Your creative brain is your future

The next two decades will increasingly belong to those who know how to use their creative (right) brain. Sadly school and in-company training courses will almost certainly not help you develop yours.

They are really only interested in testing you on things that can be easily measured because they have signed up to the insane idea that you can fully understand a person through numbers.

Your logical (left) brain is all about the what? and the How? of things and, of course, these are very important concepts. However, only your creative (right) brain can understand the why? of things.

It is only when we can answer the question "why?" that we are able to release meaning, purpose, passion and commitment.

These are the drivers of future growth and development and we are desperately short of people who know how to find those answers. Why? Because our education systems are rubbish at unleashing creativity and divergent thinking.

Many businesses do not understand creativity and what it can do for them. We are not talking here about sitting on bean bags contemplating the meaning of the colour taupe. We are talking about combining past experience and knowledge with leaps of insight to solve complex problems.

This can only happen in an environment that stimulates and promotes people who do not think in conventional ways, who do not play well in a team and who do not play by the rules. In other words, logic and process, by themselves, will not get us the answers we need.

The irony of this is that, whilst our schools and colleges have been busy churning out a steady stream of left-brained, future employees and tax-payers, artificial intelligence and automation have been busy removing the very jobs they are being trained for.

This means we cannot afford to assume that our ability to follow rigid processes and procedures will guarantee our future, even though that is how we have been conditioned.

The good news is that they will never be able to automate or outsource your creativity. We are light-years away from developing computer technology that can come anywhere close to mimicking the incredible leaps of intuition, extrapolation, insight and vision that your brain can make everyday

And yes, you HAVE got a creative brain. Just because it has not been nurtured or acknowledged, that does not mean it isn't there. You just need to learn how to use it.