Structure determines behavior. To foster innovation, companies must design organizational structures that incubate it. Innovation is driven by innovation. The Right-Brained Organization is an innovative organizational structure. But innovation is counter-traditional. Becoming a Right-Brained Organization requires the courage to be counter-traditional.
How much courage do we have to be counter-traditional? If we’re only countering other people’s traditions, it’s relatively easy to accept. But if we’re countering our own traditions, will our tolerance be as great? Or let’s put it another way: what if it’s counter-intuitive? That is, if what we’re opposing is what we ourselves consider common sense, can we still accept it?
The Right-Brained Organization is designed for companies that want to develop breakthrough innovation, disruptive innovation, and even architectural innovation. When you engage in these non-conventional innovations, you are actually doing something counter-traditional and even counter-intuitive.
People often compare entrepreneurship and innovation to an airplane taking off. Yes, this feeling is correct. This book repeatedly proves this feeling. The human brain uses the intuitive system for decision-making because it is useful – at least most of the time it is simple and effective.
And let managers fly and ride the wind. This is counter-traditional and even counter-intuitive. Faced with this kind of counter-tradition and even counter-intuition, especially letting us who are used to having both feet on the ground ride the wind and fly, it really takes courage. Our “mental model” will resist and try to put new knowledge into old bottles. And we will use our accustomed “left-brain ability” to think about this new knowledge, but in fact, you cannot train “right-brain ability” with the method of training “left-brain ability”.
Most of us have three ways of thinking through life and education: intuitive thinking of sensibility, intuitive thinking of rationality, and logical thinking of rationality. Intuitive thinking of sensibility is your feeling: I am very happy, I am very sad. You are the absolute authority on the issue of feeling. No one can challenge your own feelings. If you are a smart person who has received systematic education, logical thinking of rationality can also help you accurately analyze and solve problems. The real problem is rational intuitive thinking – they wear the “rational” sheepskin but use “shortcut thinking”. In today’s rapidly changing world, these “mental models” are very easy to make mistakes but we firmly believe.
As a manager of a Right-Brained Organization, you need to master a new way of thinking. It’s “new” because no one has ever mentioned it in writing before. But it’s not “new” because it has actually been passed down from generation to generation among professional “right-brain thinkers” (such as artists). Because it doesn’t belong to words (left brain), there are no written records either. Let’s call this ancient professional thinking “sensible right-brain thinking.”
For most people, it’s not easy at first. But it’s necessary. As long as you persist, you will soon find that it’s not difficult at all. Because as we mentioned earlier, the left and right brains are both part of yourself. Next, you need to understand how to lead a Right-Brained Organization in a counter-traditional and even counter-intuitive way. For example, how to rely on imagination to run a company; how to manage a company unrealistically; and how to manage a company in a non-data-driven way. These all go against traditional management common sense. But they are indeed effective.