Whole Brain Thinking… is Creative Thinking
The Days of Left vs. Right Brain Skills are Gone
Imagine you are walking down a crowded street and see a man coming towards you. You notice that instead of walking he is only using his left leg and left arm to move. On the other side of the street, a woman is doing the same thing with her right leg and right arm. It’s a strange sight, so you stop to ask them why they are traveling this way. They respond that: “This is how I have been walking my whole life. Someone I trust told me that my right/left side is where my strengths are, so I didn’t try the other way.”
We all may vaguely remember the point in our childhood where we learned that there are two factions of the brain. You may have chosen a camp and stuck to it for dear life. It was a way for teachers and parents to quickly identify our possible career path that was only a “short” decade or two away. The toddlers chewing on the abacus were bound to become left brain mathematicians, and the musical rabble-rouser at the rainbow xylophone would surely be akin to Rachmaninoff. (You can see where I am going with this…)
At first glance this myth might not seem harmful, but the impact really became evident when I heard someone utters the words, “I’m not creative.”
To me, these three words are blasphemy. The truth is “EVERYONE IS CREATIVE.” You just have to broaden your definition of what it means to create.
As Planners, we can not succeed without the use of both analytics and full level creativity. We know this right vs. left debate to be a fallacy, so who better to challenge these misnomers than someone who sits in the center of this theoretical spectrum. Unique personalities and life circumstances prevent us from being so one dimensional. The brain, just like any other muscle in your body needs to be used in full so that you can navigate the turns, circumvent disaster and create something grand. You can’t craft new solutions with skills you may have never learned, but we leverage what we know or collaborate to fill in the gaps. This is called using your whole brain. It seems so obvious! But if you don’t believe me yet, here is a breakdown of different ways we converge left & right in the industry.
Creative Analytical Thinking
Analyst and Marketing Scientists not only add value regarding detailed rigor, but they also use their creativity to come up with the best questions to ask, remembering the best process for future research options in MRI, and ComScore. On top of that, some often have the highly coveted skills of understanding data programming which FYI is a different language. This is using their whole brain.
Creative Artistic Thinking
Our quintessential idea of Creatives i.e. photographers, artists, writers, visual designers often does not get credit for the fact that these individuals are also highly detailed. They have great spacial awareness and attention to detail. On top of that, they have the ablility to work with space and use highly technical tools such as Photoshop, Lightroom, and Premiere to execute their jobs. They use their whole brain.
Creative Strategic Thinking
Strategists and Planners have the benefit of living more directly in the center of both camps. We also perform high-level data analysis, that often lends itself to beautifully designed decks, blueprints, frameworks, & eco-systems. Carrying soft skills to communicate information to analysts, and share work/briefs with Creatives and trusted conversations with clients. We use our whole brain.
At the end of the day, I have met many Planners and other people in advertising who started from different academic pasts which include world history, biology, film, mathematics, economics. Ultimately the one thing that brought us all to this vector in our lives is our ability to use our full experience to learn and grow.
Creativity involves all points of the spectrum. It’s not about left vs. right, or using one vs. the other, because limiting your ability to think in new and uncomfortable ways is your disservice.
The man and woman in the story above may have chosen to go through life hopping on one leg, but for us coordinating with both sides allows us the advantage to gain strength, pick up speed and excel toward the future.
