Last month, I was on the campus of Northwestern University to interview fellow alum, Dan Pink, on applying his book, A WHOLE NEW MIND, to shape one’s career.  The interview itself was great fun–Pink’s brain is crammed with facts and figures and he’s a quick wit.  What I noticed in our conversation is how easily he digests information and sees patterns. He’s also great at combining disparate ideas to come up with something new. 

After the interview, I had a chance to guess Pink’s StrengthsFinder profile. StrengthsFinder is an assessment of one’s innate talents, developed by the Gallup Organization and found in the book, Now, Discover Your Strengths.  For those of you who are familiar with StrengthsFinder, see if you can guess Pink’s top 5 talents based on my observations above. I’ll give the answers at the bottom of this post.

The interview was recorded in the School of Music building. This was the building on  campus where strange sounds could be heard wafting from the windows, day or night. At one moment, I might hear the shriek of a budding opera singer and at another moment, the somber tone of a trombone. The age (early 1900’s), architecture (Victorian?) and condition (a fire trap as I remember it) of the building reinforced the connection in my young mind many years ago that this was a haunted building.   

Fortunately for me, I didn’t encounter any ghosts in the taping, just the friendly confines of a soundproof booth. It’s amazing how quiet it gets when they close that door. Good thing I’m not claustrophobic. 

Besides the interview, one of the more interesting conversations I had was with the dean of the McCormick School of Engineering, Julio Ottino.  I quickly found out that Ottino is not your run of the mill geek.  In addition to specializing in complexity theory and networks, he’s an accomplished artist.  His office displayed several of his paintings.

This dean is intent on changing how engineering is taught and how engineers interact with the rest of the world. It’s not the engineering curriculum of the 80’s that I knew, where my option as a graduating engineer was to either go on for more schooling or to work in a plant. I chose the plant (a nuclear power plant!) and hated it.

Ottino views the right brain as just as important to develop as the left brain. He’s made sure that engineering students get a good dose of Design and Empathy (two of the Six Senses in Pink’s book) as part of their schooling. In one class, students work with patients at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago to design things to make everyday life easier–for example, a contraption to help eat a sandwich, when not all your limbs are working like they should. I’m excited that Northwestern grads will be alot closer to having a whole new mind than when I first entered the working world.

I suggested to Dean Ottino that engineers could benefit from taking a few improvisation classes at Northwestern’s world class School of Theatre. I’ve found engineers can be afraid to play, to make mistakes. The dean didn’t seem to take to this idea just yet. Give him time.

The interview with Dan Pink will be available on the Northwestern Alumni website in December, as a podcast.

I’ll be back on campus in November, to interview another alum and current professor, William White, on his book, From Day One. The subtitle of the book is "CEO Advice To Launch An Extraordinary Career." White is a former CEO as well as having served on several boards.

Oh, and if you guessed the top 5 StrengthsFinder talents for Dan Pink, here’s the answer:  Input, Learner, Ideation, Strategic, and Consistency.