Cells that fire together wire together

This is an oft-quoted phrase to explain the power of habit. Now a new book by New York Times investigative reporter Charles Duhigg explains the three phases of habit formation and how smart business leaders use this to create organisational success.

He refers to the cue, routine and reward phases of habit formation. (From the perspective of the chemistry of neural networking,  Martin Lindstrom’s two-phase approach of dream and routine makes sense, whereby the insula response during the induction/dream phase is linked to the quicker and stronger hardwiring associated with the routine phase.)

Duhigg, interviewed on CNN last week, impressed with the range of his application of this concept to success. E.g. Alcoa CEO’s use of “keystone” habits (worker safety) to transform an entire range of positive success habits, propelling Alcoa to Dow Jones top performer status. (See Alcoa website for Alcoa’s Values Endure - A Letter from CEO Klaus Kleinfeld to Employees, February 2010)

Duhigg relates the power of habit across the full range of human endeavours from sport to civil rights to commerce. (This resonated during the recent TV One Sunday interview with Aussie hero Ben Roberts-Smith VC – the influence of deep/midbrain beliefs on action under fire.)

Understanding the structure of habit and the anatomy of the mind puts people and organisations in the driver’s seat for personal and commercial success.

Why executive coaching doesn’t work

Now that I have your attention,  I’ll hasten to add that I do one-to-one coaching under certain circumstances, and can refer people in other circumstances to my colleagues who specialise in this area.

Mostly, I use a Systems approach, which requires system coaching not individual coaching. This is one of the few models that explain most of the issues within organisations, using Pareto’s 80:20 rule. Where a model explains (and can fix) 80% of issues, by addressing these in one go, the remaining 20% dissolve. (A manager said to me yesterday: if we can get a 20% improvement in our communication alone, that will make a significant difference to how we function.)

Principles of Systems Theory, largely attributed to Biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy in 1936)

• The whole is more than the sum of the parts
• A closed system is one where interactions occur only among the system components – it can only maintain or decrease its organisation (entropy/disintegration)
• An open system receives input from its environment. The result is the opposite of entropy i.e. evolution
• Communication (information) and transaction (matter or energy) are the only vehicles for exchange between parts of the system/between systems
• New information (feedback) from an open system’s environment allows a system to adapt, renew and reinvent (constant change)
• Change in one part eventually creates change of the whole system
  A system tends towards equilibrium – it resists threatening  or jolt change
• Tweak one problem (without treating the system) and another will replace it (if the system was not fixed.) An individual aligns with the system pattern.

Applied to business (a social and economic system):

• When everyone in the business contributes fully for the collective good, the collective output is more than that of each individual (“teamwork”)
• Where an individual, department, division or the entire organisation blocks feedback, the system entropies (weakens) and eventually dies. (Many organisations limp on in various forms of ill health.)
• Where information is treated as a “thing” instead of an energy form, people leak information inappropriately according to individual agendas (In the human system this would be labelled a rogue cell, or “cancer”)
• A closed system is the natural flow-on effect from the “dangling-box structure” of organisations. Many design organisations for disease then complain about the disease (and “rogue” individuals)
• An open system means everyone is a link in a value chain with connectors throughout the system (like the human body)
• Communication for the collective good comes from agreed “ways we communicate around here”
• An open system is kept healthy with engineered/regular feedback among key stakeholders throughout the environment. (A simple health step is for the CEO to chat informally to everyone/anyone – this is just one sensor of the system’s health
• No part of a system (individual or team) is non-influential
• For health, change MUST BE CONTINUOUS – engineer one-degree-at-a time (iterative) change; like boiling a frog. Continuous improvement is the modus operandi  (what Buckminster Fuller called Ephemeralisation and the Japanese call Kaizen). It keeps a system commercially-relevant and avoids system-resistance to “jolt” changes.

Back to executive coaching: critical mass lies at the frontline, not with a single executive or manager. When you change the manager, the prevailing system pressures the person back into previous behaviours to restore equilibrium. When the system changes, the individual changes.

I work with a manager and his or her team – sort of like family therapy. Outcomes? The whole team interacts effectively, people do what they’re there for, you resolve rogue cells (sometimes over night; in one instance, within 3 hours), you make the manager’s job (everyone’s job) do-able and relieve stress.

Otherwise, the danger is you get the coaching target offside, and possibly make the situation worse.  Feel free to disagree!

The amazing middle-aged brain

For a hundred years, neuroscience believed the mature brain was “stuck”- unchanging. It has now had to reverse that position. By middle age, our brains have trillions of connections making us smarter, calmer, happier and more capable.  And we keep growing new brain cells until the day we die.

Barbara Strauch in “The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain” presents an impressive amount of research showing that for many of us the best is yet to come. Sure, as we age memory wanes, but judgement about people, work and the world around us is increasingly accurate.

As myelin (white matter) increases, so our brains build connections that help us make sense of our environment – a developed wisdom.  This means we get to the point of an argument sooner than youngsters. It helps us act judiciously rather than irrationally.

A Seattle study found that middle-aged brains performed better in 4 out of 6 cognitive skills than at any other time. (Vocabulary, verbal memory, spatial orientation and inductive reasoning.)

We also increase in ‘bilateralisation’. As this use of both sides of our brain increases, we’re better able to deal with high levels of mental demand and situations requiring discernment (needed for management, law, diagnosis in medicine etc.)

There is now sufficient evidence for a cognitive reserve (in the frontal cortex) that buffers against negative effects of aging. (It’s exciting to have early research evidence to back what many have believed for years.)

And here is the answer to why we forget people’s names: the connective links between word and the concept of the word weakens with age. The example given is if Mr Potter is a baker and Mr Baker is a potter, you remember the occupations more easily than the names. Verbs are easier than nouns, as there are more neural networks involved. When we think of someone as a baker, the associations are all over the brain.

But one of the most significant findings is the variation among people during these years, which leads to the question about what causes superior performance in some. Yankner (Harvard Neuroscientist) found a 93-year old who had the genetic brain patterns of a middle-aged person. She had near perfect cognitive performance until the end of her life. He says causation is not just about genes but due to a combination of genes and the DNA soup (our environment) they live in.

The researchers Strauch interviewed have personally made the lifestyle changes found to be significant, so compelling is the evidence. Ages 40-50 seem to be the crossroads – what you do during this time determines what follows.

Brain boosters – the factors that cause new brain cell production and ward off dementia, (especially Alzheimer’s):

1. Exercise: called the “magic wand” –  exercise that increases heart rate and blood flow.
2. Education: another reason to tell your children to appreciate education! The link appears to be causal between education when younger and protection against the effects of dementia when older.
3. Cognitively-stimulating activity: the kind that involves collecting and processing complex information.
4. People interaction: work that involves interaction with people as opposed to machine work. (Although I do wonder about the stress effects of staff interactions on managers – the ones I meet anyway! Is this what drives them behind their computers? The evidence shows it is best to go and have that face-to-face encounter in a calm and positive way, to ward off Alzheimer’s!)
5. Diet: all the usuals such as anti-oxidants (especially dark-coloured foods), folic acid and (in other brain research) high-quality fish oils. Blueberries, spinach and spirulina has come up trumps in research.
6. A positive attitude! “The best and brightest brains have a bias for the positive.” The opposite is also true: unrelenting stress/stress induced cortisol kills neurons in the hippocampus (mid brain, important for memory). Depression too has been linked with a smaller hippocampus. Around age 41, we recall more positive images than negative ones. This persists through to age 80 and beyond across all ethnic groups. In younger people, negative thinking is more effortless. (BTW, it takes 5 positives for each negative before we’ll consider a marriage a good one.)
7. Hormone levels: Estrogren is essential for healthy functioning of the frontal cortex in particular.

Perhaps the best news is this:

You’re not considered “old” until you have a 4% chance of dying in the next year. Middle age is between that 1 and 4% range. From analysis of 2000 Census data, men reach middle age at 58 and women at 63.

Under this interpretation, men don’t become old until 73 and women at 78.

According to Strauch, we have to now start regarding everyone as 20 years younger!

The Great Game of Leadership

Eric Berne wrote “Games People Play” – there is nothing more common in business than “The Leadership Game.”

Like all games, some degree of fantasy is involved. The players pick up rules along the way and observe others to acquire winning strategies.

In commercial organisations fantasies include:

• Change title from manager to leader and there is leadership
• Because a team has a leader, the team will perform
• A leader performs well when you either breathe down their neck or leave them alone

Gaming principles suggest that:

• Employees have the numbers (critical mass) to control throughput and output
• Employees tell the power figure (person in control?) what they want to hear (or what employees want them to know or think)
• Reality is superseded by the illusion of hope
• When reality dawns, the least effective strategy is the one chosen.

How can you beat the odds in the game of business?

The only strategy that works consistently is one that takes internal competition out of the game, that treats barriers to success (and challenges) as just part of the game, and that requires all players to be on the same side.

Practically, there are a number of ways to do this, but before anything else you have to:

• See reality for what it is
• Accept there are blind spots – whoever discovers them first, gets the advantage
• Do whatever it takes to find the best outcome for all in the game

Only then, can you keep ahead of the game.

Bubble bubble toil and trouble

Reflecting on the last couple of weeks,  I’m reminded that people (and organisations) have an extraordinary tolerance for  %^#&*. Like the boiled frog. People only act to deal with the %^#&* when things bubble over. When often it’s too late.

Why do things have to reach a crisis before people (and organisations) are driven to action…..to change those things pop psychologist Dr Phil calls “change worthy”? Up til then, these things lie submerged beneath life (and business)-as-usual.

Then a crisis hits, and people say: “why did they (whoever they is) wait for a disaster before doing something?”  Well, they (and we) don’t have to. And shouldn’t, if we want fulfilling lives and great organisations.

It boils down to ASPIRATION. Top performers (people and organisations) are aspirational. They want what’s best in a given situation.

When you tolerate what’s less than the best (possible), mediocrity seeps into your psyche and before you know it, you no longer aspire.

This is like acting under the influence of the lowest common denominator. This is true for both people and organisations. This influence is so profound, mediocrity can start to seem pretty damn good. It’s comfortable, and comfort is good, right? Fine; but be prepared to diminish with time and to be challenged by those who want more …….who want to be more (whatever their definition of that.)

If you want to live “full”,  or have a great organisation, decide to:

°          Aim for the best possible contribution and outcome in each and every situation

°          Make this a way of life (not a January rush of blood to the head)

°          Set up ways to get back to this path when things unavoidably boil over and toss you about

°          Seek improvement one degree at a time, so you become sensitised to micro temperature changes and are able to stay the distance during business (and life) as usual

°          Control the temperature shifts through anticipation and pre-emptive action

 Small adjustments today can mean the difference between thriving and expiring, for both people and organisations.

Monkey business

They say if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. Well, believe it or not, we can learn something about how organisations succeed from monkeys.

 A few weeks back, I sat for about half an hour observing an extended family of vervet monkeys at a lodge where I was holidaying.

The smallest monkey was distressed at having been isolated on a lower roof while the elders, and other slightly larger youngsters, were frolicking on the top level. They appeared oblivious to junior’s plight. The distressed creature darted from side to side, unable to see them due to the roof overhang, but anxious to join them. It tried repeatedly to jump up, only to fall back and wobble precariously. It tried to climb up a drain pipe only to keep slipping back down.

 With my wide angle view, I was immediately aware that if the monkey moved to the tree to the extreme right, it could easily access the top level. But the monkey’s vision was fixed on the upper roof (and the rising panic perhaps did not help with problem solving.)

I thought about parallels with many organisations. A narrow field of vision can lead to wasted time and effort and cause much unnecessary angst. Observing the apparent lack of concern at the top level about the youngster’s plight, I pondered the disconnect between levels and “divisions” (interesting word) within organisations.

In my intrigue, I moved closer and almost simultaneously the mother (I presume) jumped into action. Quick as a flash, she leapt to the lower level, grabbed the monkey and leapt back up again. It would appear she was aware of what was happening below, despite evidence to the contrary.

 Here’s where the monkey “system” and human organisations differ:

°          Nature’s longer term purpose for leaving the baby alone to figure things out prevailed, until the imminent cost outweighed the benefit. Then, the elder solved the problem

°          The elders had a ‘finger on the pulse’ at the lower level and took necessary action

°          Junior never gave up its aspiration to that higher level

°          Human beings, despite being able to make a phone call or call a quick ‘brainstorming timeout’ for problem solving, often prefer to complain about the problem and blame those at the top for their plight

°          Those at the top don’t always see it as their role to stay in tune with others who don’t share their wide angle view. (Given that the latter vastly outnumber the former, collectively cost the organisation far more and generally determine how the organisation performs each day, begs the question “Why?”.)

If organisations functioned more like a family of monkeys,  capability would expand through experience, leaders would be tuned in to what matters, risk would be averted, challenges would be regarded as “business as usual” and an outside threat would unite those within the organisation family.

 All too often, staff are uninspired and don’t want to stretch. Often the law of diminishing returns applies to the payroll.  Leaders are disconnected; their actions destroy value and alienate people. External threats lead to internal conflict and chaos.

 Perhaps a step in the right direction would be to behave more like monkeys.

Why people do what they do

Your recipe for health and contentment during 2012

They say Actions speak louder than words. My take on this is: If you want to know what is REALLY important to people (their “currency”), watch how they behave.

It took me a long time, and many years both at university and through work experience, to discover that people are pretty straightforward. Yes, people are unique; they have an individual social history that has made them who they are. There are nuances that differentiate individuals as well as situational factors that cause variations of behaviour, even within the one individual.

But when you boil it down to the basics, all people take action for two reasons: to reduce pain and increase pleasure. And this is supported by basic biology.

How you can use this to live and work with people more harmoniously and with less stress to you personally

1. Realise that we’re all pretty much the same. Don’t judge others for something you most likely do yourself. (Even if there are differences in how you behave; the underlying motivators are the same, and the principle of self-interest overrides all else. Check it for yourself! Even those doing something for others do it primarily for the way it makes them feel, which is fine.)

2. Work out people’s currency and don’t trade in US dollars if their currency is Singapore dollars (metaphorically speaking.)

3. To change behaviour, if you are a manager, either change the consequences, or ask someone else to do what you want done. Make it clear that if you end up repeatedly asking Person B instead of Person A, the consequences are Person A becomes less and less useful, and eventually becomes commercially irrelevant. (It’s up to them to do what they want with that realisation.)

4. When someone says I don’t have time, translate this as: It’s not that important. Either make it more important or refer to Point 3.

5. When someone says I can’t or It’s impossible, refer to Points 3-4.

6. Don’t get frustrated by others. Mainly because it is counterproductive and an unhealthy lifestyle choice. Your frustration won’t change them. In fact, it could be your frustration (or any negative emotion) traps you and others in an addictive pattern increasing the behaviour you don’t want. Emotions are very sticky – like Velcro. It’s easy to get stuck when there are negative emotions of frustration, annoyance, resentment, guilt………emotions that represent the ‘low road’ according to Daniel Goleman in Social Intelligence. (See his book Emotional Intelligence for the scientific evidence of the physical price you pay for indulging these emotions.)

A tip:
Think of yourself as  Teflon – let people’s behaviour slide off the outside (and your own frustration slide off the inside.) This is a healthy lifestyle choice. Make a request. If you don’t get what you need through open, clear, calm, rational conversation, look elsewhere for what you want. Repeat until you have what you want, and not what you don’t!

It makes no sense to keep hitting your head against a wall and complaining about the pain. Unless you enjoy it! Or are addicted to it – Prof Cliff Abraham at Otago University has some great insight into addictive behaviours.

Make different choices during 2012 and don’t worry; be happy.