Neuroscience in Business: Being Smarter in the Downturn
Last night I heard a neuroscientist make a remark that has huge implications for 21st century businesses, ”For all the ways we know to use a tool, like a needle or a hammer, for example, we use the Wernicke’s area of the brain,” pointing to the area just above and behind his left ear. “But if you want to think of new ways to use a needle, you use the other side,” pointing above and behind his right ear.
Every business is challenged to rethink the way it uses tools, processes and other assets, to be sure. That’s challenging enough, you think?
Take a look at a few of the factors required in order for your brain – for customers’ and employees’ brains – to perform this all-important task.
The right and left sides of our brain are connected by the corpus collosum - a structure that is highly affected by a number of types of stress.
If your employee or customer is worried, frightened, tired, not getting enough exercise, hyped up on caffeine, or has any concerns for his/her status [rank on the social or corporate hierarchy], s/he won’t be able to take on a new question.
Because of the way the brain works, many types of stress decrease ingenuity when we need it most.
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A thriving enterprise is what every business wants, but blueprints are not readily available. Despite $$bb invested in B schools, informed design is rare: few business cultures generate competitive advantage; few leaders know how to ask the vital questions that enable resilience and responsiveness.
In the trenches as Business Anthropologist for nearly 3 decades, I've been honored to work with leaders committed to being the best - bringing the best of themselves to the task of building thriving enterprises -- knowing that part of their task will be to inspire the best in others.
It's been my pleasure to illuminate the core dynamics of commerce, many of which haven't changed since the first human communities - perhaps 350,000 generations ago. Nothing makes leading easy, but mastering those dynamics fuels commerce: opening opportunities, continually improving execution, and minimizing risk - no mater what may be happening around them.
This blog addresses the tough questions that test leaders in business. I'll offer examples, inquiries, and insight inspired by the glorious ingenuity people bring to the task of creating value.
Please jump in. What are you thinking about thriving enterprises? I look forward to the dialogue.
Hi Tom, Behavior is at least
By Marsha Shenk (not verified)Hi Tom,
Behavior is at least as influenced by Culture as by Organizational structure. In this moment of change, leaders have an opportunity to shift their cultures.
Tools for doing that? New forums in which people can participate in new questions; new standards for efficacy, with clear means of measuring performance; new interpretations of what constitutes excellence, with new rituals for celebrating it.
We come to be the way we are via 350,000 generations of group cooperation. We are designed to be pickled in the brine of culture. Leaders have a huge opportunity to design new cultures - people are crying for it
What comes first, the chicken
By Tom Fabrizio (not verified)What comes first, the chicken [the organizational structure], or the egg [a person's behavior]? Perhaps it's the wrong question. One affects the other so much - they become ONE. They can't be treated as separate. This is my big challenge...