Jean Roberts

The intention of my writing on this topic is to increase and enhance organisational effectiveness – defined as a combination of business performance and individual job satisfaction.

Since 1988, I have undertaken a sympathetic study of left and right brain orientation through the observation and exploration of the attitudes and behaviours of people in their workplaces, families, social gatherings, community activities and public office. This process has included a diversity of people and organisations.

Activity at every level of every business consists of planning, implementing and evaluating one or a number of individual tasks or situations: some will be of major significance and many will be routine or of relative insignificance. Yet it is predictable that each task or situation will consist of 3 major components:

1. the task itself
   - ie: what needs to be done, why, how, when, where, at what cost
2. the person or persons involved with or affected by the task
   ie: who, who for, by whom, who else, together with their needs, interests and aspirations
3. the environment within which the task is to be accomplished or achieved
   ie: the broad environment, eg political, cultural, social, economic, geographic: or the immediate environment, eg organisational issues, buildings, equipment, facilities, physical comfort.

A left and right-brain business is deemed to be a business that includes orientation as an analytical tool, one which values relationships and allocates time and energy to make each relationship as effective as possible in order to increase and enhance the performance of the business.

This is what I call ‘business brainpower’, defined as:
the ability to understand how people think and act differently to you, why they do, and how to apply this knowledge and understanding to manage problems, create opportunities and accept challenges.

Business brainpower is an important contributor to business effectiveness.

Organisations are made up of people: it is often said that organisations don’t make decisions, people do. Therefore an effective organisation is one that fully understands, respects and capitalises on the orientation in internal and external relationships.

Orientation indicates a person’s natural style, characteristics and behaviour, and is based on the dominance of either the left or right hemisphere of the brain. My writing introduces 3 styles:

• Left-brain style, where the left hemisphere is more dominant than the right
• Right-brain style, where the right hemisphere is more dominant than the left
• Centre style, where there is almost no dominance between the left and right hemispheres