The Interconnected Leader: Peek & Bohm

Since Reagan’s time in office, much of the focus of concern and research around dementia has centered on loss of memory. But as Goldberg makes clear in The New Executive Brain: Frontal Lobes in a Complex World, while it is certainly disconcerting to lose specific stored memories, what is far more problematic is the loss of what he calls the “executive functions” associated with aging.


“The frontal lobes perform the most advanced and complex functions in all of the brain, the so-called executive functions. They are linked to intentionality, purposefulness, and complex decision making. They reach significant development only in humans; arguably, they make us human… The frontal lobes are to the brain what a conductor is to an orchestra, a general is to an army, the chief executive officer is to a corporation.” (The New Executive Brain, p. 4)

It is said that Kim Peek (see December 25th blog) had a condition of the brain called agenesis of the corpus callosum, meaning the bundle of nerves that connects the two hemispheres was missing. Often individuals with this condition have cognitive difficulties associated with connecting complex information and solving complex problems, as well as recognition of subtle social cues.

One thing is depressingly clear: I will never have Kim Peek’s photographic memory. My access to stored memory works very differently and in ways that are mysterious even to me. Kim was at times described as a human computer; certainly not something anyone ever said of me (at least not that I remember). Due largely to the Synchronicity of multiple events on Christmas Day, my memory of Bohm’s thinking is once again front-of-mind, and I now discover that his ideas are consistently connected with Hawkin’s theory of intelligence and the Buddhist concept of Dependent Origination. The more I re-read my own highlighting in his book On Creativity by Bohm, the more I realized how central and reinforcing his ideas are to Originicity.

This blog will return to Bohm in much more detail in connection with leadership Capacity for Intelligence and for the parallels between Bohm’s definition of Originality and leadership Originicity. This will be used to describe more fully how Originicity might arise in the neocortex. For today, there is more to be said about the interconnectedness of the mind and world that underlies Synchronicity and contributes to the leadership Capacity for Environment.

Both Einstein and Bohm eloquently expressed a deep conviction that human beings are inextricably connected to the physical environment in which we live: statements of reality, not aspiration.

"A human being is a part of the whole called by us "the universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest - a kind of optical illusion of consciousness." Albert Einstein

It would be a mis-understanding to limit this idea of interconnectedness as a statement of environmental awareness -- as is becoming embraced in environmentally friendly business agendas. Bohm and Einstein go much further. While grasping the profundity of interconnectedness may result in such business objectives, what Bohm refers to is much more fundamentally about how -- as human beings with highly developed frontal lobes -- we “participate in how reality unfolds.” In the discovery of science, “scientific theories do not reflect an objectively certifiable world.” Science provides paradigms, or “simplified but typical examples” that become “working models that serve to orient and organize data, interpretation, and the formulation of theory.” (On Creativity, David Bohm, p. xi-xii)

It is no different in business. The ideas of leaders do not reflect an objectively certifiable world of market economies and competitive threats. They reflect paradigms of thought, working models of the business environment around them. Business leaders are not separate from the markets they create around them. Bohm, like Einstein, was concerned about how the phenomenon of thought and how our patterns of thought can hold us captive.

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe." Albert Einstein



It is critical that those in positions of leadership understand how their own minds participate in creating the reality of the world around them. The executive function in the command center of the mind is much more than a volume of discrete data, facts or memories. It is an integrating force, interconnected within and without. Leadership responsibility includes an understanding of the contribution of the mind of the leader. In Bohm’s view:

“The human mind is thus in the unique position of perceiving the dynamism and movement of the world around him, while at the same time realizing that the means by which this perception takes place – one’s own mind – is of an equivalent order of creativity, participating intimately with the world which it observes. To the extent that our perceptions of the world affect “reality” – and the evidence for this is considerable – we have a corresponding responsibility to attempt to bring into being a coherent relationship between our thought process and the world they emerge from and interpret.” (On Creativity, David Bohm, p. vii)

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Sychronicity & the World of Possibilities: In Honor of Kim Peek

Kim Peek died on December 19th.

I wrote about Kim on December 10th. Kim and Rainman have been prominent in my thoughts since that day. The fact that this is so strikes me as an example of “Synchronicity”. I cited Kim as an example of someone who possessed truly extraordinary intellectual powers that stretch our understanding of what is possible in the mind. At the same time, the kind of leadership Capacity required contains dimensions that go far beyond memory (which will be described further in future blogs). Similarly, the leadership capacity of Environment must be understood in dimensions that go far beyond the “knowing your customer” mantra that has become popular in recent days. The idea of Synchronicity is illustrative of a deeper sense of Interconnectedness that is possible in a leader’s relationship to their business environment. While it is not the primary focus of Originicity, the wisdom of Synchronicity is telling me this is a meaningful departure that is really not a departure at all. Let’s see where Kim takes us on this Christmas Day.

(Photo:  Ethan Hill, photographer. Scientific American http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=inside-the-mind-repost)


Truth be known, when that day began on December 10th, I did not know Kim’s name. I know now that his friends called him “Kim-puter”. All I remembered was the movie Rainman. When I was writing about Leadership Capacities that day, somehow Dustin Hoffman’s portrayal of Rainman popped into mind as an example that might help people see the extraordinary mental abilities that are possible in our human experience. I researched Kim and became fascinated with the details of his life and his mind.

I brought it up in conversation with my wife and learned she had never seen the movie. Yesterday, I rented the DVD from Blockbuster, and it was sitting on the living room table when my son and girl friend arrived home for Christmas. They too had to listen to me describe this incredible being. Last night my wife and I watched Rainman. Today, on Christmas, both of us brought it up in conversation, now with my other son. Why am I suddenly so intrigued with Kim? During the day I went to look up Kim Peek online in order to share some additional information.

It was only then that I learned: Kim Peek had died just a few days before. I was both saddened by the loss and dumbstruck by the appearance of coincidence.

It is said that Carl Jung, the Swiss psychologist, first defined Synchronicity to explain events that seem to happen by coincidence and are not clearly linked by cause and effect. And yet, from a purely statistical perspective, there would appear to be a low probability of these being totally random or chance events. In some mysterious way that makes no logical sense and has no reason for being, it strikes me as highly unlikely that I was suddenly drawn to Kim Peek in the days near his passing. When synchronistic events are recognized, they appear to reveal an underlying pattern, a larger framework, a governing dynamic.

Much more dramatic, Joseph Jaworski, in his book Synchronicity: the Inner Path of Leadership, describes the circumstances through which he met his wife. In the midst of a busy airport he saw a woman pass by. He dashed away from his son, telling him he would catch up with him on the next flight, and ran off to follow her. He grabbed her arm just before she boarded her flight, told her he needed to speak with her and asked her if she was married. She probably would have pulled away from him had she not had a very strong dream and premonition about meeting a man of great significance on this very trip. (This story is personally meaningful to me because my own wife’s sister-in-law also had a vivid dream that she was to meet a blonde-haired man dressed in a suit doing business in the Cayman Islands, just before she took a medical underwriting position with Aetna Global Benefits -- where we met. The details were precisely correct.)

Jarowski’s life’s work was greatly influenced by his encounter with remarkable people, including the brilliant quantum physicist, David Bohm. Jaworski met Bohm just a couple months before he met his wife, through another chance encounter, this time via a newspaper ad and a phone call. Bohm, a friend and colleague of Einstein, wrote about a “level of reality beyond our normal everyday thoughts and perceptions, as well a beyond any picture of reality offered by a given scientific theory….Everything in the universe affects everything else because they are all part of the same unbroken whole.” (Wholeness and the Implicate Order). Bohm described that the interdependencies we see in life are a “window into a deeper domain of wholeness.” (Synchronicity: the Inner Path of Leadership, p. 6) There is something about the fabric of wholeness that lends itself to what we call beauty. But Bohm felt that there was an objective nature to beauty that was more than merely a subjective experience of the mind. He felt that there was an underlying process of order that manifest equally in nature and in the mind itself. (On Creativity, David Bohm, p. ix)

How can it be that two of the most brilliant physicists of our era both describe the scientific nature of the world in words that strikingly consistent with Buddhist thought? “Dependent Origination” is the insight of the Buddha upon his enlightenment that similarly describes the interconnected reality of wholeness, the simultaneous arising of the mind and the world, reflected in each other, like reflecting dew drops on the web of a spider. And how coincidental is it that what Kim Peek’s mind apparently lacked was the very capacity to integrate – to piece together volumes of itemized memory into a fabric of meaning -- the ability to connect the dots into a pattern.

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About the Blogger - The Story Behind the Facts

"It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards”.

(Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll)

This blog arises out of the synchronicity of three seemingly unrelated paths weaving through my life:

Mind + Meditation + Management

Or you could say,

Brain + Buddha + Business

Today I am a partner in The Clarion Group, a very unique management consulting firm. We are advisors to senior executives (leadership, strategy, structure, culture, etc.), primarily in large to mid-size business corporations, some not-for-profit organizations.

The route that brought me here has been a curious one. Years back, interviewing on Wall Street with my freshly printed Yale MBA, one bond trader scanned my resume, gave me a puzzling look and said: “the last guy I interviewed has been reading the Wall Street Journal since he was six; what are you doing here?” Good question.

For sure, I am one of those people who had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. Still don’t, though now I am too old to only look forward. And only by looking back does it seem to make any sense, much as the White Queen said to Alice (quote above). This quote is said to be a favorite of Carl Jung, the Swiss psychologist who first defined Synchronicity to explain events that seem to happen by coincidence and not clearly linked by cause and effect. However, when recognized they appear to reveal an underlying pattern, a larger framework, a governing dynamic.

I went to Duke assuming I would go to law school and enter some arena of politics. But the impact of the Sixties did not propel me outward into social action but rather inward, intuitively sensing that real change starts within. The first day of Psych 101, the professor started by saying, “If you signed up for psychology to learn about yourself, you are in the wrong class.” I happily ignored this advice, got my BA in Psychology and went on to work three years in inpatient psychiatry. But what I was really trying to understand was the higher end of human performance: great leaders, heroes, the Ghandi’s, the Martin Luther King’s of the world. And the saints. How is it that ordinary people, like me, rise above their imperfections and human limitations?  How do they find their way beyond all the mental and emotional shortcomings to become such inspiring creatures?

After Duke I went to Yale Divinity School. I cannot tell you my reasoning was clear: it was not the perfect place for me. But looking back through a poor sort of memory, it was the perfect place for me to be.

To be continued, as time and backward memory allows…

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About the Blogger - THE BARE FACTS

Profession

Business Leadership Advisor; Partner, The Clarion Group, a boutique management consulting firm providing advisory services to senior leaders. (http://www.theclariongroup.com/)

Education
Duke University, BA, Psychology
Yale University Masters of Divinity
Yale University, MBA
Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA)

Previous Professional Experience

20+ years experience in Financial Services: Aetna Financial, Aetna International; founding partner, Pangea Insurance Risk Management Services (http://www.pangeahealth.com/)

10+ years experience in education and psychiatry: Choate Rosemary Hall (taught religion and psychology); Yale New Haven Hospital (Chaplaincy CPE training and inpatient psychiatric staff)

Spiritual Training
5+ years in monastic spiritual settings & intensive Buddhist meditation retreats (New York Zen Studies Society, Dai Bosatu Zendo, Livingston Manner, NY; Insight Meditation Society, Barre, MA; St. Joseph’s Abbey, Trappist Monastery, Spencer, MA) as well as training in TM, Yoga, Centering Prayer and other spiritual practices

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So why don’t we start training business leaders at age five?

Most typically, when executives are first hired at the beginning of their careers, they are hired for their content knowledge and/or technical skills. Promotion up through the career ladder takes a significant leap at the point of moving from being an individual contributor to managing others. This is a significant demarcation point in that the skills that determined success up to this point were comprised more of acquired or teachable Capabilities, but from this point forward it could well be argued that the skills that determine success or failure are more “hard wired”, engrained Characteristics and Capacities. It is particularly noteworthy that there is little by way of formal training that can assure the presence of these Capacities. It is more by trial and error, by learning on-the-job, by leading under fire that others can determine whether aspiring executives have what it takes.

Is there no way we could start cultivating leadership Capacities at a younger age?

Kim Peek (see Dec. 10th) Kim Peek was born on November 11, 1951. Before he was 2 years old his parents realized that he had memorized every book ever read to him. His father recounts the day Kim asked what the word “confidential” meant. His parents kiddingly suggested he look it up in the dictionary. He did. He was 3 years old. (Darold Treffert, MD, http://www.wisconsinmedicalsociety.org/savant_syndrome/savant_profiles/kim_peek)

Michael Kevin Kearney, born January 18, 1984 in Honolulu, Hawaii graduated with a BA in Anthropology from the University of South Alabama at the age of 10 years old. He had enrolled at Santa Rosa Junior College at the age of six. He learned to read at ten months. (Accidental Genius, Michael Kearney)

Christopher “Kit” Armstrong, born March 5, 1992 in California, started playing the piano and composing music just out of toddler age, graduated #1 in his class from Los Alamitos High School at age 7. (Davidson Institute for Talent Development; San Francisco Classical Voice, 2002, Janos Gereben) He is the youngest winner of the concerto competition at Tel-Hai International Master Classes in Israel, and he has won numerous prestigious Mozart and Bach competitions. (Paolo Alto Weekly online, November 08, 2002)

Eldrick “Tiger” Woods, born December 30, 1975, in Cypress, California beat Bob Hope in a putting contest at the age of 3 years old and his first formal competition at 8 years old. His father, Earl Woods, oversaw his training as a child. (While recent transgressions have diminished our respect for Tiger the person, nevertheless his athletic accomplishments are unquestioned, having deservedly been named the Athlete of the Decade by the Associated Press.)

Child prodigy or not, endless numbers of parents encourage their children to develop skills in music, sports and education at an early age. Why not business leadership? Certainly not because we don’t think work is important. Even if we work only 40 hours a week for 50 weeks a year for 40 years -- that’s (very conservatively) 80,000 hours of our life spent under the leadership of someone at work. Yes we care. And certainly as many parents would aspire for their children to be successful leaders in business as they would musicians or athletes.

Is there no way we could start cultivating leadership Capacities at a younger age?

Before we can possibly find precise right answer to this question, it is necessary to change our shared perception, our whole paradigm around what is possible in developing leadership capacity. Two hypotheses I would like to challenge:

1. While we may have some idea what makes for a star musician or athlete, we have much less idea of what makes for great leadership.
   
   
   
2. There is an aspect of leadership that appears to be hard wired, like being born with a musical ear.

So not only do we not know what the deeper, underlying capacities are that distinguish great leadership, but we do not really believe they can be developed or trained.

Albert Einstein describes how, at the age of 16, he imagined riding a beam of light. While little more than a flight of imagination, a “thought experiment”, it played a central role in his development of special relativity. To do so required a re-examination of our basic notions of space and time -- a re-examination of mental models that limited our knowledge of reality. (Einstein’s autobiographical notes, edited by Paul Arthur Schlipp, Open Court, 1991)

Think of this blog as a thought experiment. I’m no Einstein (but I will gladly reference as many of them as I can find). My thought experiment starts with the assumption that:

1. We can discover deeper capacities of the mind that distinguish great leadership, perhaps with the help of evolving advances in neuroscience, and
2. Prodigy or no prodigy, these capacities can be cultivated; hard wiring may help, but leadership capacities can also be cultivated in the rest of us through training.

Being an advisor to business leaders, I recognize the enormous complexity and inherent ambiguity in any attempt to identify what differentiates leadership. A mountain of thorough, analytic work has been pursued in the industry to identify contributing competencies already. This blog will not set forth any top ten keys to becoming a great leader, no magic answers. Leadership physics may be just as complicated as the theory of relativity. But I will be bold enough to suggest that by changing our underlying mental model we can find out what is possible.

Okay, so to think that we could actually identify attributes in a child of 5 that would allow us to recognize a prodigy of future leadership greatness strikes us as totally absurd. I get that. But before you entirely dismiss the idea as no more than a provocative title to grab attention, ponder this mystery:

Lhamo Döndrub was born July 6, 1935, the 5th of 16 children of a farming family in the village of Takster in north-eastern Tibet. He was identified as the tulku at the age of 2 and was raised and trained from that age forward to become the 14th Dalai Lama. Widely recognized today -- not just by far off Tibetan Buddhist but by all -- as one of the world’s most important spiritual leaders, how was it possible that such capacities were seen in a mere child? It is far less unlikely that we could actually raise a child to be a business leader than a truly enlightened spiritual being.

If is of any comfort, to be best of my knowledge Einstein never actually rode a beam of light. All he did was to change a mental model in his mind, one that was limiting, one that was collectively inherited through generations of science. Anyone can do that. That is the aspiration of this blog. And that is what great leadership requires.

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About This Blog

Originicity^TM: a leadership methodology based on evolving research in neuroscience and insight from eastern meditation practices, and western applications such as biofeedback, that creates deeper understanding of how the mind originates models of reality and that enables senior business executives to cultivate and develop deeper leadership capacities.

The primary intent of this blog is to help executives cultivate leadership capacity. My perspective arises from the intersection personal passion and professional work. The approach is admittedly unorthodox and purposefully so.

"The essence of strategy is variety. But there is no variety in strategy without variety in how individuals view the world. Do you see differently? Do you have a point of view that is, at least in some respects, at odds with industry norms? The point is simple: you're going to have to learn how to unlock your own imagination before you can unlock your company's imagination. You must become the merchant of new perspective within your organization." (Gary Hamel, Leading the Revolution)

I believe our collective understanding of what makes for great leadership would benefit from original thinking. There is much to suggest that innovation is sparked by the cross pollination of seemingly unrelated domains of knowledge. Many readers would assume that brain plus Buddha do not equal business success. That would be a mistake. This blog is written for you.

“How do you discover radically better ways of leading, organizing and managing? The
short answer: You look far beyond the boundaries of today’s “best practice.” You look
someplace weird, someplace unexpected.” (Gary Hamel, The Future of Management)

This blog explores the challenge of business leadership through the domains of neuroscience and Buddhist meditation practice. One domain is very new; the other quite old. One looks at the human from the outside in; the other experiences the mind from the inside out. One is conceptually complex and analytical in approach; the other is pragmatically simple and practical in approach. One is about the what; the other is all about how. All the more remarkable that their perspectives into the nature of human mind are so strikingly similar; here modern scientific knowledge reinforces ancient wisdom.

The work here is exploratory in nature. At the same time, wherever possible, immediate applicability is sought. It is hoped that the blog will create a forum for shared exploration and experience that includes direct application in business.

Why business leadership? For one, it’s needed. Two, business is the author’s primary domain of professional expertise. Three, the level of innovation and creativity demonstrated by business leaders in continuously bringing reality into being – originating reality for themselves and for the many people who work for them – is largely unrecognized (by themselves as well as others). Four, to provide focus to the application of Originicity^TM and give it meaningful depth (which could otherwise be extremely broad in scope).

Does Originicity^TM have applicability in other fields? For certain, many. While this blog will touch on those along the way, it will continually return to the primary concern with business leadership.

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The Intention: To Cultivate Leadership Capacity

The primary intent of this blog is to help executives cultivate leadership capacity. My perspective arises from the intersection personal passion and professional work. The approach is admittedly unorthodox and purposefully so.

I believe our collective understanding of what makes for great leadership would benefit from original thinking. There is much to suggest that innovation is sparked by the cross pollination of seemingly unrelated domains of knowledge. Many readers would assume that brain plus Buddha do not equal business success. That would be a mistake. This blog is written for you.

This blog explores the challenge of business leadership through the domains of neuroscience and Buddhist meditation practice. One domain is very new; the other quite old. One looks at the human from the outside in; the other experiences the mind from the inside out. One is conceptually complex and analytical in approach; the other is pragmatically simple and practical in approach. One is about the what; the other is all about how. All the more remarkable that their perspectives into the nature of human mind are so strikingly similar; here modern scientific knowledge reinforces ancient wisdom.

The work here is exploratory in nature. At the same time, wherever possible, immediate applicability is sought. It is hoped that the blog will create a forum for shared exploration and experience that includes direct application in business.

Why business leadership? For one, it’s needed. Two, business is the author’s primary domain of professional expertise. Three, the level of innovation and creativity demonstrated by business leaders in continuously bringing reality into being – originating reality for themselves and for the many people who work for them – is largely unrecognized (by themselves as well as others). Four, to provide focus to the application of Originicity and give it meaningful depth (which could otherwise be extremely broad in scope).

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The Reality Of Business Leadership

It’s the eighth day of the twelfth moon, often recognized as the day of the Buddha’s enlightenment. As my first Buddhist meditation teacher, Zen Master Eido Roshi, would often say: “an auspicious day”.

And a good day to launch a blog. Especially one that links the cultivation of business leadership capacity to recent findings of neuroscience… and the long established practice of Buddhist Meditation.

What the Buddha saw on December 8th is the insight that is known as “dependent origination”. That being, our reality of the world originates in the mind in each and every moment through a causal process of interdependency with the world around us.

And what does this have to do with neuroscience? Everything. Research into the neural plasticity of the brain suggests that our physical neural wiring is influenced by the information we take in through the senses. Hard wiring is not so hard. Recent theories of intelligence suggest that the models of reality we carry around in our brains shape and screen what we perceive. Hard data is not so hard. The origination of reality in the mind is an interdependent, causal process.

And what does this have to do with business leadership? Everything. One of the greatest challenges of business leaders is to be more strategic. Great business leaders bring into being (originate) the reality of business plans and organizational capabilities over and over again, day in and day out. It is not so much the linear planning side of strategy that is wanting, but rather the ability to see reality as it is, the bare truth, and to see reality evolving as unfolds, changes, morphs. The nature of competitive markets is aptly described as “Creative Destruction”. (The Buddha called it impermanence.) Over and over, companies fail when its leaders are locked into old business models that do not keep pace with changes in the markets. Many ask why our leaders did not see the financial crisis coming. “Reality is an illusion albeit a persistent one.” (Albert Einstein) Opportunity comes with the ability to anticipate, see new realities, predict and act upon emerging trends.

Originicity: the leadership capacity to bring reality into being (originate) in each and every moment.

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