is
propelling them into our national consciousness. I find this fascinating.
“As one gaming columnist writes: Changes in
the way games are built indicates less of a future demand for coders,
but more of a demand for artists, producers, storytellers and
designers.”

It used to be that while we had the choice to disappear into books or novels, we still had to put the book down and live our own lives. It appears now that these gaming storytellers are designing the stories, content and worlds of our lives that we are finding more compelling and interesting to live in than our own real lives.

Are we becoming even more alienated from our inner selves than we previously thought?

Games: The Literature of the 21st Century

“University Of Southern California’s renowned School of
Cinema-Television now offers a masters of fine arts degree in game
studies. “When USC started a film school 75 years ago, there were
skeptics,” says Chris Swain, who teaches game design at USC. “We
believe games are the literature of the twenty-first century. When you
look at games today, it may be difficult to see that. But the pieces
are in place for that to happen.”

Pink also points out that “DigiPen Institutue of Technology near
Seattle awards a four year degree in video gaming and USA Today touts them as
“fast becoming the Harvard among joystick-clenching students fresh out
of high school. The schools nickname is “Donkey Kong U.”

A Graduate Program for the Left and Right Brain

Even the esteemed Carnegie Mellon University is getting into the business of awarding interdisciplinary gaming degrees.

Pink writes “The purest expressions of the centrality of gaming in the emerging economy might exist at Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center, a collaboration between its College of Fine Arts and School Of Computer Science. Carnegie Mellon offers and entirely new degree: a master’s in entertainment technology, which it bills as “a graduate program for the left and right brain.” Students study everything from programming to business improvisational theater-”

More Than a M.F.A. or a M.B. A.

Students “earn neither an arts degree nor a science degree but an interdisciplinary degree that the school says is, ” the academic pinnacle of studies in this field, thus having greater significance than the M.A. or M.S. and the  equivalent academic weight of the M.F.A and /or M.B.A.  degree.”

So What Do We Do With Our Whole New Mind?

If Pink’s research is right, that degree at Carnegie Mellon is one “that requires and enables a whole new mind.”

Where we go with this “whole new mind” is anybody’s guess right now. All I can say right now is that increasingly with clients I am watching their struggle to birth and understand what this whole new mind is about. At the same time they are discovering that a facility for high tech is no longer enough to compete in today’s fast paced world, they are also struggling to discover, embrace and communicate their own story out in the business world of today.

According to Pink, in this more “conceptual age” people need not only the left brain high tech skills but also the more right brain skills of empathy, connection and ability to communicate a compelling narrative. Pink believes as I do that this combination of “high tech” skills with both  “high touch” and  “high concept” capability are going to be the skill sets of the future which people in business will be hiring.

The Keys To The Kingdom Of The 21st Century

The new age is dawning. This means that for all of us, the ability to develop and master great observation, listening and communication skills is more crucial than ever.
 
If we are to learn how to truly “Speak To Win” in this new “Conceptual Age,” a new combination of balancing and utilizing both the left and right brain skills will be the key to both connecting and competing well in the 21st Century.