As Daniel Kahneman conveyed to the business world in his book, Thinking Fast and Slow, the human mind has two core levels: System 1 and System 2. While there are differences, for my purposes I will refer to these two systems of mind as Unconscious (most closely aligned with System 1) and Conscious (most closely aligned with System 2). These parts of mind have profoundly different characteristics, one of which is size and scope.
It’s useful to think of the Conscious Mind (System 2) as the tip of the iceberg—visible above the surface of the water—as comprising only 5% of mind. While very limited in scope, we have awareness of content that is currently held in conscious mind, though it changes from moment to moment. Conversely, the Unconscious Mind (System 1)—below the surface of the water—comprises 95% of mind. Some unconscious material is what may be called pre-conscious (i.e., able to be called up to conscious mind upon demand just by thinking about it; for example, recalling what you had for dinner yesterday), the vast majority of material housed within unconscious mind (i.e., beliefs and memories that drive consumer and employee behavior, etc.) requires other means to access and work with it.
I hope you are beginning to imagine that there are major connotations to understanding the differences in size and scope of the two parts of mind, and the importance of having resources to access and leverage both. Does this make you curious about how limited a business is that only seeks to leverage the conscious part of the minds of executives and all who work within the corporation?
Research within the field of cognitive psychology has been in process since the 1970s that defines the myriad differences between conscious and unconscious processes. Rolling out of this research is a vast body of knowledge defining what can go wrong when the distinctions between the two processes of mind are not understood and conversely, what can go right when they are aligned and leveraged.
To elaborate on the differences, conscious mind includes the analytic processes that are well understood by business executives, while the holistic processes of the unconscious mind are less understood. While most executives embrace the idea that CONTROLLED analysis and rational logic are at the heart of good decision-making (tip of the iceberg), what about the other 95% of mind that operates AUTOMATICALLY, without controlled thought? And what about the fact that, as Kahneman described, the conscious mind operates relatively slowly, and the unconscious mind operates quickly. Further, conscious processes are highly demanding of cognitive capacity and sequential in nature, and unconscious processes are relatively undemanding of cognitive capacity and parallel in nature.
The unconscious mind is the seat of all habits and learning. Hence, when a new skill has been learned, the vast unconscious mind can take over (operating on automatic pilot), while the conscious mind goes on to learn other things. Further, the ‘unconscious’ is the part of mind that manages all of the systems of the body, such as breathing, circulation, digestion, immune system, etc. And it is the seat of memory and emotion, and the source of creativity and intuition.
While the vastness of difference between parts of mind has only been touched upon here, hopefully this is enough to whet your appetite to learn more about how conscious and unconscious minds can be used in tandem to create performance improvement, understand true brand perceptions, and ignite creativity and innovation.
Businesses that appreciate the differences between the two parts of mind can dramatically improve performance and unleash creativity that leads to innovation.