In a world increasingly dominated by deadlines and short-
term performance regimes, we need to listen to our hunches and
intuitions more, not less.
Jonas Ridderstråle and Kjell Nordstrom encapsulate this
belief with a powerful metaphor: “We have to turn the workplace
into a gas station for our brains, not only a racetrack.”
Guy Claxton has explored the idea of “soft thinking” exten-
sively in his writing. In his book, Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind: Why
Intelligence Increases When You Think Less, he makes a compelling case
for letting your mind work at different speeds. The book offers a
wealth of insights into the complex process of learning to learn, for
example, that the apparently contradictory sayings “Look before
you leap” and “He who hesitates is lost” can both be true.
At various stages in this book, I have included practical sug-
gestions for how you can seek to move from the stressful, time-
dominated present into the fuzzier, but somehow more creatively
focused world I am describing.
Creative organizations make time for people to find their
creativity. In some consultancies it is, for example, becoming common-
place for senior staff to be given time off after challenging assignments
to recharge their batteries and to reflect on what they have learned.
One practical way of creating time at work is consciously to
seek to undertake fewer projects in smaller teams. The larger the
team, the more it is necessary to meet. The more functional meet-
ings you have, the less time there is for fuzzier, more productive
thinking and learning.
When Richard Branson creates a new business he does not
subsume it within Virgin. While it benefits from the Virgin name,
Branson has shown how much more creative it can be to keep teams
small and focused and leave them space to create.
Interestingly, research has shown that you tend to come up
with more creative ideas after the initial burst of ideas that you pro-
duce. This truth, linked to the idea that the world is becoming
much more complex, explains why a fuzzier approach is increas-
ingly helpful to have as part of your own toolkit of skills.
This is partly why I think that brainstorming is an overrated
pastime. Edward de Bono stressed that the key element of the tech-172 Power Up Your Mind
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