The Power of Creative Intelligence - Tony Buzan

Choice Words/Phrases

“The brain divided its activities distinctly into Right Brain and Left Brain activities.” Right brain caters to- rhythm, spatial awareness, dimensions, imagination, daydreaming, color and holistic awareness while the Left brain is responsible for words, logic, numbers, sequence, linearity, analysis and lists. The radically different view that the book puts forth – right brain and left brain are more intricately connected while performing their activities and there is a cross impact and dependence on the activities between the right and left brains. It is the whole-brain that creates the difference. Not the two parts independently. Creative brain is the whole brain. The book gives creativity work outs through out and I will list down some of the most salient of the tips.
1. Take breaks – Some of the most interesting and brilliant ideas come out while in the bath, in the shower, before going to sleep, while asleep, upon waking up, while listening to music etc.
For the whole brain to work well, take breaks.
2. Go for Long Walks or Rambles: Solvitas perambulum (solve it while you walk)
3.Use both sides of your body. (brush /comb your hair with your left hand if you are right handed and vice versa etc)
4. Play Einstein’s creative games: Ask questions to yourself like “what would it be like to go for a ride on a sunbeam to an end of the universe?’ or ‘if I traveled at the speed of light away from somebody, would I be invisible?’
5. Daydream and night dream- both give your visual creative muscles added strength.
6. Use Mind maps

If you want to understand more about the Mind Maps, which in itself is a fairly lengthy study, read Tony Buzan’s book on Mind Maps.

7. Join an art class or visit art galleries.
8. Try cartooning
9. Sing, Dance, get you another instrument, take music classes, perform in clubs, parties.
10. Improve vocabulary
11.Take any two words and try to think of atleast five similarities between them, the wilder the better. If you can find 10, you are exceptional, 15 you are in the world’s top 1 % and if you find over 20, you are demonstrating creative genius in this area.
Eg of word pairs: Orange and Frog, Bird and beetle, spaceship and watch etc.
12. See things from different viewpoints (Alexander the great was brilliant at seeing things from other points of view- and not just from that of other humans, but animals too.
13. Act of reversal – simply take whatever exists and consider the opposite.
14. Learn to tell witty jokes
15.The Universe and Me game: In this game, put yourself at the centre of the Associative universe. Each day, pick one random concept or idea, and generate five or more ideas in which this random concept relates to YOU. Eg. The moon and me, Love and me, Earth and me, Laptop and me, Blog and me etc.
16. You and Animals: Compare yourself with the traits of as many animals as possible. Check out which animal you resemble the most.
17. Create short poems
18. Be a child (stare at things, listen to stories, play with children, learn to do new thngs, ask questions (why, what, where, who)
19. Ask why or how, five times at least, a day.
20. Read more of Tony Buzan and Edward Debono

Outliers- by Malcolm Gladwell

Choice Words/Phrases

“This is a book about Outliers, about men and women who do things that are out of the ordinary”
The Matthew Effect: This chapter is a revelation. It tells us that our notion that it is the best and the brightest who effortlessly rise to the top is much too simplistic. What is and has been overlooked all the while is the big head start that these outliers got, an opportunity that they neither deserved nor earned. It is this great opportunity that made the difference and not just the extraordinary individual traits attributed to these personas so far.
Here on the book deals with bolstering this concept of the strategic opportunity that most of the super successful humans got in their lives.
The 10,000 – Hour Rule: Ten thousand hours is the minimum time that makes a genius and this is widely accepted in the intellectual world. But here the book does not argue against nor support this rule. It explains how the outliers got the advantage of being able to spend their 10,000+ hours on their passion.
Eg. Bill Gates: Bill got the opportunity to work on ASR-33 way back in 1968, when virtually most of the schools used the tedious computer-card system. Reason, Gates’ father was a wealthy lawyer and his mother the daughter of a well-to-do banker and he was put in a private school that catered to Seattle’s elite families and the school had an ASR-33 teletype, which was a time-sharing terminal with a direct link to a mainframe computer in Seattle. Bill Gates got to do real-time programming as an eighth grader in 1968.
There are examples of Beatles, Bill Joy, Paul Allen, Steve Ballmer, Eric Schmidt, and Steve Jobs, each of them with the extraordinary opportunities they had been bestowed with.
IQ vs. Practical Intelligence: Termites the ones with extremely high IQ deemed the intelligentsia of the world were considered the logical successors to the corporate world. However, that was proved to be untrue and a new type of intelligence called the practical intelligence is now attributed to the overall success. What is Practical Intelligence? To Robert Sternberg a renowned psychologist, practical intelligence includes things like “knowing what to say to whom, knowing when to say it, and knowing how to say it for maximum effect”. Lets now look at what classes of people have superior practical intelligence. The answer: middle class and the elite. The middle-class parenting style also defined by some as ‘concerted cultivation’ attempts to proactively foster and assess a child’s talents, opinions and skills. While the poor parents tend to leave their children to develop on their own. Middle class encourages their kids to a bit of casual incivility and entitlement. They are encouraged to reason, negotiate and ask for what they are entitled to and these are key skills for success in today’s world.

The factors:
Some of the factors that the book outlines for the outlier advantage, which is the core point of the book are listed and detailed below:
1.New York Law firms: If you had to be an uber successful law firm in the 1960’s, you had the outlier advantage had you been Jewish. This is how the story turned. The Jewish lawyers that set foot in New York in the 1960’s were subject to work and pay discrimination. They were therefore forced to take up cases that were disdained by the white-shoe firms, such as hostile takeovers, proxy fights etc. Then came the 70’s. Federal regulations were meeker, markets globalize, easier access to cash and this lead to a surge in controversial takeovers and litigation cases. Who else was best prepared for these? The Jewish law firms of New York who were handling these forsaken cases. They are now experts in these with more than 10,000 hrs of experience. The tide was in their favor. So, if you were a Jewish lawyer in the 60’s, you had the opportunity to become big in the 70’s.
2.Demographic Luck: Most of us know about the baby boomers. There is another important trend in the American demography and that was in the 30’s, the demographic trough. The 1930’s saw a sizeable decline in the population growth compared to the preceding years, thanks to the great depression. Families stopped having children due to the economic hardships. What does this mean to the Outlier theory? For children born in the 1930’s, there was lesser competition for education, jobs etc. For a young would-be lawyer , being born in early 1930’s was a magic time, just as being born in 1955 was for a software programmer.
3.The garment industry and meaningful work
4.Legacy
The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes & Korean Air:
Korean Air had a very disturbing trend of plane crashes.
The crash of Air flight 801 headed for Guam on August 5, 1997.
The crash of KAL 801, that wandered into the Russian airspace and was shot down by Soviet military jet in 1977. The Korean Air Boeing 747 crash in Seoul in 1979. Another Boeing 747 crash near Sakhalin Island, in Russia, followed by a Boeing 707 that went down over the Andaman Sea in 1987, two more crashes in 1989 in Tripoli and Seoul, and then another in 1994 in Cheju, South Korea.
The average loss rate for an airline like the United Airlines in the period 1988 to 1998 was .27 per million departures, while the loss rate for Korean Air at 4.79 per million departures- almost 17 times higher loss rate.
Korean Air’s crash sequence continued unabated and this trend was worrisome. In April 1999, Delta Air and Air France suspended their flying partnership with Korean Air. Korean Air’s fate was bleak.
Now for the analysis: Power Distance (PDI). PDI is concerned with attitudes toward hierarchy, specifically with how much a particular culture values and respects authority. High PDI means the subordinates maintain a distance to their superiors, hesitate to challenge them, carry on their orders with little resistance, and speak using conversational mitigation and Low PDI is just the opposite.
The flight –deck design is intended to be operated by two people and when on of the pilots’ is a Korean and communicating with the traffic control of a low PDI nation, the gap turns out to be a fatal gap. The problem is Korea is very high on PDI and US very low.
As some of the black box studies showed after a plane crash, it’s this gap between the two pilots that caused the crash. A cultural issue. Even in case of an emergency the Korean would try to indirectly hint at things like ‘how about trying it this way” or “what if it does not work” etc, instead of simply saying “it’s an emergency, we need immediate clearance “
A series of interesting black box conversations are illustrated in the book.
Culture also expounds the reason why Asians are better at math. Eg. Chinese number words are quite brief. Most of them can be uttered in less than one-quarter of a second( eg. 4 is “si” and 7 is “qi”). Their English equivalents four and seven are longer, takes around one third of a second to pronounce them. This difference extends to two digit and three digit numbers as well.
Eg.eleven, twelve etc The number system in English is erratic while in China, Japan and Korea it is more logical. Twelve is ten two and Twenty-four is two-tens-four. This difference leads to Asian children learn to count faster than an average American. Chinese on the whole abets easy understanding and application of maths and hence the advantage.
So far in Outliers the point made is that success arises out of the steady accumulation of advantages: when and where you were born, economic status of your parents, and what the circumstances of your upbringing, the Power distance of your culture, the uncertainty avoidance of your culture and a host of other cultural issues, all make a significant difference in how well you do in the world. – The Outlier Advantage.

Ten Secrets of Worlds Greatest Communicators- by Carmine Gallo

Choice Words/Phrases

Speak with passion: Unless the audience sees that you, the speaker is totally involved, enthused and passionate about what you are speaking the audience might just ignore you. The book introduces a new quotient similar to IQ or EQ and that is PQ (Passion Quotient) . PQ increases as your enthusiasm increases and also as your energy increases. So be energetic and be enthusiastic and be more passionate as you speak.
Inspire: Inspiration and Charisma is the key to inspiration. The author defines charisma as “a personal attractiveness that enables you to influence others, an ability to arouse fervent popular devotion and enthusiasm”.
Seem human and paint a picture to your audience. Tell them where they are and where you are going to take them to. Show them that this is the compelling vision you have for them and that you are going to take all of them towards that vision.
One of the very effective ways of selling your vision is through a story. A good story appeals to the audience like a magnet and conveys the message in the most lucid and straightforward way. However, keep the story original and personal. Copying someone else’s story could have an adverse impact.
Sell a mission to the audience. Steve Jobs told the then CEO of Pepsi Sculley “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or Change the World”, in a bid to convince Sculley to join Apple.
Prepare: Prepare, prepare and prepare thoroughly before a presentation. Most of the world’s greatest communicators prepare thoroughly before the presentation. Some of them prepare to the finicky extent of when to pause, what joke to crack and when to smile.
People prepare by watching themselves the recorded practice sessions and improvising on the presentation.
It is also cardinally important to know your audience. Their background, their history, their interests and what kind of humor they’d like and what they are looking for in the presentation and what they actually care for.
And
Don’t read from your presentation…Speak.

Start Strong: Powerful beginning and end will leave the audience speechless. Some of the experts feel – get your audience’s attention in the first 30 seconds or perish. Try the 30 second pitch, where the gist of your message needs to be addressed in nothing more than 30 seconds. What makes a good 30-second pitch? The one that answers
1.What is my service, product, company or cause?
2.What problem do I solve?
3.How am I different?
4.Why should you care?

Clarity: Lose the Jargon or Lose your Audience. Keep it simple. Express the Wow in your message clearly.
Eg. for a Simple and Clear message. “Fix, Sell or Close” by Jack Welch.
Here’s what you can do to work around the jargon. Use Story enhancers
Story Enhancers include Analogies, Anecdotes, Endorsements, Examples, Statistics and Testimonials. `
Brevity:
Long is Dull. Are you dull?
Keep the presentation small and sweet. Avoid too many slides in case you are using a PowerPoint.

Say It With Style:
Develop your individual style.
There are some good tips to make a good style in a presentation.
1.Vary your tone
2.Have a reasonably good pace
3.Pause (at important points)
4. Punch the key words – for that extra stress
5. Clearly utter each and every word. Don’t mumble

Command Presence:
Don’t stand just at the same place throughout your presentation. Move around the stage and move around the audience. As you move around the audience, keep
1. Open Posture
2. Make Eye Contact
3. Use well placed Hand Gestures


Wear It Well:
Clients are flattered when you dress up for the occasion, because dressing up for an occasion shows that you care for the occasion and that is a positive sign. Great dress catches peoples’ attention. So Wear It Well.
Stay in Style when it comes to dressing. Update your closet with the latest in the market.
Get the Right Fit and Right Color. The color of leadership is “Dark Blue (solid or with fine pinstripe) Suit, White or baby blue shirt and burgundy tie “ according to De Paris. De Paris is an authority in dressing design and has made suits for some of the most popular US presidents such as Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Bush Senior and Junior etc. All this, however with the disclaimer that one needs to dress for the occasion. No point wearing De Paris’ style for a Valentine’s Day outing.


Reinvent Yourself:
Curiosity is the key word. Always be prepared to reinvent yourself, with new skills, new ideas, new vision, new slogan for your business etc.
AND
The 11th Secret – Believe, deep down that you’re destined to do great things.