Five minds of the future

Five minds of the future provides a useful frame of reference to understand my professional activities .These five minds are - the disciplined, synthesizing, creative, respectful and ethical mind.First three minds mainly cater to the intellectual pursuits and last two relate to our social attitudes.

Disciplined mind is what we use to master a body of knowledge and we are used to this activity right from the beginning of our academic life. Within the IT industry,functions such as delivery, strategy, presales and consulting value different kind of skills set and knowlege base.The challenge as one shifts between them, lies in reinventing yourself - keeping at the cycle of unlearning and learning.

 Synthesizing mind is engaged in cherry picking the right insights from different streams of information and weaving in into a  cohesive story which is more than its parts. I feel that synthesizing mind is also useful in building up knowledge because the more we relate what we know, the more we retain. So when I am scouring through analyst reports garnering the Market and Strategy Insights,I am here. Delivering a crisp session, putting together a winning proposal,researching a topic,writing an article,designing and building software are all in this domain.

Creative mind is engaged in solving the jigsaws of the known unknowns and unknown unknowns. The basics of discipline and synthesizing are prerequisites - as the author aptly quips that to think outside the box we need to know what is in the box first ! So reverse enginnering a framework and using it build another platform would be an example of using creativity in technical domain.

The last two minds are all about values that build personal worth.. the respectful mind - having respect for others and understanding that we cannot individually have all the answers ..the ethical mind - walking the talk  and living up to our values. This is an ongoing quest of personal development and professionalism.