An Adaptive Mind

An adaptive mind can converge conscious thinking and unconscious or inner realm, think fast and think slow accordingly.

Adaptability is to be understood as the ability of a system to adapt itself efficiently and fast to changed circumstances. An adaptive mind is, therefore, an open mind that is able to adjust its thinking processes according to changes in its environment, or a learning mind to absorb all necessary knowledge and abstract it into insight and wisdom.



An adaptive mind has better learning capability: Each person has a different level of knowledge (the consciousness about a problem) and reacts to environmental changes, with behaviors that are strictly linked with the information they have and with the way other people share and collaborate with them.... but knowledge (structure) and reactions (behaviors) change, evolve applying them in time and space. Knowledge is a collection of facts; raw data. What one does with the raw data requires wisdom. Wisdom is an umbrella term, as it is the amalgamation of thought, analysis, planning, prediction of consequences, and so on. Then knowledge is the result of lessons we learned by exploitation of our wisdom! There is possible to see what enables us to be self-adaptive organisms is an information-driven process feeding and sustaining it.

An adaptive mind has better collaborative attitude & behavior: Self-adaptation is faster if made with the full involvement of people in organizational change; Thanks to rapid evolution in technology and neuroscience, we are discovering many things about our brains, our behaviors, our attitudes, and skills. This “incremental consciousness” about our own potentials is changing the way we see ourselves, our roles into a community: a team or a company. Organizations are made by people and people are the key element in self-adaptive organisms today's digital organization. There are heuristics in defining these requirements for the integrated system, as well as the system elements: the human, software, firmware, hardware (automated, semi-automated, and/or manual functions) and the environment; further addressing the system life cycle. Understanding the people and the organization through a common lens then makes it possible to turn organizational “theories” into tangible management processes that use “relations between people” as the loom on which to create management structures and processes that support self-adaptive problem-solving.

An adaptive mind can converge conscious thinking and unconscious or inner realm, think fast and think slow accordingly: How we behave as individuals in regard to our inner world is just as important and may even be more important than how we behave in regard to our outer world. Jung's psychological theory is based upon the primary assumption that the human mind has both a conscious or outer realm and an unconscious or inner realm. Because we tend to live and function in our conscious world, it is here that we try to resolve our individual and societal problems using the same behavior patterns over and over until they no longer fit the situation. Because of this, Jung believes that the resolution to conscious problems lies in the unconscious realm and as long as humans deny the contents of the unconscious they are also denying a fundamental part of themselves and society. Hence, an adaptive mind can leverage both thinking realms in a more profound and flexible way in order to make effective decisions and fair judgments.

An adaptive mind is in such a synthesizing mode, well-mixing systems thinking, holistic thinking, abstract thinking, temporal thinking, integrative thinking, quantitative and qualitative thinking, induction and deduction, with the very purpose to “perfect the wheel,” to adapt to the changes, and to move the world forward.

Posted in: Mindshift