Originicity

Shaping Business Reality: Seeing The Mind In Motion

2010-07-15T14:28:00.005-04:00

Moment by moment we are witnesses to the process of mutual causality, of creating business reality. But an untrained mind is a somewhat unreliable as witnesses go. We don’t see it, and for good reason.

It is much like watching a movie. We become so wrapped up in the content of the story that we do not stop to observe the underlying process by which it comes into being. It is particularly telling that speed itself feeds into perceptual illusions (called beta movement and phi phenomenon) in the brain. “Motion pictures” are in fact a series of individual images, or frames, shown so rapidly the illusion of motion is created.

May 23rd was the 30th Anniversary of Pacman. In its honor, Google created a celebratory Pacman version of its logo for our entertainment. Users will almost uniformly believe they see Pacman moving left and right, up and down through the Google logo. In the hard-based factual reality of neuroscience, they do not. It is the astonishing complexity of the brain -- more precisely the cognitive process of perception in the brain -- that links a sequence of separate digital images in time and causality. By doing so the brain creates the illusion (or reality) of meaning that we enjoy as a game. The (internal) nature of how the brain functions itself participates in creating the (external) reality.

It is not so terribly different in “real” life, including real business life. These and other cognitive processes combine to create a sense of reality, pulling together an enormously complex universe of data elements. The interdependencies of cause and effect exist in the physical world, in the brain, and in the interconnections between.

Witnessing this process is infinitely more challenging, in “real” life. Unlike playing Pacman on a computer screen, we are the primary actors in the movies of our personal and professional lives. We are hugely vested in the outcomes of the reality being created. This introduces numerous layers of emotion and ego that create attachment and aversion to the story being created. We want the storybook ending to all our strategies and business decisions, reality or not.

If we slow a movie projector down to the point where we can actually see each image, each frame, we can expand the focus of our attention away from the content of the story. By doing so we become aware of the underlying process through which the interconnection of the brain and the film create a story. So it is in real life.

In Strategic Intuition, William Duggan makes a direct link to Buddhist training as the way in which business executives can develop the capacity that creates strategic “glance”. (The) Buddha gives us instruction in the mental discipline to turn an ordinary mind into one that sees a coup d’oeil. In a spiritual sense the Four Noble Truths (the foundation of the Buddha’s teachings) leads to enlightenment, while in a secular sense they prepare your mind for coup d’oeil.”

William Duggan does not provide the depth of instruction available through Buddhist Mindfulness meditation, but the “literal translation of the Pali word sati is ‘to stop’… you have to stop in order to become aware of what you are doing.” (Ruth Denison, Insight Newsletter, Fall/Winter, 2010/11) Sati is the Pali word for Mindfulness. Mindfulness meditation is the technique used by Buddhist monks for 2500 years to see into the underlying truth of reality of life. I first heard the analogy of movie frames described by Joseph Goldstein and other teachers while sitting at Insight Meditation Society many years ago.

The other great yogi, Yogi Berra said it best: you can observe a lot just by watching. Developing deeper self awareness as a leader requires the willingness and discipline to pause and observe the inner mental process by which one’s sense of business reality is being created, moment by moment. To stop and use the mind to observe the mind.

Photo at top: http://youareincontrol.is/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/cameraman1-287x300.jpg

Shaping Business Reality: Recognizing A New Leadership Meta-Competency

2010-07-15T13:26:00.000-04:00

To realize that we don’t just see reality, but in fact are active participants in creating it, requires grasping the implications of the paradigm shift that has already occurred in science. One such implication is that some executives may have a greater capacity to create reality than others. This is critical. In fact, the ability to originate a sense of reality, like Napoleon, may be a differentiating meta-competency for business leaders.

But first, we must recognize that it is even possible for the mind to participate in creating reality.

At the lower end of human performance, it is common to categorize some individuals as being out-of-touch with reality. Abnormal psychology recognizes a range of disorders in which people are described as less and less able to grasp reality -- from neurotic to delusional to psychotic. Here we can clearly see that there is something about the functioning of the mind that creates ones experience of reality. Of course, we think of these as distortions of the true reality.

Two rudimentary systems of brain function are electrical and chemical processes. The basic transmission of a thought through neural connection does not happen without those systems. It is fairly common knowledge that a variety of chemical drugs are capable of producing hallucinations and delusions. Clearly, the chemical composition of the brain participates in our ability to perceive stimulus and build a coherent sense of reality.

We know all this, but for some reason when we look at the upper end of human performance we tend to leave this knowledge aside and take reality as a given, a constant that we all share in common. We marvel at the creative brilliance or strategic insight of certain people, seeing – no actually creating -- opportunities that others have missed. But we do not think much about what is different in their brains. We do not talk of leaders we admire as having an extraordinary ability to create business reality for our organizations. Why not?

The paradigm shift that has now permeated science has not yet reached our understanding of business leadership. It is no wonder, because the old paradigm dominated Western culture for two millennia. The radical dualism of Descartes and other Western philosophers assumes a mind that is totally separated from matter. Our engrained notion of causality presupposes a one way street: A => B, not A<==>B. In this paradigm “reality” is an objective truth that exists outside and the challenge in business is to see it accurately. One way reality. There is virtually no recognition whatsoever that the capacity of the mind itself may be more or less skilled at creating a sense of business reality, one that is more or less well aligned with the business environment and marketplace in which it performs.

Neuroscience has convincingly displaced the old notion that the mind is a passive recipient of one external and objective reality. The mind is an active participant -- moment by moment -- continuously originating a view of reality. Seeing market opportunity, evaluating strategic options, weighing competitive positioning, allocating resources and aligning organizational structures – all are made possible as a result of a leader’s capacity to see cause and effect, and thereby form a sense of business reality.

Photo above: Mutual Causality (Feed-back) - the expression of a two way exchange of information. When looking at the wave structure of the simple electron with its incoming and outgoing waves we observe a dynamics of Duality & Parity in Union with Reciprocal Proportionality and Mutual Complementarity.

http://emanzipationhumanum.de/english/human/wsm.html

Shaping Business Reality: One Strategic Mind at a Time

2010-06-30T12:35:00.001-04:00

In his books, Napoleon’s Glance, and Strategic Intelligence, William Duggan describes the brilliance of Napoleon at the siege of Toulon in 1783. It is a dramatic example of how the mind of a leader can shape reality and change the course of history. The French general in charge was pursuing a traditional military strategy, that being to storm the primary fortress held by the British on foot with sword and bayonet. Napoleon, at the time only a lower ranking officer, recommended that by capturing a small, nearby fort, the British would leave Toulon. A general, locked into well worn patterns of habitual thought, dismissed him and failed. The next general listened and won.

Napoleon envisioned a possibility that did not yet exist in reality. Studying the contour of the battlefield, Napoleon drew from his knowledge of innovations in weaponry and previous historical battles ranging from Joan of Arc to the American Revolution. He knew that British troops feared being cut off from their naval support, and the nearby fort was the best vantage point from which to threaten that. The brilliance of his mind connected four diverse and seemingly unrelated elements of military knowledge into a new strategy that had no discernible precedent.

Carl von Clausewitz, in his classic book On War, explains the key to Napoleon’s strategic success as coup d’oeil, which means “glance” in French. Duggan states that “today we recognize coup d’oeil as strategic intuition: ordinary intuition is just a feeling, but strategic intuition comes from real knowledge and experience, brought together in a flash of insight to suit the situation.”

Underlying each and every moment of executive decision making is an astonishingly complex mental process whereby the mind interacts with the environment(s) in which it is embedded. In the midst of this interconnectedness a sense of reality is created. After two millennia of existence inside a Western cultural that believes the physical reality of the world is separate from the mind, most of us cannot help but assume that there is one objective reality that is seen by many subjective minds. Furthermore, we have become comfortable believing that the mind somewhat passively receives information through the senses about that tangible world outside. We conclude that we see is caused by natural phenomenon acting upon us from the outside. Neuroscience is suggesting otherwise: the mind does much more to shape reality than we assume. Collectively and individually, we form mental models that shape the reality of what we see. The French general was stuck in one reality; Napoleon’s brilliance was his capacity to see others.

Typically we look to differentiate leadership performance by how astutely different executives perceive the same business environment in which they compete: one reality, many minds. It never occurs to us that the mind of a leader actually participates in the creation of the business reality around it. Yet clearly, some business leaders make new things happen. We need to understand why.

Grasping Complexity From The Inside Out: Yogi Berra and Indra’s Net

2010-06-28T12:08:00.000-04:00

Photo by Doug Brenner, Lavernder Dream. His photography can be seen at http://www.BetterPhoto.com

What will it take for business leaders to understand the mindset or paradigm shift necessary to navigate Complexity? Exposure to the theoretical content and analytic properties of Complex Adaptive Systems is one approach. Some would argue grasping Complexity is also quite intuitive; if that is the case, it will require a different approach.

Despite the fact that the Western world has become quite familiar with Eastern meditation over the last 40 years, the predominant assumption is the purpose of meditation is for relaxation and stress reduction. True and effective, but only a small part of the story. Tons of research has documented the physiological and psychological benefits of meditation and many an executive overwhelmed by business pressures has been taught mindfulness meditation in stress reduction programs. But a little context here is helpful: practitioners of meditation 2500 years ago in India were not stressed out by the demands of modern society. They didn’t sit for hours on end to reduce their blood pressure. Their motivation was quite different. Balance or calmness in the mind was simply one of many skillful mental factors that lead to deeper realization.

Enter the wisdom of Yogi Berra: “you can observe a lot by just watching.” The Buddha (and many others) developed mental techniques and disciplines that enabled them to observe the nature of human experience from a different level of awareness. They used the mind to observe the mind. As we now know, the brain is a Complex Adaptive System. What is much less known in our Western world today is that the discipline of meditation-- just watching -- led the Buddha to a profound realization of the human experience as a Complex Adaptive System. The Buddha realized the nature of complex causality from the inside out, and this insight came to be known as Dependent Origination.

“Two and a half millennia ago Gotama the Buddha put forth the doctrine of causality called paticca samuppada, or dependent co-arising. It is basic to the Buddhist view of life. Indeed in no other religion we know is a teaching of causation accorded so explicit and fundamental a role. In this vision of reality, the existence of both self and world are seen in terms of mutually conditioning psycho-physical events, which arise and pass away, interdependently.” (p. 25. Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory: the Dharma of Natural Systems, Dr. Joanna Macy, State University of New York Press, 1991.)

Indra’s Net

A metaphor to describe the Buddhist view of dependent origination and interpenetration was developed in the 3rd century and is known as Indra's net. It is described by Francis Harold Cook from the perspective of the Huayan school of Buddhism in the book Hua-Yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra:

“Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each "eye" of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering like stars in the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring”

“Because reality is seen as dependently co-arising, or systemic in nature, each and every act is understood to have an effect on the larger web of life, and the process of development is perceived as multi-dimensional…Being interdependent, these developments do not occur sequentially, in a linear fashion, but synchronously, each abetting and reinforcing the other through multiplicities of contacts and currents, each subtly altering the context in which other events occur.” (Macy, p. xv.)

Even a tiny bit of curiosity leads one to wonder why the simple practice of mindfulness meditation might lead to such profound insight. And if it might prove effective in developing an intuitive understanding of complexity in business -- as well as reducing blood pressure.

The Leadership Complexity Gap: IBM 2010 CEO Study Part II

2010-06-15T11:33:00.035-04:00

http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/ceo/ceostudy2010/index.html

This blog entry will offer a partial summary of IBM’s 2010 CEO Study, covering themes most relevant to Originicity – that being the neuroscientific challenges of a leader’s mind in the face of complexity. (Please use this link for the complete study: ibm.com/CEOStudy.) Subsequent blog entries will continue to build on these themes by exploring the nature of complexity, both in the mind and in the world around us, and some steps leaders might take up the steep learning curve.

Integration and Interdependency

IBM’s study tells us that the common denominator to business complexity is the unprecedented level of interconnection and interdependency in global integration. Whether companies think of themselves global or not, all compete in this “global system of systems”. More and more often threats and opportunities arise that leaders simply don’t see because they have originated through seemingly tenuous connections at deeper levels and with multiple dimensions. One of the critical contributing factors is speed. But equally important is the convergence of multiple factors influencing each other to create entirely unique ‘first-of-a-kind’ situations. Needless to say, all of this leads to much greater ambiguity, uncertainty, and unpredictability that contribute to the significant gap between leadership capacity and escalating complexity.

Characteristics of Leadership in the face of Complexity

Creativity is the leadership characteristic that CEOs have now placed above all others, so much so that it has been elevated to a leadership style. That is a real surprise, and likely indicative of just how dramatic the change of the last 2-3 years has been for leaders. Of all the possible leadership characteristics included in leadership competencies models, creativity has rarely if ever made it to the top. Possibly it landed there because of the linkage between creativity and one’s comfort with ambiguity and experimentation.

Comfort with ambiguity is probably obvious but experimentation deserves some explanation.

For one, it has a lot to do with the increased need to act – try something despite uncertainty -- which implies taking some risks. Leaders in particular cannot sit dormant, but will have to take responsibility on their shoulders to push themselves and their organizations through to action.
And it has a lot to do with a new mandate for immediacy in decision making. There is a growing sense that in the face of rapid change there is insufficient time for protracted analysis and traditional strategic planning cycles. Instead, it is necessary to hold strategic decision making more like iterative, rapid prototyping in product development. Take an idea and try it quickly; if it’s not working, stop quickly, and try something else -- quickly. And then start all over again, quickly. In other words: real time experimentation in the market.

Creativity is also the basis for innovation, especially disruptive innovation. There is a growing sense that incremental innovation may not be sufficient in a world that is operating in fundamentally different ways. This too is a huge change in CEO sentiment as many companies are much more comfortable with incremental innovation. In the face of paradigm shifts, more CEOs are recognizing the need to make bold changes that challenge long held assumptions and disrupt the status quo. Not an easy challenge.

Tightly connected is a leadership capacity for Openness inviting others to challenge assumptions and ideas. This applies within and without. Leaders must model break through thinking and a mindset for questioning; they must show little fear of having their own ideas examined. This applies not just in strategy debates or silo-ed areas of product development, but in the organizational structure and management systems that determine how efficiently work gets done and how quickly companies go to market. At the heart is a discipline of continuous business model innovation where everyone understands that business models are impermanent by nature, just like the markets in which they compete.

If it is not clear already, continuous change is the norm. Leaders of tomorrow must excel in managing change as a way of life, and for most leadership teams, this requires an entirely new set of capabilities.

Given the level of immediacy and interconnectedness of today’s networked world (including partnerships and more tightly integrated co-creation with customers), leadership styles must be much more collaborative by nature, using influence and inspiration. Individual command and control is not effective here, rather strong team skills that encourage shared discovery and shared vision. All of this implies need for a broad set of communication skills across multiple channels.

Is it any wonder the learning curve looks so steep? In fact, looking at all these leadership challenges, there is so much learning going on that learning itself must also be a fundamental leadership capacity in the new world of complexity.

What is not stated explicitly but could easily be assumed is the intellectual capacity for holistic or systems thinking required to lead businesses in complex global systems. This entails the capacity to see patterns and processes across disciplines, industries, etc., to integrate multifaceted interdependencies and interconnections, and to identify broad, systemic solutions.

The Leadership Complexity Gap: IBM 2010 CEO Study

2010-06-07T10:56:00.006-04:00

Click onto picture to access the report

IBM’s 2010 CEO survey tells us that CEOs now identify the rapid escalation of complexity as their biggest challenge. One could argue that the financial crisis starting in 2008 is the flashpoint or the tipping point that has forced awareness of complexity upon us. Complexity is not at all new; in fact, it is primordial, a characteristic of creation itself. But the fact that business leaders claim complexity has resulted in a gap in leadership capability and they have never faced a learning curve so steep is both new and highly significant.

It is also encouraging. Why? Because it means leaders are looking in the right direction:

 It is absolutely accurate that complexity is the nature of the global marketplace in which business takes place – but business leaders have not always understood it that way or acted accordingly.

 Not only are the social and economic environments of global business competition complex, but so are the companies that compete within them. Businesses themselves are large, complex organizational structures, and as such, require a different kind of awareness and leadership capacity.

 Complexity also describes the very nature of the mind. The brain itself is arguably the most complex natural organism in the universe. A leader’s sense of reality originates within an extraordinarily complex neurological, chemical and electrical system. The internal mental models we use to anticipate and predict business outcomes share common properties with other external complex systems.

The reality is that CEOs experience a gap of understanding in not just one, but several complex systems that are critical to business performance – inside and out. Living in this gap real time, face to face, with heightened awareness of its impact will likely create greater urgency to understanding what complexity is and what to do about it.

To recognize just how steep the learning curve may be is a good first step. But to fill the gap will also require greater openness to learning. Navigating complexity requires questioning some basic assumptions – as recommended by the IBM study – and some re-learning. Understanding complexity demands both a paradigm shift, and a mindset shift.

Much of what is written in business literature refers to complexity in fairly vague terms, but there are sources outside business who have gone at the study of complexity with greater discipline.

For one, there is an emerging science that crosses over all three of these leadership challenges, … and much more broadly across the whole spectrum of sciences. It is the study of “Complex Adaptive Systems” that characterize the very nature of life -- in physics, biology, ecology, etc., etc. There is a growing portion of the business and scientific communities working together to apply the insights of complexity theory to business leadership. Those will be explored in detail in subsequent entries.

Secondly, as Yogi Berra taught, “you can observe a lot by just watching.” Buddhist mindfulness meditation is the science of using the mind to observe the mind. What the Buddha saw – just by watching – is the true nature of human experience as an inseparable part of a Complex Adaptive Systems. At the heart of the Buddha’s insight was the realization of a complex, multi-directional cause and effect, a mutual interdependency – “Dependent Origination”.

Yogi Berra, nicknamed "Yogi" by his child hood friend, Bobby Hoffman, who said Yogi walked like a Hindu Yogi he had seen in a movie.

With Strategy In Mind: Part VI

2010-05-28T22:35:00.070-04:00

4. Paradigm: Rely not on personal intuition, but on the Quality and Independence of Information

When clear, compelling independent data, is available, of course we are foolish to ignore it.

But Fred Smith had no data. There was no market; he created one where none existed. Now there is data, tons of it.

(Photo: http://thecprogrammer.com/)

And that too is a problem. We have so much data today that the real challenge is often sorting through it all to make sense of it. To make meaning of data, to turn it into useful information. Only Paul Lauterbur saw meaning in data others thought was useless noise in the system.

The challenge that faces most business leaders today is the abundance, complexity and confusion of multiple, competing sets of data. Take global warming. Putting any political or personal opinions aside, just look at the controversy around the data itself. How does the brain decide between all that conflicting data?

The amygdala senses personal danger, but is not so proficient at detecting aggregate threat. We know full well if our personal mortgage is at risk, but we did not so astutely fight or flee the larger mortgage crisis.

If we are to believe what neuroscience tells us, our past experience creates neural connections that categorizes the perception of new data. We actually shape the data we see. This is a bit more troubling: just how independent is the data

Hawkins, the founder of Palm Pilot and long time student of neurobiology, has posited a thought-provoking new theory of intelligence. He suggests that the real distinction of our neocortex is the human ability to create models of the world, models that help us predict. With some similarities to how the brain categorizes visual (and other) perception, his theory is that over time we assimilate entire models that integrate data into predictions of the next moment, and this is what allows us to navigate our worlds. At the higher regions of the neo-cortex there is less data, fewer neurons, but rather patterns of connectivity in the brain. These patterns are the filters through which we receive and process data at more abstract levels.

Recently Professor Peter Schott, Economics, received the Yale School of Management 2010 Teaching Award. In his acceptance comments, he spoke about the field of macro-economics. He made the point that macro-economics does not make predictions. Macro-economics attempts to make sense of data, and realistically, data that is often only able to be gathered after 3-4 years at best.

Strategy is about prediction. The data itself does not do this, we do this in our brains. This is the role of leadership, a function predominantly residing in the neo-cortex, what Elkhonon Goldberg calls the “Executive Function” of the brain. (The New Executive Brain, Goldberg) It is not without its own form of “cognitive bias”. The emerging field of neuroscience is beginning to confirm that the brain does not exist in a vacuum, passively receiving and processing data that resides cleanly and independently outside.

Instead the intelligence of the brain actively participates in originating reality moment to moment. It is perhaps the uniqueness of being human. Herbert Simon, the Nobel-winning psychologist, described the interaction of the brain and world like a pair of scissors -- one blade the brain, the other the world outside. Both blades function simultaneously to make a cut --- to create intelligence, to predict, to think strategically.

The implications are profound for strategic decisions makers in business. The quality of data depends in part on the quality of the mind that brings in and manipulates the data. To sharpen the blades of strategy means sharpening both blades simultaneously: the external gathering of experience in the markets, the quality and clarity of data, feedback systems for meaningful information, etc., etc. But it also means sharpening the neurological blade of the mind inside as well.

And should this last step of neuroscientific theory seem too big a leap, too impractical or not applicable to what ordinary humans can realize for themselves, in closing ponder this intriguing bit of information. As with existence of emotional bias (aversion and attachment) in the mind, the Buddha also quite precisely described the cause-and-effect process through which the mind and world interdependently create a sense of reality.

While strikingly similar to the modern neuroscientific ideas of Hawkins, Simon and others, the insight known as “Dependent Origination” was realized by a simple human being, purely by using the power of the mind to observe the mind. Our minds are active participants in originating the reality of the world around us, and we can see it happen for ourselves. Indeed, it may well be a key to developing high performing leadership capacity today. This is the hard part, but one that any aspiring leader cannot ignore.

A Buddha Sculpture made from Scissors, Emporio Mall, New Delhi, India, named for designer Rajesh Pratap Singh. The store in the mall is made almost entirely of scissors.

With Strategy In Mind: Part V

2010-05-22T20:00:00.023-04:00

3. Paradigm: Use group wisdom, multiple perspectives, to counter balance individual bias

Yes…And.

Yes: For all the reasons cited in the McKinsey articles and more, use the knowledge, experience and perspectives of many people to develop and test strategic decisions. We would be foolish business leaders not to do so.

And: Take full personal responsibility as an individual high performing leader to do everything in our power to develop our own mental capacity for strategic decision making.

The history of scientific breakthrough is marked by discoveries that defied the collective wisdom of the day. Just how many centuries did all of humanity hold to the belief that our global world was flat? Why did it require a cloth merchant to show the entire field of dedicated, passionate medical doctors the unseen enemy killing their patients day after day? We live not just within the constraints of our personal bias, but our collective paradigms as well. Multiple perspectives are not enough to guarantee good strategy when we all see the world the same – i.e., literally, perceptually, neurologically, see the world the same.

Gregory Berns, a neuroscientist, tells us that it takes an iconoclast to see the world differently. Magnifying lens, microscopes, MRIs – external technological tools help us see the world differently. Some of us see things differently through the tools of human perceptions inside our brains. Dale Chihuly (pictured above; his glass art below is located in the Columbus Museum of Art) is a dramatic example of this. His art design revolutionized the world of studio glass – after, Berns tells us, Chihuly lost one eye. In the world of glass art historically dominated by symmetry, Chihuly’s work took on a decidedly asymmetrical form. He saw things differently. (Iconoclast, Gregory Berns)

As an aside, the MRI technology, so essential to the advance of neuroscience today, also owes its discovery to an iconoclast. In 1940 Paul Lauterbur, a chemist, was struck by an intuitive insight (while eating a Big Boy hamburger) that the blurring contained in nuclear magnetic resonance might be useful information, not just meaningless noise. It took the rest of the collective world another 30 years to see.
Berns and other neuroscientists explain that for efficiency sake our brains have learned to process or filter visual (and other) data based on repetition and the familiarity of past experience. Understand, this means that experience actually modifies our (“hard wired”) neural connections. The neural processing in our brains categorizes perceptions into familiar and not; the brain quickly differentiates what it believes to be familiar and deals with it efficiently. This helps us navigate the complexity and volume of information around us.

This has profound implications for strategy. We use pre-existing mental categories to differentiate perception that arises in the moment. What we see or don’t see is impacted (biased) by what is already in the brain. At times there are things we don’t see clearly because the brain does not know how to categorize them. We also know that a different part of the neo-cortex is activated to deal with truly novel information, once it is recognized. It takes more energy, and a different kind of attention, to process novel information. This kind of mental processing is perhaps sensed as less efficient, somewhat inconveniently disruptive, especially when the brain is overwhelmed with many other tasks – unless the amygdala senses a life-or-death, fight-or-flight kind of important danger at the personal level.

The fact that perception can be changed by experience is hugely important for developing leadership capacity in strategic thinking. It is one compelling basis for exposing executives to broader management challenges in different aspects of the business. But its greater significance is in understanding that each of us can train our own perceptual minds to “be more strategic” by consciously changing the focus of our attention. We need not passively depend upon someone else handing us exposure to new opportunity in the business environment of our company to do this. If Einstein had depended on this as a development strategy, he may never have discovered the theory of relativity: Einstein’s thinking was advanced by his own mental capacity to imagine riding a beam of light at the speed of light. Not sure anyone has actually ever done that.

Nor did Fred Smith have any experience whatsoever, nor any conceivable way to actually prove in 1966 that there was a profitable and sustainable business model for overnight delivery service. But he saw things differently. Apparently he got a mere “C” for his academic paper at Yale first outlining this brilliant business concept that ultimately became FedEx.

With Strategy In Mind: Part IV

2010-05-18T14:20:00.009-04:00

Of enormous significance is the fact that people can actually learn to increase the level of activity in the optimistic part of the brain through training and focus. It is one thing to have scientific evidence to verify how our brains actually work. It is another altogether to observe it directly from the inside and find a way to use that knowledge to our benefit.

It might come as a surprise to learn that scientists of a very different sort observed the very same workings of attachment and aversion in the mind well over two centuries ago, long before cognitive psychology and scientific technologies like MRI. (In fact, they observed a third element as well, one they documented as a lack of feeling, a dullness, a perceptual “blind spot” if you will -- the delusion of not being aware of actual sensation (data) that was in fact present.) These three factors were observed to be core human “biases” rooted in the nature of the mind that interfered with our direct observation of the senses, fundamentally distorting our ability to process reality.

How did they discover this? Loosely speaking, we could say they developed the capacity to objectively use certain neurological functions of the brain to observe other functions and parts of the brain. The ancient path of Raja Yoga in Hinduism was designed for empirical, scientific discovery of the mind. It required that individuals set upon a course of psychological experiments that developed powers of concentration, the ability to quiet physical and mental distractions, and the ability to consciously focus attention or use different kinds of attention in the mind for long periods of time. Simply put, they used the tools they had: they used the mind to study the mind, from the inside out.

You may wonder what on earth could bring these seemingly separate if not opposing domains together. The answer, in part: the Dalai Lama. The Buddha himself practiced this inner scientific discipline for many years. The direct observation of the mental forces of Aversion, Attachment and Delusion are core to the practice of Buddhist meditation. The pursuit of spiritual enlightenment seems worlds apart from war and business strategy, but the underlying mental disciplines and capacities are not. Today, eagerly supported by the Dalai Lama, the efficacy of ancient methods that “use the mind to observe the mind” are being verified in laboratories of neuroscience. Unlike ordinary test subjects, MRIs show that Buddhist monks are able to move their attention to specific mental activities upon request and then hold focus there for extending periods of time. They also produce levels of brain waves rarely observed in other humans.

Some of these remarkable monks are nothing less than Olympic-caliber athletes of the mind. But like Olympians, they have simply focused on certain human competencies with an elevated commitment and discipline. If Buddhist monks can learn to observe and separate mental activity from the roots of human bias, so too can others. We have many business leaders who are trained athletes -- if some spent as many hours in mental awareness training as many did in athletic training, who knows what might be possible. It’s merely a matter of turning the focus to a different field of achievement. A good leadership strategy, we suggest, would be to look inside.

With Strategy in Mind: Part III

2010-05-15T10:08:00.040-04:00

2. Paradigm: Individual business leaders can’t see their own biases; the best strategy is to manage around them.

In his popular book, The Medici Effect, Frans Johansson describes the breakthrough insights that come in business and science through the intersection of ideas, concepts and cultures. It is now a ‘best practice” of business innovation to bring together different, even contrating domains of knowledge. Perhaps some of the entrenched perspectives of how we develop leadership competencies could be advanced by similar efforts. Today we are witnessing the cross pollination of two domains that by all appearances would seem totally unrelated; on closer examination, they offer a fascinating glimpse into the possibility that individual leaders could do much more to develop their own strategic capacity.

(Antique Medical Magnifying Glass http://cdn1.ioffer.com/img/item/140/545/401/aAuQ.jpg )

Anton van Leeuwenhoek, a Dutch cloth merchant in the 1660s, was the first to observe bacteria. He was inventing higher resolution magnifying lenses to better see the weave of the cloth. His chance observation of a glass of pond water changed the paradigm of medical practice forever after. In 1974, Raymond Damadian, a medical doctor and research scientist, was granted a patent for the MRI. For the first time, we can now actually observe the amygdala in action; scientists can observe heightened neurological activity in different parts of the brain connected with emotions of love and hate, likes and dislikes -- attachment and aversion. The history of scientific discovery is marked by knowledge acquired as a result of new tools of perception. It is hardly a stretch to think we are at such a tipping point in the mind.

MRIs and other technologies may now give us the external scientific proof we need to objectively and rationally verify that our minds are not as rational and objective as we wish to think:

1. The neo-cortex did not replace the amygdala, it grew around it: emotional bias operates as a parallel process alongside our more conceptual, thinking minds.

2. The amygdala reacts instinctively for survival, which means the emotional/judgmental response typically happens first. When we get to the thinking part, aversion and attachment are likely already present.

3. For survival sake, the amygdala developed a more acute sensitivity to pain (fear) than pleasure. It kept us alive, but in business strategic terms, we may be more emotionally inclined to avoid potentially painful risks than invest in opportunistic rewards.

4. It turns out that even within the more evolved neo-cortex there is evidence to confirm that some of us are, neurologically speaking, “biased”, or inclined to be more optimistic than others. Scientists now directly observe different levels of activity in two distinct areas of the neo-cortex, one associated with pessimism, the other optimism. Not just the glass now, but the neo-cortex too is half full.

Recent advances in magnetic resonance research have opened up new opportunities to track connection fibers between different brain areas using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). http://www.sep.ethz.ch/projekte/life_sci

With Strategy In Mind: Part II

2010-05-10T23:00:00.046-04:00

Advancing Strategic Capacity in Leaders

Whatever political agendas might have been served by declaring the 1990’s the “Decade of the Brain”, the timing was fortuitous. What we have learned about the brain in the past 20 to 30 years (in part through new technologies such as MRIs) has exponentially surpassed the sum total of all knowledge accumulated before. With 100 billion neurons, each firing 5-50 times per second, and capable of forming 10 to the millionth power different combinations, the brain inside your head is likely the most complex organism created by nature; perhaps more so than physical universe in which we live. Very possibly what goes on inside the brain is more complex than what the brain observes to be going on outside. That is a startling revelation. Mental capacity is obviously the single most essential tool of business leadership -- the “sine qua non” – that without which, literally, nothing happens. All this calls for a new leadership strategy: look inside.

To illustrate what kind of strategic capacity might evolve in leaders from new neurological insights, we explore here four paradigms that are implicit in the thinking captured in the McKinsey articles.

1. Paradigm: Individual bias is an unfortunate and unwelcome departure from the ideal strategic decision making process in business.

To fully grasp the pervasiveness of bias at work in the brain is humbling. Most business writing picks up on what many of us think of as pre-conceived aversions and attachments: the boss’ irrational aversion to risk in a certain market, or some pet project that loses money but never seems to get the axe. But long before emotional bias sets in -- the likes and dislikes that seem to cloud otherwise rational choices – perceptual bias is already present at the front door of the data we take in, influencing and shaping the “objective” information we see or hear. It is also deeply engrained in the very process of thinking itself – it is part of how we learn.

The drawing to the right is called the Kanizsa Triangle. There actually is no triangle drawn; it is an optical illusion,made possible because our minds fill in what is not there based on our preconceived expectations.

What we learn from studying the brain is that mental bias is not some isolated malfunction resulting from ignorance, some socially awkward management gaffe that we should be embarrassed about in the privacy of our own office. Neuroscience reveals it to be a perfectly normal, perhaps necessary part of the learning process that enables us to survive. Ever since the Greek philosophers, we humans have wanted to set ourselves apart as the rational, logical thinking creatures. Indeed, the neo-cortex does some pretty impressive heavy lifting in that department, but it does not work alone.

A whole field of behavioral economics has grown up around the realization that a surprisingly high number of decisions are made somewhere outside the parameters of an objective, fully rational assessment. At times subtle, other times not, our decisions can be badly skewed by our fears and desires, or our base emotions like anger, frustration, sexual arousal, even hunger; often we realize all this only in hindsight. In the immediacy of physical survival, the brain translates raw physical pain as something dangerous and to be avoided; pleasure, largely to be sought as desirable. The more primitive part of the brain directly responsible for judging everything at this level of good and bad, likes and dislikes, is old in evolutionary terms. The newer part that we rely upon heavily for our more thoughtful rational analysis, the neocrotex, has simply grown in around the old. Neurologically, biologically, chemically speaking, these are different but inseparable parts of one brain.

With Strategy In Mind: It's Time We Look Inside

2010-05-05T21:47:00.027-04:00

People wouldn’t write so much about strategy if it was easy. It’s not. In fact, strategic decision making is likely the most difficult and complex mental activity in all of business, war and politics. This difficulty was articulated some two hundred years ago in Carl von Clausewitz’ strategic masterpiece On War: “Clausewitz's approach is profoundly realistic in that it describes the complex and uncertain manner in which real-world events unfold, taking into account both the frailties of human nature and the complexity of the physical and psychological world.” (http://www.clausewitz.com/).

Recently McKinsey Quarterly (Strategic decisions: When can you trust your gut? March, 2010 ) published a series of interesting strategy articles that touch upon some important aspects of the psychological world – the human mental processes that influence and shape strategic decisions in business. In this Clarion Insights article we look to advance the thinking. Evolving research in neuroscience is revealing more and more about the underlying mysteries of our brains. This knowledge -- combined with a certain degree of self awareness -- offers the potential for new insights that could help cultivate coveted leadership capacities in strategy. Like Clausewitz, our “purpose is to develop our human capital—i.e., to help the reader develop his or her own strategic judgment in order to deal with the ever-changing strategic environment.” (http://www.clausewitz.com/)

Building on the Articles Published

The McKinsey articles in part tell us that the decision making process of the human mind is limited by biases, a slew of them actually, which inconveniently makes for poor business strategy. But what is equally troubling is what one of the contributors (psychologist and Nobel Laureate in Economics, Daniel Kahneman) points to as the overconfidence of persuasive, charismatic executives. Natural bias in the brain ( + ) combined with overconfidence ( + ) combined with reliance on personal intuition or “gut feel” ( = ) is a powerful source of illusion amidst mission critical leadership decision making.

As Kahneman reminds us, CEOs are often hired for these very qualities, namely, a strong dose of confidence and decisiveness. As a result, the articles suggest a number of countermeasures or practices that business leaders would be wise to adopt, ones that aim to “assure multiple perspectives and objective fact finding”. Such practices help keep personal intuitions of individual leaders in check so that they are not allowed to run herd over the “quality and independence of information.”

Our interest in advancing this thinking is not a criticism of the recommended practices: the tools and frameworks mentioned in the articles include many that we find very effective and use often in our role as advisors and strategic planning facilitators. But the articles express a lack of optimism in leaders’ abilities to see their own biases and question their own intuitions. We wish to challenge the paradigm of thinking here.

Optimistic or not, we believe a distinguishing factor of high performing leaders is their willingness and capacity for self awareness. Recognition that the human mental process is fraught with bias is only the tip of the neurological iceberg. Success at the highest levels of leadership requires a willingness from each of us to look more astutely beneath the surface of our own brains. Perhaps this is a discipline not meant for the many, but we see enough evidence to suggest it is a particular mark of brilliance in a few.

Image fMRI cutaway. www.mindhacks.com

Look, A Brainbow!: The Art of Neuroscience

2010-03-17T11:40:00.011-04:00

Anton van Leeuwenhoek, a Dutch cloth merchant in the 1660s, was the first to observe bacteria. He was inventing higher resolution magnifying lenses to better see the weave of the cloth. Just happened to look at some pond water, thank you very much. Over the long history of scientific discovery, new innovations in technology have continually expanded our capacity to sense (see, hear, touch, smell, taste) the world through external instruments. Today it’s the Hubble Telescope, electron microscopes, the 17 mile long Large Hadron Collider (LHC) lying beneath the Franco-Swiss border, the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator intended to collide opposing particle beams. And in the field of neuroscience, it’s Magnetic Resonating Imagery (MRI).

Expanding perception correlates strongly with increased understanding of reality. At the same time, perhaps unexpectedly, we have created – or discovered -- images of astounding beauty. Note this is equally true when we learn to refocus our brains and expand our internal observation of the mental field of awareness. Thus far no one seems to have figured out how to capture the experiential beauty of expanded awareness in photographic images. Words fall far short, but we see some correlation evidenced in the nature and actions of such people.

This photomicrograph is the work of a team of researchers under Dr. Jean Livet. The aim of their research is to understand how neuronal circuits of the brain are organized, how they develop and how they can be affected in diseases. The imaging process they developed is called “Brainbow”. This allows them to visualize neuronal circuits by creating a multicolor labeling of the brain. In this case, it is a map of neural networks in mice (axons and dendrites).

In Brainbow transgenic mice, nerve cells randomly express fluorescent proteins of different colors. Combinations of these proteins label neurons with multiple distinct hues, as seen here in the hippocampus (confocal microscopy, dentate gyrus).

Source: http://www.fondave.org/-Team-of-J-Livet-.html (Dr. Jean Livet (CR1, Inserm), E-mail: jean.livet@inserm.fr, Phone: + 33 1 53 46 25 18 )

SMALL WORLD

Recognizing the art in science, Nikon established the Nikon International Small World Competition, dedicated to furthering creativity and excellence in photomicrography. “Combining microscopy and photography, a photomicrographer is able to capture an image of the world that the naked eye cannot see.” In 2008, Dr. Livet won an Honorable Mention for this photomicorgraph.

Honorable Mention - Dr. Jean Livet (Institut de la Vision - INSERM U592 and UPMC - Paris, France; Specimen: “Brainbow” mouse brain stem with auditory pathway axons (40x); Technique: Confocal

Nikon’s Small World Galleries can be found at: http://www.nikonsmallworld.com/gallery

Upgrading Legacy Systems: Purposeful Awareness of the Accidental Mind

2010-03-03T11:53:00.002-05:00

The capacity for the human species to engage in such a broad spectrum of behaviors -- from acts of horrific destruction to breathtaking beauty, from the depths of depravity to the heights of inspiration – is almost incomprehensible. At times it is disturbing to contemplate how the content and functioning of someone else’s mind could be so different from our own. And when we see diametrically opposed behaviors simultaneously coming out of one-and-the-same brain we have no logic to make sense of it; we are reduced to calling it “mindboggling”, even “schizophrenic” or “possessed”.

Illustration: www.pcbdesign.org
But while our brains are indeed the most complex and sophisticated entity in the known universe, they are at the same time the messy, perhaps accidental result of evolution. What this leaves us with is what David Linden calls “a cobbled-together mess, with a “quirky, inefficient and bizarre” design. (The Accidental Mind)

An analogy to help understand this might be the experience of many large corporations who years ago began to build their data management on what are now old legacy systems. It is not uncommon for there to be two or more information systems in the same company that cannot talk to each other – cannot pass data between them. As many know, the financial cost and disruption to business operations to undertake whole-scale redesign and replacement of those old systems is often prohibitive. Instead of replacing, many companies have deployed a newer evolution of software, aptly called “mid-ware”, and layered it on top of the old systems. A compromise, if you will, but the function of mid-ware is to extract bits of data up into a higher level system where the data can be shared, leaving the legacy systems in tact. The old systems never do talk to each other directly.

Might surprise you to know the visual system(s) your brain is (are) using to read this page share similar limitations. It appears that at one point in evolution our brains took on a systems upgrade that resulted in a more sophisticated visual cortex that makes possible the more complex processing of visual perception whereby we can mentally “represent” or “recognize” the things we see. However, we never fully replaced the old system, one that is, at the same time, engaged in more primitive actions, the simple physical movements that enable us to act -- to grab the things we see. How do we know this? Well, bizarrely enough, if the higher level visual cortex is damaged, patients can still reach out and grab physical objects when asked, even though they claim they cannot see anything. Apparently these two systems inside our head do not talk to each other. (The Accidental Mind, David Linden) (The Visual Brain in Action, David Milner, Melvin Goodale)

This poses a fascinating question: Is it really possible that one part of our brain could be unaware of what another part of our brain is doing? I mean, not because one of us is crazy, or has a split personality, but rather because of the basic neurological wiring we all have in common? Really? (We’re in big trouble if that line of defense shows up in a future episode of Law and Order.) Like business information technology, is it possible that when everything is working well we are in full communication and know what is going on everywhere, but when we have a systems glitch, we are then potentially unaware of what is happening in another part of our brain’s organization?

Oprah Winfrey says the most important book she has ever chosen for her book club is The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, by Eckhart Tolle. It was at the verge of suicide that Eckhart Tolle experienced a curious insight as he observed himself saying: "I cannot live with myself any longer.” “Then suddenly I became aware of what a peculiar thought it was. Am I one or two? If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me: the 'I' and the 'self' that 'I' cannot live with. Maybe...only one of them is real." (http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Oprah-Talks-to-Eckhart-Tolle)

In this singular moment of directly observing the peculiar nature of how his mind’s system was actually operating, Eckhart Tolle shifted the direction of his life from one end of the spectrum of human behavior to the other: from meaningless annihilation to personal inspiration. In every moment of our existence, our brains are pulling together an immense volume of information to make sense of our worlds. By doing so, we participate in creating an understanding of reality. Research in neuroscience is demonstrating just how bizarre, distorted, incomplete or misguided our creation of reality can be. At the higher end of human achievement, Eckhart Tolle is personal evidence of the power of using the human mind itself as an instrument through which to upgrade the system: to observe through awareness, to learn and dramatically change the accidental nature of our imperfect mental activity -- from the inside out.

The Origin of the CEO’s CEO

2010-02-20T12:32:00.004-05:00

The internal complexity of the brain far exceeds the complexity of even the largest global corporations. The internal map of the neural networks through which the CEO’s CEO must navigate is far more daunting than the external business environment. As if that is not enough, an additional challenge is the way the brain evolved over time. It’s not unlike what we see in many large corporations of today, where over time new highly sophisticated IT systems have been layered on top of – but never fully replaced -- primitive old legacy software programs of earlier years. As Jaron Lanier states: “The process of significantly changing software in a situation in which a lot of other software is dependent upon it is the hardest thing to do. So it almost never happens.” (You Are Not A Gadget, p. 7.) And fascinatingly enough, it did not happen in our brains either. As a result, highly intelligent CEOs at times make embarrassing, humbling mistakes, and often far more public and damaging than their company’s IT inefficiencies.

It might prove to be a relief if we could actually confine executive mental activity within that section of brain mass with the latest technology -- the more modern cerebral cortex. This is the area that Goldberg (The Executive Brain) refers to as closest to the Executive Function, applying oversight, judgment and decision making in the brain. This is where our more rational, conceptual thought is found ("All we want are the facts, ma'am", Joe Friday, Dragnet). But the fact of the matter is the CEO’s mind houses potentially troubling ancestors, conveniently hidden away in the deeper recesses of the brain, but lurking nevertheless. In the absence of vigilant security, primitive mental forces all too often find their way up into the executive suite, and not without consequence, even to the lions (or tigers) of leadership.

While 2009 is certainly no exception to history, some are already calling it the “Year of the Scandal”. Examples of embarrassing leadership blunders have been dramatically precipitous on the public leadership stage: Mark Sanford, John Ensign, former senator John Edwards, and perhaps the most captivating and intriguing of all, Tiger.

• As CEO of the professional golfer at work on the links, Tiger Woods was voted Athlete of the Decade.

• As CEO of his expanding business empire (course design, endorsements, etc.,) he was voted No. 1 in BusinessWeek's 2008 second annual Power 100 list of the most influential people in the sport’s industry. (http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_41/b4103047401760.htm?campaign_id=rss_daily).

• But as the CEO of his own tightly constructed and extremely private personal life, Tiger totally unraveled, leaving the world around him baffled and confused, wondering if it ever really knew the real CEO it came to admire.

The growth of the brain through the course of evolution has been additive: the primitive roots never died away. As a result, we have a (1) layer of cerebral neo cortex wrapped around (2) an inner system of limbic functions, all built upon and around (3) a primitive brain stem. All still function, though differently than in the beginning. As a CEO manages their daily schedule of business demands, “there’s a kind of lizard-squirrel-monkey brain in your head shaping your reactions from the bottom up.” (Hanson, Buddha’s Brain, p. 24)

Some cultures seem to be able to separate personal foible from public or professional performance; for us here in the US, the inability to manage the Executive Function in one part of life raises questions about all the rest. The CEO is obviously a critical asset of any company. When the Executive Function of a CEO fails in any part of life it exposes the business to risks, financial and otherwise. If for that reason alone, CEO’s must cultivate capacities for wisdom in managing their own tri-part brains, never forgetting that they are – in overly simplistic terms -- part reptile, part old mammal, and only part the newly evolving “human”. Most of the focus of this blog will center on the role of higher Executive Functions in the neo cortex (The Executive Office of the CEO's Brain); but CEOs must never lose awareness of where we all come from.

The CEO’s CEO: Who Decides Who Decides?

2010-02-14T13:53:00.005-05:00

An aspect of our advisory work with senior executives includes assisting them in thinking through the design of their organizational structures. While it could be easy for some to assume this is only about hard structure reporting relationships and business divisions or units, in fact the “soft structures” in business organizations are equally if not more important. And like the Necker Cube (http://www.originicity.com/2010/01/naivete-in-leadership-capacity-necker.html ), there is more than one right answer. Soft Structure includes, among other things, the way organizations make decisions. For example, when there is confusion between two or more executives as to who is responsible for making a specific business decision, we often ask: “Who decides who decides?” If there is no clear soft structure by which to make that determination, frequently the CEO will end up having to decide.

But it turns out that with a quadrillion neural synapses (above), asking “Who decides who decides?” is equally important inside the brain of the CEO themselves. If you thought large multinational organizations were complex, take a look inside the head of just one CEO. “The human brain is the most complex natural system in the known universe; its complexity rivals and probably exceeds the complexity of the most intricate social and economic structures.” And like a large organization, the brain has distinct areas with distinct functional jobs to do. (Goldberg, The New Executive Brain).

Just think of it: Fortune’s 2009 ranking of world’s largest companies is topped by Walmart with 2,055,000 employees. (http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2008/snapshots/2255.html)

But the CEO’s brain is comprised of 100 billion cells interconnected by long and short pathways. Information is passed along through a combination of electrical signals and chemicals. This “network of mind-boggling complexity”… allows for “coding information of stupendous complexity.” When faced with a even a mere one billion of those cells at your neocortex office door sending a barrage of ambiguous data -- sensations -- perceptions -- kinesthetic movements -- emotions -- pains -- pleasures -- fears -- desires -- ambitions -- drives -- foresight -- insight -- and memories [ at least a reasonable and hopefully useful portion of Kim Peek’s memories (the telephone book, even if complete, may not help here) ] -- faced with all that, just what part of the brain is it that exercises clear intentionality and purposefulness in that moment to execute the complex decision making process required? In other words: Who decides who decides?

Goldberg tells us that the CEO’s CEO is the frontal lobes, the prefrontal cortex. This is the "Executive Office" of the brain. The frontal lobes are critical for motivation, for attention, and for every meaningful learning process. (Goldberg, p. 5) This is clear neurological confirmation that the leadership capacity that distinguishes the CEO’s mind is much more than acquired knowledge or IQ, more than the years of accumulation of technical experience.

Initially these lobes were not thought to have great significance in mental functioning. They are not linked specifically to any one function. Even today, just exactly what they do is not easily defined. (Very aptly, the same is often said of a CEO.) The uniqueness of the role is perhaps best understood, as Goldberg suggests, through the metaphor of the orchestra conductor, whose visible role is not immediately obvious to the uninformed, because they play no instrument and produce no noticeable sound. The role they play is the coordinating, integrating, architecting role, somewhat “behind the scenes”. But without their forward looking strategic design, their sense of timing, their synthesizing connections, their moment-to-moment decision making --- the music stops.

Naiveté in Leadership Capacity: The Necker Cube

2010-01-23T13:50:00.004-05:00

One of the greatest challenges of leadership today is making decisions in a world of enormous uncertainty and ambiguity. Knowing and accepting the workings of the mind can help guard against the arrogance and false sense of infallibility in leaders. Naïve realism is the simplistic belief that we perceive the world exactly as it is. In fact, what we perceive, even hard physical data, is open to interpretation. Every leader faces the possibility of being deluded by what they assume is true. The depth and preponderance of this illusion in human experience is a central insight of Buddhism. Knowledge of the neural networks that manage visual and other sources of perception back up this concern, confirming for us that in fact the brain can hold two equally possible and rapidly fluctuating interpretations of exactly the same visual data. While ambivalence is often seen as an indication of leadership weakness, it may have validity in the reality of neuroscience.

http://earlywomenmasters.net/quilts/s/shifting/index.html

A simple, well known example that illustrates the possibility of such naiveté is the Necker Cube, first created by Louis Albert Necker, a Swiss crystallographer, in the 1830’s. The cube is ambiguous, in as much as it does not distinguish which lines in a three dimensional cube are in front or in back, and thereby fail to provide conclusive evidence of the perceptual distance and positioning of the lines. Typically we only see one interpretation. Once we are aware of multiple interpretations, we still do not see both perceptual realities simultaneously, but we are capable of shifting back and forth between them.

The real problem is created if we assume that there is only one possible interpretation and either refuse to see others, or do not pause to search for alternative “realities”. The potential for holding onto illusions is not only an individual risk, but a shared, collective one. This came to light in the financial crisis of 2008 when so many of the brightest financial and political leaders of our decade failed to see the evolving collapse of the mortgage backed securities fueled by over extension of credit.

The challenge of making decisions in complex ambiguity is that most often there is no clear right or wrong solution, and very possible only two or more right answers. In situations as this, leaders are forced to choose between two right answers with potentially differing but ambiguous values. Often there is a desire to obtain more data, thinking that lack of clarity is the failure of insufficient information. There is no right or wrong way to interpret the Necker Cube, but rather two correct ways. It is not a matter of needing more research, more data – the data is complete and ambiguous at the same time. Both solutions are equally valid, or equally delusional.

The Mind at the Heart of Leadership, Part II

2010-01-06T16:59:00.000-05:00

Perhaps no one in recent times has done more than Daniel Goleman to show that the mind at the heart of leadership is more than just intellectual smarts. In fact his work makes the case that success in business leadership is more highly correlated with EQ (emotional intelligence) than IQ (intellectual intelligence). EQ includes one’s ability to experience empathy (seeing from another’s point of view), sensitivity to organizational and political dynamics, and the ability to influence and inspire others, etc. (Emotional Intelligence, Primal Leadership)

Consistent with the four layers described in The Clarion Group’s Foresee (Capabilities, Characteristics, Capacities, and Core Motivations), in this blog we will explore additional aspects of the mind that are critical to leadership success that likewise expand beyond the typical narrow understanding of IQ, or analytic thought. There are a range of additional mental activities that are encompassed in this broader understanding of the mind. It is also relevant to know that this broader understanding of mind is likewise embraced by Buddhism.

Before I go further down that path, let me explain that The Clarion Group’s advisory work in business is not grounded in Buddhist philosophy or practice. Most of us have mainstream executive experience in large business organizations (IBM, Aetna, Microsoft, etc.); some come out of careers with prominent consulting firms (Accenture, Ernst & Young, etc.). While we are an eclectic group in academics (mathematics, chemistry, psychology, business, etc.) and professional experience, I am the only partner who has a background in religious studies and Buddhist meditation. The parallels I outline in this blog are my own exploration.

That said, the Buddha tradition is a profound study of the mind, far preceding the development of psychology in the west. Centuries ago, the Buddhist had outlined very subtle mental distinctions, including a clear awareness of the conscious and unconscious aspects. Buddhists developed three different aspects of mind: the instrument of thinking or cognition; the instrument of affect, or feeling, both emotional (heart) and sensory; and a deeper sense of cognition and consciousness that is at times correlated with psychic knowing .

Two weeks ago I participated in a retreat at IMS (Insight Meditation Society) with Daniel Goleman, Tara Bennet-Goleman and Joseph Goldstein. The three friends first met in Bodhgaya, India, in the late 60’s, where Joseph was practicing Buddhist Meditation with Munindraji. IMS has been my “spiritual home” since I participated in the first three month retreat offered in 1976 with Joseph, Sharon Salzberg and Jack Kornfield, shortly after IMS was founded.

It might surprise some business executives who have been deeply influenced by Goleman’s work to know that he has been a student of Buddhist meditation for these many years, but it is so. Daniel reiterated that mindfulness practice is a foundation for developing emotional intelligence. And Joseph mentioned that it was Munindraji’s extremely logical and pragmatic words that motivated him to practice Buddhist meditation initially. Munindraji said, “if you want to understand the mind, sit down and observe it.” So simple, so logical, yet almost completely overlooked in the Western cultures of the world. We study and observe many things, mostly external objects; rarely the inner workings of our own minds.

The mind at the heart of leadership is the full sense of the mind, as described in The Clarion Group’s Foresee and in the Buddhist framework. And the foundation of Buddhist meditation is enormously pragmatic, even scientific: use the instrument of the mind to observe the nature of the mind.

The Mind at the Heart of Leadership

2010-01-04T16:43:00.001-05:00

In November, 1994, Ronald Reagan disclosed he had Alzheimer’s. “Nearly 70 when he took office in 1981, Mr. Reagan became the oldest President, and throughout his two terms, a series of well-publicized memory lapses and a casual executive style had provoked uncertainty -- even ridicule -- about his mental competence.” (NY Times, REAGAN'S TWILIGHT: A President Fades Into a World Apart, By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN, October 5, 1997) ( Quoted in http://medicalcrises.blogspot.com Wednesday, March 07, 2007; “Mental Illness in U.S. Presidents--"Call Me Incompetent But Don't Call Me Crazy") While none of the four White House doctors saw any indication that Reagan had crossed that line, one study suggests almost half our presidents met criteria for psychiatric disorders, and half of those evidenced disorders while in the White House. (The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease: January 2006 - Volume 194 - Issue 1 - pp 47-51, Mental Illness In U.S. Presidents Between 1776 and 1974: A Review of Biographical Sources, Davidson, Jonathan R. T. MD; Connor, Kathryn M. MD; Swartz, Marvin MD.)

Whatever one’s criteria, it is almost impossible to argue that the mind is not at the heart of leadership. We our leaders to be of sound mind, even if the body grows infirm. In our advisory work with senior executives at The Clarion Group, we focus more at the upper end of the spectrum of mental capacity, not lower threshold competency. We work with executives who have already attained substantial success and still we ask the question: what differentiates those truly high performing, even extraordinary senior-most leaders?

We find it helpful to separate out four layers of knowledge, mental skills or attributes, ranging from those which are readily acquired through external sources down to those which are usually considered more innate. (Foresee^TM, The Clarion Group Leadership Assessment Suite, http://www.theclariongroup.com/) By design, the aspects we include are not intended to be a comprehensive spectrum of human attributes, but rather are more precisely focused on the highest level of business leadership:

1. Capabilities: These are developable skills and knowledge-based elements acquired through education and experience. Capabilities are what people have learned to do, perhaps through formal education or on-the-job training, and include how people think and their knowledge on a variety of topics. At the senior leadership level examples include a variety of management practices, approaches to Problem Solving, Decision Making or Communication Skills.

2. Characteristics: These are operating and interaction styles, skills such as Influence and Interpersonal Ability, Organizational Agility or Strategic Management. We all have stylistic preferences Characteristics, and although these are at least partially innate, they may be strengthened or modified to a degree through awareness, practice, reinforcement, or sheer determination.

It is widely known that Mahatma Gandhi, the spiritual and political leader of millions, was in fact quite shy by nature in his youth.
Candy Lightner was one who led a relatively normal life as a real estate agent and mother until her 13 year old daughter, Cari, was killed by a drunk driver in 1980. Driven by her anger and outrage, Candy seemingly overnight transformed into a prominent national figure, demonstrating remarkable influence and political and organizational agility, galvanizing a grass roots national movement that founded Mothers Against Drunk Driving and changed criminal law across the entire nation. (http://www.bookrags.com/biography/candy-lightner/)

3. Capacities: The level of Capacities is primarily where this blog will focus. There are certain Intellectual, Environmental, and Emotional capacities, as well as a capacity for Openness, that seem to differentiate great leadership. These will be explained in greater detail in coming entries. For now, just one example to highlight the fact that we are talking about a range of mental capacities beyond IQ.

Kim “Kim-puter” Peek was born November 11, 1951 with damage to the cerebellum, missing the bundle of nerves that connect the two hemispheres. While Kim has a below average IQ of 73 he also has a photographic memory. Furthermore, he reads a book in about one hour, reading the left page with his left eye, the right page with his right. He can recall the detailed content of some 12,000 books from memory (faster than Google) and has nearly total recall in 14 to 15 different subject areas. Kim Peek is a considered prodigious savant, a megasavant, and is the real life inspiration for the 1988 move “Rain Man”. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Peek) (Scientific American, December, 2005)

But we can all attest to people we know or hear about who just seem to have more of certain mental capacities – a gift for languages, math comes easy for them, an enviable sense of direction. Of course what we are most concerned about here are those specific kinds of capacities that lend themselves to leadership acumen: more like being very strategic or visionary; a “second-sense” around timing in competitive ventures; indefatigable energy, passion and drive. For the most part we have come to think of these kinds of capacities as more “hard-wired”; companies tend to hire for these qualities and typically do not expect to develop them through any kind of training program. We will explore these assumptions much further.

4. Core Motives: Our motivations are also deeply rooted, so much so that at times they are beyond our own awareness or consciousness. Again it is not clear just how possible it is to change our motivational core. But it is critically important that leaders develop considerable self awareness around the motivational patterns that energize, orient, and impact their behaviors. It is important that they be recognized and managed constructively. Given again that our focus is specifically business leadership, we tend to utilize motivational theories most directly applicable, such as McClelland’s three types of motivational need – achievement, power (in self and others), and affiliation. (The Achieving Society, 1961).

From this it is easy to see that the mind at the heart of leadership encompasses much more than just thought or intelligence. More about this in the next entry.

The Interconnected Leader: Peek & Bohm

2009-12-31T22:37:00.000-05:00

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)

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

2009-12-25T22:26:00.004-05:00

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.

About the Blogger - The Story Behind the Facts

2009-12-20T14:41:00.006-05:00

"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…

About the Blogger - THE BARE FACTS

2009-12-18T14:15:00.002-05:00

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

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

2009-12-17T14:33:00.005-05:00

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:

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.
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:

We can discover deeper capacities of the mind that distinguish great leadership, perhaps with the help of evolving advances in neuroscience, and
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.

About This Blog

2009-12-11T15:26:00.000-05:00

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.