Using your brain EDITORIAL GLASS CANADA April 2021 Volume 33 • Number 2 Annex Business Media P.O. Box 530, Simcoe, Ontario N3Y 4N5 READER SERVICE Print and digital subscription inquires or changes, please contact Shawn Arul, Audience Development Manager Tel: 416.510.5181 Fax: 416.510.6875 Email: sarul@annexbusinessmedia.com Mail: 111 Gordon Baker Rd., Suite 400, Toronto, ON M2H 3R1 EDITOR | Patrick FLANNERY pflannery@annexbusinessmedia.com 226.931.0545 ASSOCIATE EDITOR | Sukanya RAY GHOSH srayghosh@annexbusinessmedia.com 647.203.7031 PUBLISHER | Danielle LABRIE dlabrie@annexbusinessmedia.com 519.429.5187 NATIONAL ACCOUNT MANAGER | Amanda McCRACKEN AMcCracken@annexbusinessmedia.com 519.429.5234 ACCOUNT COORDINATOR | Barb COMER bcomer@annexbusinessmedia.com 519.429.5171 MEDIA DESIGNER | Alison KEBA VP SALES/GROUP PUBLISHER | Martin McANULTY mmcanulty@annexbusinessmedia.com COO | Scott JAMIESON sjamieson@annexbusinessmedia.com SUBSCRIPTION RATES Canada -1 Year $37.00 (plus tax) U.S.A. -1 Year $85.00 (in CDN dollars) Publication Mail Agreement #40065710 Printed in Canada ISSN 0843-7041 Occasionally, Glass Canada will mail information on behalf of industry-related groups whose products and services we believe may be of interest to you. If you prefer not to receive this information, please contact our circulation department in any of the four ways listed above. Annex Privacy Officer privacy@annexbusinessmedia.com Tel: 800-668-2374 No part of the editorial content of this publication may be reprinted without the publisher’s written permis-sion. ©2021 Annex Publishing & Printing Inc. All rights reserved. Opinions expressed in this magazine are not nec-essarily those of the editor or the publisher. No liability is assumed for errors or omissions. All advertising is subject to the publisher’s approval. Such approval does not imply any endorsement of the products or services advertised. Publisher reserves the right to refuse advertising that does not meet the standards of the publication. There are two modes of thinking and each is equally important in our work. Been reading an excellent book called The Master and His Emissary by Iain McGilchrist. It’s all about the differences between the right and left hemispheres of the brain. As I read it, I keep thinking of ways this information applies to the business world. Most of us know that the left side of the brain controls the right side of our bodies and vice versa. But the differences in what the hemispheres do goes much deeper than that. The left side is where all our focused attention happens. It’s the side that looks at things, identifies them, makes decisions and plans action. The right side of our brain is where the brain does all its “background” work. It’s probably what Freud was talking about when he described the subconscious. It’s actually more aware of our environment than the left side as this is where all the information from our senses is collected, filtered and prioritized for importance. Thus the title of the book: the right brain is the master who knows about every-thing going on and comes up with the innovative strategies, the left side is his emissary who acts on his memos but thinks he’s in control of everything. What on earth does any of this have to do with your business? Well, one way is in how we think NEXT ISSUE about marketing. A lot of people expect advertising • Great glazing to work like a lever: you put out ad X and the phone • Northern rings Y times. When that doesn’t happen, they become frustrated and conclude advertising doesn’t work. facades That’s left-brain thinking. Direct-response advertising is a thing and does work, but it has to be executed properly and represents only one of several advertising strategies. Another kind engages the right-brains of its audience: branding. This sort of advertising inserts your company into your market’s environment, making its message and character part of the background your prospects live with every day. Once this is accomplished, when decision time comes for your clients, they are much more likely to direct their left-brains’ attention to your company. One of the reasons for this is that your right-brain is better at noticing new things and thinking new thoughts. Remember, it’s where information is collected and assimilated; your left-brain is engaged in actually rejecting irrelevant infor-mation, narrowing your attention and sorting through the data to extract the useful and actionable bits. The left-brain deals with what you already know and actively prefers to focus on that information, resisting the distracting addition of potentially irrelevant detail. So when employees resist change in your organization, they are letting their left-brains run the show. This is perhaps an inevitable result in the parts of your organization where problem-solving is important and people who are good at problem-solving are employed – that’s what the left-brain does. But an organiza-tion also needs out-of-the-box thinking, acceptance of novel ideas and broad awareness of the business conditions both internal and external. So in business, there needs to be a master who considers all factors and contemplates all pos-sibilities as well as emissaries who attack problems and drive specific tasks. In short, in business, we need to think with our whole brains! • @GlassCanadaMag www.glasscanadamag.com 4 April 2021 | GLASS CANADA
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