EXECUTIVE THINKING

iUniverse, Inc.

Contents

Acknowledgments.........................................................................................................viiPreface: Realizing Bright to the Fourth Power...........................................................................ixIntroduction: A Journey from Bright to Brilliant through Visual-Spatial Thinking........................................11. Increasing Our Capacity to Think.....................................................................................52. Visual-Spatial Capacity: Seeing Brilliantly..........................................................................403. BRIGHT1 : Verbal Height: Solving Problems with Words......................................................904. BRIGHT2 : Quantitative Width: Solving Problems with Numbers...............................................1315. BRIGHT3 : Spatial Depth: Solving Problems with Inventions.................................................1646. BRIGHT4 : Global Insight: Executing Decisiveness, Direction, and Speed....................................222References..............................................................................................................279Appendix: Powers of Executive Thinking Capacity.........................................................................297Postscript: Developing Bright to the Fourth Power: The High-Tech, Educational Pathway to Brilliance.....................299

Chapter One

We cannot solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. Albert Einstein Today's revolutionary advances in neuroscience will rival the discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo, and Darwin. Paul Churchland

Life is about how much we think. Thinking is about how much capacity we have to process information. Capacity, in addition to our abilities and consciousness, is about how much we can simultaneously process combinations of verbal, quantitative, and spatial dimensions with decisiveness, direction, and speed.

Brilliance is about how much we can increase our capacity to think.

"Life" said Emerson, "consists in what a man is thinking all day." No matter where we go or what we do, we take our thinking with us. To a great extent we are what we think about. What we think about molds our aspirations and attitudes and what we will accomplish during our lives. Our lives are influenced more by our own thoughts than anything else.

How could a person possibly become what he is not thinking? Nor is any thought, where persistently entertained, too small to have its effect. The divinity that shapes our ends is indeed in our self. Spencer W. Kimball

Contrary to established dogma, our thinking capacity is not locked into an IQ score or set in genetic immutability. IQ scores cannot possibly tell the whole story about thinking capacity—not even close. Our capacity to think is uniquely dynamic, plastic, and changeable. None of us need be dead-bolted into a closed-door belief in a predetermined, fixed level of intelligence, and a limited life. We are today where our thinking has brought us, and we will be tomorrow where our thinking will take us. The dilemma for most of us is that we also filter our thoughts through the lens of limitations, fears, anxieties, and irrationality.

A widespread, oversimplified myth is that only a handful of us are capable of making inventive contributions to our lives. This bellcurve thinking is not supported by a new era of neuroscience research. Brilliant thinking can be observed in almost all intellectual activity. We discovered, after our extensive executive research on spatial ability/ capacity, why the engine of inspiration and inventiveness seems always to be in high gear in some leaders while others struggle. High scholastic aptitude is not the crucial ingredient here, because it is not the only criterion determining a leader's capacity for brilliance. Language is a marvelous tool for communication, but it is greatly overrated as a standalone tool for thought. Scholastic intelligence tests primarily involve verbal (language) and numerical thinking, whereas more brilliant leaders will measure high in spatial thinking with a good grasp of concepts. They are able to free themselves from conventional thought streams; instead, distant areas of their brains converse simultaneously and more robustly than is normal. Their creative abilities play out with a hyperconnectivity of normally disconnected thoughts, memories, feelings, and ideas. Brilliant leaders are able to mentally visualize and process in such a way that they can proceed from different starting points, change direction as needed, and spontaneously generate many unusual, probable solutions or distantly associated answers—each of which could be correct, useful, relevant, or effective and doable.

Some of us are privileged in life to gain more light and knowledge than others. Some are discouraged with life and/or do not continue to stimulate our minds with mental pursuits. Some attend school for a dozen or so years and then find employment only to provide an income until retirement. Our living patterns usually move toward routines and slowing down until we quietly fade away. Many of us assume that we were born with a certain number of brain cells and thereby have a genetically predetermined intellectual cap (somewhat false); that our brains start to slow down fairly early in life (somewhat true); and that there is little we can do about changing this pattern (false). We can't change the fact that we're older, but we can compensate for the cognitive changes that happen as a consequence (true). Although scientists still believe (for the most part) that we cannot grow new neurons, they now believe that the brain can grow new dendrites—the connections between neurons that create memory and learning (Koob, 2009). In other words, the human brain is like plastic. It is molded, at least in part, by its environment (true). We are not hostages of fate, but only hostages of our own thoughts (true). We are what we are because of our capacity to think (true). And the way we think, the way we take on our challenges, will influence our whole lives (true).

Think back ... way back! What happened when you first learned how to walk? Almost half of your brain's cortex spent a lot of spatial-processing time trying to figure out how to prevent you from falling. But once you got the hang of it, you no longer thought about it at all. Now, when you walk into a board room, you don't think about which foot to move next or which muscles need to be told how to react in order to do so. You are thinking about what's on the agenda, what you might contribute, how you might avoid failure and embarrassment, and generally of more important things. As executives, we are all learning experience by experience, but also precept by precept. Subsequent experiences confirm and reconfirm what we already know intellectually. However, unless our insight sustains ongoing spatial expansiveness (connectivity among distant brain regions) and changeability, we will not survive the erosion...