Iain McGilchrist’s bird has to pick a seed out of grit, which takes narrow attention, while keeping a wide, open watch for whatever might eat it. In The Master and His Emissary (2009) he argues the brain’s two hemispheres attend to the world in those two ways.
Peck to eat. Look up now and then.
We have two ways of paying attention: narrow, for getting the seed, and wide, for noticing what’s going on. Trouble starts when the narrow one thinks it’s in charge.
Ask yourself. What has your organisation trained itself to stop seeing?
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