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India is considered a powerhouse in the IT space. We are also considered a nation that produces high IQ students. The prowess that every educated Indian possesses over mental math, computing and science, is considered a genetic gift, that is widely dispersed among Indian population. This is in sharp contrast in an international scenario where simple arithmetic and reading is a huge challenge in younger children, especially in the west. Then why is it that India does not create as many scientists as some of the other countries? Why is it that India does not boast of number of technical and scientific patents as some of the other western countries do? Why is it that Indians in India are largely involved in low-end of the value chain of business? Why is it that the same Indians excel differently when they are in a western country context?
One of the reasons, may be that in India we rely too much on left-brain and give undue credence to it. As a result we are growing into a nation involved in lower value chain of the pyramid. May be since majority of people are not following their passion but routinely execute something asked for. They only look at as much as they are supposed to and therefore they are not able to take plunge to create something big. They are not working at the high-end of the value chain. This may not be generalised for all Indians, but large number of educated Indians may fit this scenario. Predominantly this is how we are shaping our young generation.
As a contrast look at Indian kids who have advantage of western education at any age. Most of them become very successful. The reason is not because of booming local economy in that country or their currency exchange rate. But with high IQ the moment, the right-brain of these children gets a stimulating environment, they prosper much beyond their counterparts in India.
Dr Makoto Shichida, famous brain scientist from Japan who spent 40 years of his life studying, untangling and developing strategies for brain activity of higher value creation says “Helping a child develop his right brain potential is about raising a child to become the best he can be.”
Left Brain dominance
Left brain trains to be logical, structured and therefore by definition is incremental. Right-brain by contrast produces creative and inspiring transformations. In organisational context, left brain is required more for engineering jobs, managerial jobs and other routine jobs where the role is to play an Inspector or maintain status quo or follow SOP developed by someone else. More intelligent people, with right-brain dominance therefore crate new product/ process paradigms, develop standards for use by others, then create SOPs to be followed by lesser mortals using their left brain.
One of the reasons, governments across the world have not succeeded in making transformations, is that they are spearheaded by bureaucracies. Bureaucracy that is trained to be predominantly left-brained aligned. They therefore often do not focus on developing strategies for transforming society, they only design and implement interventions that drives incremental changes.
Education – promoting compliance
Indian system of education grounds and prepares children for left-brain acuity. No wonder India has quickly gained enviable position in IT space. Interesting though is the fact that most of the IT work done in India is at the low end of the value chain, repetitive and mechanically accomplished. Very few product designs happen in India. It is either led by Indians trained in west or others educated in western system. Anyone not falling in this category is an exception, not the rule.
Even beyond IT, if you look at most of product design work , in other technology or business areas – most of them happen in the West. At one level it is a cultural issue therefore where mass education system is concerned. At another level, those who are able to break away from the rigid mould, are able to do fascinating work here. But unfortunately their numbers are too thin. They are not mass produced by our education and training system.
On the contrary the Western education system relies largely on developing right brain acuity. Ever wonder why some of the most successful people in recent times have not done engineering but created great technological innovations? They relied largely on their right brain – created world-beating products, set product trends rather than improve them.
Let us look at some of the other very successful businesses and people who are behind it – Mark Zukerberg of Facebook, Bansals of Flipkart in India, Jeff Bezoz of Amazon, Kunal Bahl of Snapdeal etc. Did the value of Facebook or any of the other companies mentioned above, come from bright engineering of codes or the coding of a bright idea? We need to understand what gives you incremental advantage and what brings transformational advantages.
Cultural drag
Culturally in India we ‘tell’ children at every stage of their growing up years what to do. Following what elders say is considered a virtue and doing something that a child thinks ‘ok’ is considered impolite, uncouth, disobedience, signs of being spoilt and even rigidity of attitude. Left-brain centric is so deeply ingrained that he or she always looks at someone to ‘tell’ him what to do.
Another challenge associated with this phenomena is that it teaches them indirectly to evade ‘ownership’ for actions – it is always someone else who told me to do so how and why should I take responsibility? When you join a business organisation, normally at age 24 and beyond, Organisation spends millions on its employees to ‘train them to take ownership’. Is that so simple to train someone otherwise than the way he has been used all his life. Could this be an area of organisational conflicts and dilemma?
Every individual in this world is creative. Difference is some use it and others do not. Innately therefore all individuals are right-brained. With our education and training system, we convert them to be predominantly left-brained. If you look at small children and how they approach any problem or game. It is refreshingly different from the way elders approach same problems and games. The young children possibly therefore enjoy what they do, while with time they start finding everything so routine and boring.
Performance paradigm
At work therefore when we are talking about employee engagement, should we also assess and review if predominantly the work of employees is left-brain centric or right-brain centric? Could that be a refreshing way of looking at employee engagement? Could that then lead to an exciting work place, with engaging people practices rather than copy-paste and routine intervention driven work environment. I am sure most of you have experienced that organisations spend lot of time and energy in organising events for employees, but attendance and participation becomes a challenge. Employee participation is driven by either who are the top brasses participating and for how long or what is the menu of snacks. There are some who always find time for organisational events in all sincerity but does that hold good for most of the employees?
In the recent times if you look at performance of Microsoft against companies like Google – the differentiating factor has been that while MS has been focusing on newer version of the product with added features, Google has always challenged the paradigm and created new product lines, including new OS platform like Android. In terms of engineering probably these products are only as good as MS products, but they have challenged and changed operating paradigms and therefore they have acquired the market share that they have. Google has also challenged the ‘paradigm of per-user license’ and created open platforms for people to use. They still make money and today far more people use Google applications and vouch for it than any other OS.
Even attrition in Google is far less than many other companies. The biggest engagement factor for employees is the ability to chose what they want – the company also calls it ‘work’. The ownership of employees is therefore very high and they enjoy to deliver high quality work. They do not complain about work-life balance.
Engineering vs Ingenuity
We need to understand difference between engineering a product or business and creating a product or business. the former comes from left brain competence while the latter comes from right-brain competence.
Need to change our education and training paradigm, if we want transformational changes in the way our business and society is run. In the West, even small children are taken out on a trip to the play ground or any external place to visit and then the students are asked to prepare a report and capture their perception/ thoughts about the experience. This trains kids and strengthens their perception ability. This therefore enhances their comprehension ability also. In contrast, if you look at the Indian education system, the teacher will dictate in the class answer that she expects the children to reproduce in examination. These were some of the occasions when I always visited schools of my kids and spoke to their Teachers, forbidding them from asking my kids to reproduce answer. I insisted that my kids should be allowed to write answer from their own comprehension. I also assured them that I shall never come back to speak to the Teachers, if my kids got less marks. Fortunately both of them have been toppers of their classes respectively and well respected amongst both teaching and student communities.
Conclusion
There has been lot of research and talk of left-right brain. Both have their own importance. Focusing on developing one at the cost of other may not necessarily give benefits to the people and society at large, they deserve. Our education system appears too heavily inclined in favour of left-brain dominance creating a pool of mechanical brains and followers. Shifting focus on developing right-brain competence will enable a nation to nurture and exploit its people resources for benefit of society and mankind. Possibly there is a need to restart meaningful debate in academia as well as business organisations on how to make this shift work for all of us. It will also improve happiness quotient of our society.