The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain - Betty Edwards [4]
The results of the seminars have been sometimes startling, sometimes almost amusing in terms of the obviousness of engendered solutions. An example of a startling result was a surprising revelation experienced by the group working on the chemical problem. It turned out that the group had so enjoyed their special status and favored position and they were so intrigued by the fascinating problem that they were in no hurry to solve it. Also, solving the problem would mean breaking up the group and returning to more humdrum work. All of this showed up clearly in their drawings. The curious thing was that the group leader exclaimed, “I thought that might be what was going on, but I just didn’t believe it!” The solution? The group realized that they needed—and welcomed—a serious deadline and assurance that other, equally interesting problems awaited them.
Another surprising result came in response to the question about customer relations. Participants’ drawings in that seminar were consistently complex and detailed. Nearly every drawing represented customers as small objects floating in large empty spaces. Areas of great complexity excluded these small objects. The ensuing discussion clarified the group’s (unconscious) indifference toward and inattention to customers. That raised other questions: What was in all of that empty negative space, and how could the complex areas (identified in discussion as aspects of the work that were more interesting to the group) make connection with customer concerns? This group planned to explore the problem further.
Krishnamurti: “So where does silence begin? Does it begin when thought ends? Have you ever tried to end thought?”
Questioner: “How do you do it?”
Krishnamurti: “I don’t know, but have you ever tried it? First of all, who is the entity who is trying to stop thought?”
Questioner: “The thinker.”
Krishnamurti: “It’s another thought, isn’t it? Thought is trying to stop itself, so there is a battle between the thinker and the thought. . . . Thought says, ‘I must stop thinking because then I shall experience a marvelous state.’ . . . One thought is trying to suppress another thought, so there is conflict. When I see this as a fact, see it totally, understand it completely, have an insight into it . . . then the mind is quiet. This comes about naturally and easily when the mind is quiet to watch, to look, to see.”
—J. Krishnamurti
You Are the World, 1972
The group seeking more productive ways of working together came to a conclusion that was so obvious the group actually laughed about it. Their conclusion was that they needed to improve communication within the group. Members were nearly all scientists holding advanced degrees in chemistry and physics. Apparently, each person had a specific assignment for one part of the whole task, but they worked in different buildings with different groups of associates and on individual time schedules. For more than twenty-five years they had never met together as a group until we held our three-day seminar.
I hope these examples give at least some flavor of the corporate seminars. Participants, of course, are highly educated, successful professionals. Working as I do with a different way of thinking, the seminars seem to enable these highly trained people to see things differently. Because the participants themselves generate the drawings, they provide real evidence to refer to. Thus, insights are hard to dismiss and the discussions stay very focused.
I can only speculate why this process works effectively to get at information that is often hidden or ignored or “explained away” by the language mode of thinking. I think it’s possible that the language system (L-mode, in my terminology) regards drawing—especially analog drawing—as unimportant, even as just a form of doodling. Perhaps, L-mode