A Whole New Mind for

This Whole New World:

Using Daniel Pink’s Six
Senses to Develop Ourselves
as Lead Learners

Jamie Baker
©Reverb Consulting
What I hope we accomplish:

Learn how to use Daniel Pink’s six senses to

develop new awareness and skills that will
help us, individually and organizationally,
increase our effectiveness and our “relevance”
in the 21st century
We are no longer in an environment where a school
can put its head in the sand and imagine that it only
has to deal with change every 5 to 10 years.

Descriptors common in the “industrial age”

(stable, predictable, logical, linear, long-
range, fixed, tasks, roles, rules) are being
replaced with “information age” descriptors (e.g.
turbulent, unpredictable, fluid, pragmatic,
adaptable, emerging, and process.)
ISM Ideas and Perspectives Vol. 29 No. 1
What do I know about Hutchison?
“Vision, Inspiration, Excellence”

  Educate girls to be ethical, responsible, and active leaders in the 21st

century 

  Align the school’s programs with the challenges [and

opportunities] of the 21st century

  Implement a strategic institutional advancement plan

  Develop the resources to support and enhance Hutchison’s

programs

  Enhance relationships with the Memphis community to grow the

relevance of Hutchison in the larger community



If you don’t like change,
you’re going to like
irrelevance even less.
General Eric Shinseki, U. S. Army Chief of Staff
 All types of individuals and organizations are struggling to
respond and stay in sync, to remain relevant. Some do this willy
nilly, and others are trying to devise plans such as personal
learning plans, organizational learning plans, or sustainability
plans. The basis for these plans is this question:
What will it take to survive in a new, fast, flat, wiki world?
A recent article in ASCD, "Rigor Redefined" by Tony Wagner, outlines 7 critical
survival skills for the 21st century:

1. Critical Thinking and Problem Solving

2. Collaboration and Leadership
3. Agility and Adaptability
4. Initiative and Entrepreneurialism
5. Effective Oral and Written Communication
6. Accessing and Analyzing Information
7. Curiosity and Imagination

How are we further evolving these skills in ourselves?

How are we explicitly teaching these skills to our students?
Leadership and learning
are indispensable
to each other.
-
John F. Kennedy
Keys to a Successful Process:

Willingness

Reflection

Mindset
Becoming an organization that learns is
dependent upon becoming, individually and
collectively, intentional and disciplined at
reflection despite the time pressures that
permeate school life. Reflection is the
process of deliberatively deconstructing a
situation or endeavor for meaning, impact,
values, logistics, relevance, and strategic
import.
Daniel Pink’s six
senses provide new
conceptual tools that
we can develop,
individually and
organizationally, to
generate strategies for
becoming more
aligned to the 21st
century.
 The future belongs to a very
different kind of mind -- creators
and empathizers, pattern recognizers,
and meaning makers. These people --
artists, inventors, designers,
storytellers, caregivers, consolers, big
picture thinkers -- will now reap
society’s richest rewards and share its
greatest joys.
Daniel Pink, AWhole New Mind
Hello,
I’m
a
Mac
and
I’m
a
PC….


MFA
=
the
new
MBA

Expanding the Toolbox
Not
just
function
but
also
DESIGN


Not
just
argument
but
also
STORY


Not
just
focus
but
also
SYMPHONY


Not
just
logic
but
also
EMPATHY


Not
just
seriousness
but
also
PLAY


Not
just
accumulation
but
also
MEANING

Play

“The opposite of play isn’t work. It’s

depression. To play is to act out and be
willful, exultant and committed as if
one is assured of one’s prospects.”
Brian Sutton-Smith, U Penn
Play deserves more respect than it gets.
Playing with images and ideas is what
creativity is all about, and creativity
advances civilization...If there is any better
way to strengthen a brain, or to feed the
spirit than to play, I do not know what it is.

Edward Hallowell, The Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness

Story

“Stories – that’s how people make

sense of what is happening to them.”
Dr. Howard Brody
When facts become so widely available and
instantly accessible, each one becomes less
valuable. What begins to matter more is the
ability to place these facts in context and to
deliver them with emotional impact.

Story = context enriched by emotion.

E.M. Forster’s famous observation

Fact
The king died and then the queen died.

Story
The king died, and then queen died of a
broken heart.
Meaning
“Meaning has become a central aspect of our work and our
lives. Pursuing meaning is obviously no simple task. You
can’t buy a cookbook with a recipe for it, or open a packet
of powder, add water and stir. There are two practical,
whole-minded ways for individuals, families, and
businesses to begin to search for meaning: take spiritually
seriously and take happiness seriously.”

Daniel Pink
Presentee-ism is the phenomenon of
being there physically but not there
emotionally, mentally, or spiritually.
Presentee-ism is caused by the loss of
one’s sense of meaning or one’s
understanding or ownership of
mission.
 So what's left? Meaning. Purpose.
Deep life experience. Use whatever
word or phrase you like, but know
that consumer desire for these
qualities is on the rise. Remember
your Abraham Maslow and your
Viktor Frankl. Bet your business on
it.
- Rich Karlgaard, publisher of Forbes
Maslow
Symphony
“Many of us are crunched for time, deluged by
information, and paralyzed by the weight of too
many choices. The best prescription for these
modern maladies may be to approach one’s own
life in a contextual, big-picture fashion – to
distinguish between what really matters and what
merely annoys.”

Daniel Pink
Symphony is the ability to put together
the pieces. It is the capacity to synthesize
rather than to analyze; to see relationships
between seemingly unrelated fields; to
detect broad patterns rather than to deliver
specific answers; and to invent something
new by combining elements nobody else
thought to pair.

Daniel Pink, AWhole New Mind

Many engineering deadlocks have been broken
by people who are not engineers at all. This is
because perspective is more important than IQ.
The ability to make big leaps of thought is a
common denominator among the originators of
breakthrough ideas. Usually this ability resides in
people with very wide backgrounds,
multidisciplinary minds, and a broad spectrums
of experience.
Nicholas Negroponte of MIT
Empathy

“Leadership is about empathy. It is about

having the ability to relate and connect
with people for the purpose of inspiring
and empowering their lives.”
Oprah Winfrey
Empathy is the ability to imagine
yourself in someone else’s position and
to intuit what that person is feeling. It is
the ability to stand in someone else’s
shoes, to see with their eyes, and to feel
with their hearts. It requires attuning
oneself to another.
Empathy is an essential part of living a life of meaning.

Empathy is an essential part of design, because good

designers put themselves in the mind of whoever is
going to experience the product or service they’re
designing.

Empathetic people understand the importance of

context (symphony).

Stories can be a pathway to empathy.

Empathetic listening, intuition, and willingness to

deviate from the rules can mean the difference
between life and death.

Empathy supplements objective knowledge and the use

of technology.
Design

“Design is utility enhanced by

significance, and it is an essential aptitude
for personal fulfillment and professional
success.”
Daniel Pink
Design is:

problem-solving
everything you see, feel, hear, smell
how we collaborate
managing experiences
what we will be in 50 years
Not
just
function
but
also
DESIGN


Not
just
argument
but
also
STORY


Not
just
focus
but
also
SYMPHONY


Not
just
logic
but
also
EMPATHY


Not
just
seriousness
but
also
PLAY


Not
just
accumulation
but
also
MEANING