Wednesday, 15 December 2010

People still willing to torture


People 'still willing to torture'

Electric shock
Subjects were apparently given electric shocks
Decades after a notorious experiment, scientists have found test subjects are still willing to inflict pain on others - if told to by an authority figure.
US researchers repeated the famous "Milgram test", with volunteers told to deliver electrical shocks to another volunteer - played by an actor.
Even after faked screams of pain, 70% were prepared to increase the voltage, the American Psychologist study found.
Both may help explain why apparently ordinary people can commit atrocities.
 It's not that these people are simply not good people any more - there is a massive social influence going on. 
Dr Abigal San
clinical psychologist
Yale University professor Stanley Milgram's work, published in 1963, recruited volunteers to help carry out a medical experiment, with none aware that they were actually the subject of the test.
A "scientist" instructed them to deliver a shock every time the actor answered a question wrongly.
When the pretend 150-volt shock was delivered, the actor could be heard screaming in pain, and yet, when asked to, more than eight out of ten volunteers were prepared to give further shocks, even when the "voltage" was gradually increased threefold.
Some volunteers even carried on giving 450-volt shocks even when there was no further response from the actor, suggesting he was either unconscious or dead.
Similar format
Dr Jerry Burger, of Santa Clara University, used a similar format, although he did not allow the volunteers to carry on beyond 150 volts after they had shown their willingness to do so, suggesting that the distress caused to the original volunteers had been too great.
HAVE YOUR SAY
Until humans value the lives of others equal to their own, this will unfortunately continue to be the case
Louise, Lincoln, UK
Again, however, the vast majority of the 29 men and 41 women taking part were willing to push the button knowing it would cause pain to another human.
Even when another actor entered the room and questioned what was happening, most were still prepared to continue.
He told Reuters: "What we found is validation of the same argument - if you put people in certain situations, they will act in surprising and maybe often even disturbing ways."
He said that it was not that there was "something wrong" with the volunteers, but that when placed under pressure, people will often do "unsettling" things.
Even though it was difficult to translate laboratory work to the real world, he said, it might partly explain why, in times of conflict, people could take part in genocide.
Complex task
Dr Abigail San, a chartered clinical psychologist, has recently replicated the experiment for a soon-to-be-aired BBC documentary - all the way up to the 450-volt mark, again finding a similar outcome to Professor Milgram.
"It's not that these people are simply not good people any more - there is a massive social influence going on."
She said that the volunteers were being asked to carry out a complex task in aid of scientific research, and became entirely focused on it, with "little room" left for considering the plight of the person receiving the shock.
"They tend to identify massively with the 'experimenter', and become very engaged and distracted by the research.
"There's no opportunity for them to say 'What's my moral stand on this?'" 

Tuesday, 14 December 2010

Interviews with Global leaders of Change on iTunes

A host of interviews are available here;

http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/six-sigma-lean-six-sigma-continuous/id298069740

Monday, 13 December 2010

How Anger Poisons Decision Making - Harvard Business Review


How Anger Poisons Decision Making
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You’re late for work, and it’s pouring rain. In the parking lot, a car speeds around you and takes the last spot near the building entrance. You end up trudging from the back of the lot and get soaked to the skin. You’re mad, and you know your judgment at the moment is probably impaired. Worse, the leftover anger will continue to color your decisions at work, our research suggests, without your awareness—not a good thing for anyone trying to steer the best course through the day’s business problems.
Many organizations have anger-management programs for their most egregious bullies, but the reality is that the vast majority of employees will experience anger triggered by anything from a family quarrel to a lost parking space—and their work will suffer for it. For example, angry people tend to rely on cognitive shortcuts—easy rules of thumb—rather than on more systematic reasoning. They’re also quick to blame individuals, rather than aspects of a situation, for problems.
Companies can effectively work around this human tendency and mitigate the impact of anger-fueled actions in the workplace by introducing accountability. If you expect that your decisions will be evaluated by someone whose opinions you don’t know, you’ll unconsciously curb the effects of anger on those decisions. When you can’t be sure how your evaluator will judge your behavior, you’ll pay more attention to the key facts of a situation, which will then crowd out the (unwanted) influence of your own feelings from past events. This finding has important implications for organizations and their populations of semirational, emotion-ridden individuals who endeavor to produce good decisions in spite of themselves.
A study conducted by Jennifer S. Lerner with Julie H. Goldberg of the University of Illinois and Philip E. Tetlock of UC Berkeley documented the psychological effects of residual anger. The study found that people who saw an anger-inducing video of a boy being bullied were then more punitive toward defendants in a series of unrelated fictional tort cases involving negligence and injury than were people who had seen a neutral video—unless they were told that they’d be held accountable and would be asked to explain their decisions to an expert whose views they didn’t know. After watching the bullying video, the subjects in this accountable group were every bit as angry as the others, yet they judged the defendants’ behavior less harshly. Accountability appears not to change what decision makers feel; rather, it changes how they use their feelings—a much more manageable objective for the workplace.
Accountability vs no accountability chart here
Without revealing their own views, managers should inform employees that they will be expected to justify their decisions on certain projects—not just the outcomes—after the fact. By improving accountability, managers can steer employees toward decisions free from the negative effects of anger.

Wednesday, 8 December 2010

PCC Goes to China

OperationalEfficiencyPortfolio01.jpg http://tiny.cc/cxkwj


I'm pleased to be able to say we are truly going global, with our latest article featuring in the Lean Six Sigma Institutes newsletter in the Far East ... Thanks to William Feng Yu for sharing our thoughts with his members.

Electronic Pick Pocketing WREG News Channel 3


RFID - Easy to Pay, but easy to lose your money too?

How scary is this if it catches on?

Tuesday, 7 December 2010

Change Happens - Get over it, get on with it!


Change Happens - Get over it, get on with it!
By David Bovis 

I know this title is a little provocative. It is supposed to be!!

     1.    How would you feel if someone tells you that you have to change? There’s no choice.

   2.    How would you feel when you have sufficient experience to perceive why you need to change, how you can change and what is in it for you?

    Two different ways... two different feelings!

Let’s start with a constant. Change does happen! It is inevitable and it has been happening again and again for thousands of years.  In fact, change is the only constant affecting everything, from petrol prices to theories about the origins of mankind and the planet! Nothing is excluded, everything can change - even the way we approach the management and implementation of change in business ...

In industry, change happens for many reasons; market conditions, organizational evolution, ash clouds, oil spills or even by planned ‘change improvement programs’. Sometimes we choose it; sometimes it is thrust upon us by circumstance or by leaders.

Organizational leaders understand that because change happens, their organization must constantly evolve, adapt and transform itself if it is to survive in the market place, the goal is often to grow to a position of market leadership and improve efficiency and effectiveness, 'we must change to cope with change itself, so we can 'win''. 

This is why Lean, Six Sigma and other process improvement best practices are so prevalent in business today and why organizational improvement programs are constantly evolving in a quest to find a change program that works straight away and delivers sustainable results.

The process focused tools, techniques and strategies have been finely honed and developed to deliver results, but what has to be recognized is that it is the people who offer the resistance to change which ultimately affects long term outcomes.



Q. Why is this and how can the problem be resolved?

Resistance happens on a psychological level. 

People form personal comfort zones and if you ask them to move toward something uncomfortable, they will invariably offer resistance. Sometimes the resistance persists and in some cases, the change initiative fails before it even gets off the ground. This can be massively expensive and disruptive and I’m sure we can all recall such experiences in our own organizations. 

I’m equally sure that you have felt that uneasy feeling when you have had to push your own boundaries or fully step outside of your own comfort zone (like being detoured on the way to work or your car keys going missing when you’re late). Be it in your private life or your working environment, it doesn’t take much to challenge your patterns and you may well have resisted the change in the form of anger, anxiety, frustration or any number of negative emotions.

The degree to which you resist change depends on a number of factors including: who or what you perceive to be the origin of the imposed change, what assumptions and judgements you make and how threatened you feel by the new conditions relative to the speed of exposure – to name but a few. 

If the need to change originates in a person or a system you implicitly trust, you are more likely to accept and follow the 'new' course of action.


W.I.I.F.M...?

The irony here is that as humans in a world of change, we yearn for change; 

we pursue it with a vengeance … but usually only 'outside' of the working environment - so whats the difference?

When it’s something we want (we've had the freedom to make a choice) and we subconsciously perceive a beneficial answer to the Question “What’s In It for Me” (WIIFM), we don’t oppose change; we embrace it.

Music!

Think of the weekly music-chart updates, most weeks there’s a new No.1. In 2000, there were 42 different number one hits in 52 weeks. Also consider how we feel when that ‘comfortable’ regular change disappears? Who remembers the 16 weeks Bryan Adams was No.1 with the Robin Hood Prince of Thieves single “Everything I do) I do it for you”? Boring right? Or maybe your example is Whitney Houston’s ‘I will always love you’ from the film ‘The Bodyguard’ which lasted 10 weeks. It seemed like an eternity didn’t it?

The evolution from Top of the Pops to live download updates reflects our desire to understand the latest situation quickly; this is largely due to the way our brains derive meaning from feedback - something our 'systems' and prevailing conditions we create at work fail to deliver.

Heroic Leaders!

Think of the hero in a disaster movie. Despite the circumstances, people are expected to do something which is way outside of their comfort zone. “Jump!” shouts the hero.  The character hesitates briefly, but because the situation provides them the immediate feedback they require and the hero is consistently confident, the person jumps off the sinking ship or out of the window in the burning building. They reflect the leaders’ behavior.

These hero’s only do what all natural leaders do, they lead by example. In the world of change, this is a really big issue at a psychological level; many leaders today instruct others to change, which is a bit like telling someone to jump from the burning platform into the safety net without holding their hand or jumping with them. 

Natural leaders do exist but they are few and far between. What do they do differently and why? How do they do it? Wouldn’t you like each of your teams and departments to be led by such people?

Here’s the science bit!

Assumptions occur in people when the systems & Sub-systems (ERP / MIS / Teams / Accounting or production Processes and procedures) they encounter, fail to provide relevant information in a timeframe that is conducive to their neural requirements. We call this 'temporal detachment'.

Over the course of their lives, people are exposed to different Environmental Emotional Experiences (EEE).  This results in them making different assumptions about their current environments which then results in differing opinions or ‘Cognitive Dissonance’.

Cognitive Dissonance is another name for the experience of intuitive discomfort in any given situation, which provokes people to react with an instinctive fear / threat response. They have EEE imprinted self defense mechanisms and a negative reaction resulting in blame / projection / lack of engagement, ownership and responsibility, which results in an external locus of control.

Cognitive Dissonance from assumption, in the face of a lack of timely meaning (not information transfer as occurs in I.T. systems) also results in people experiencing a low self concept, low confidence, low energy, and a lack of creativity and innovation.  They fail to solve problems preferring to default to blame and other automatic defences that ultimately undermine organizational performance. 

The worst thing is, people start to feel comfortable with this ‘way of being’ over time and 'we' (humans) don’t challenge what we are comfortable with, regardless of whether it is judged good or bad.

Understanding these and other psychological issues which result in resistance to change will enable a leader to act in such a way that they will consistently choose to elicit positive behaviors and avoid behaving in a way that will result in resistance. That is to say, they will have the knowledge and capacity to choose to act in a way that will get the person to “Jump!!” before the ship sinks or the building burns down. 

Where leaders can understand the intricate details of the people process that culminates in the motivation of their team members to embrace change, they can realize improvement programs that will be an instant and sustainable success.

Creating heroic leaders at every level in business is about aligning beliefs and behaviors, such that they are seen in direct relationship to performance and profit. The link is absolute and is driven by a philosophy of ‘being’ as a stable foundation, that comes before the endeavour of ‘doing’. 

“How we are, is how we act”. 

With this awareness, making change that is primarily focused on ‘what we do’ can be seen in a new context ... doing can be seen as an effect of how we are being, rather than the cause. 

If you can change that belief, (supported by the latest findings in Neuroscience and psychology) you will change the way you approach change, and change can become comfortable & sustainable, culturally.




Authored by David Bovis (Founding Partner, PCC (Psychology of Culture Change) LLP
PCC provides the context in which to perceive the origins of change as something beyond what we ‘do’ in the form of new tools, process and procedure, as is historically popular in the prevailing market. By creating heroic leaders, PCC provides 'meaning' - required for each and every individual to understand and make cognitive choices over their actions and reactions, relative to their immediate conditions and organisational objectives; this provides a vehicle by which people can emotionally function in a new and sustainable way, making a change to culture autonomous and sustainable.

Contact him at david.bovis@pcchange.co.uk  

New guide for innovation partnerships

Manufacturing News, Source : TheManufacturer.com



The Institute for Manufacturing (IfM) at the University of Cambridge has produced a new report to help businesses select effective partners for collaborative Open Innovation (OI).

OI involves working with external business partners to develop new products and access new technology but many businesses lack the necessary capabilities to engage in such a project and, thus, seek ‘innovation intermediaries’, which include commercial and technical consultancies, government departments and academic networks.

IfM has conducted a year-long study involving BP, GlaxoSmithKline, PepsiCo, EPSRC and NESTA and has now produced a report “Getting Help With Open Innovation” which offers tips for and examples of a structured approach to selecting the most appropriate intermediary for a particular company’s needs.

Dr Letizia Mortara, of the IfM’s Centre for Technology Management (CTM), says: “Our research had identified a clear desire for a structured method of selecting innovation intermediaries. This came from the intermediaries themselves and the companies which used their services.

“Intermediaries vary considerably in terms of the capabilities they offer their clients. The report equips companies with the right questions to ask in order to be able to assess whether a particular organisation is right for them.

“In turn the report also helps intermediaries to clearly state what their services consist of and to clarify their offering for clients.”

The research drew on interviews with more than 100 organisations, both intermediaries and users of intermediary services.

The report also includes a directory of more than 100 innovation intermediaries.
For a copy of the report email Rob Halden-Pratt at rwh26@cam.ac.uk.

Tuesday, 30 November 2010

A few thoughts from experience

You may have to sign in to the groupsite to see this .pdf,

http://bit.ly/hO9Jb4

Ice by Volume

Just a funny thought for the day...

If ice increases in size (volume), as a solid, over a liquid, when it melts, does it replace less liquid by volume than it displaced as a solid?

If so and the ice caps melt, will the sea-level drop instead of rise? ;-)

Wednesday, 24 November 2010

Our Emotional Experience makes us who we are

Introduction (Setting Context)

Following an extensive conversation on a LinkedIN group (Systems thinking world), I decided to post a requested reply here, as it's a little longer that LinkedIN allows. I also thought it may provoke others to contribute from a wider audience ..... 

You will see that to start us off, there is an overview provided by Helene, building on a request I originally made in the discussion.

This request was for all involved to ID a 'Language' we might be able to use to make a 'Right brain' message appeal to the current 'Left brain' market ..... I made this request, as a number of incredibly experienced change agents and systems thinkers were all fundamentally saying the same thing (in my own estimation), which in essence (my own summary) is that; 

"sustainable change (incorporating all the other benefits typically associated to the pursuit of change - growth, EBITDA improvements, waste removal, cost downs, productivity increases, space reduction etc.etc.), originates in people, the way they think and behave (react / perform) and requires a 'Cultural' understanding to be consciously effected in organisations at a systemic and strategic level. 

So, addressing Helene directly,
Hi, as promised via e-mail, here are a few thoughts following the comments shared in the Sytems Thinking World LinkedIN discussion - (manager - leader definition differences).

For the benefit of others ... here is your proposed  framework;

Building the case for the 21st century organization and leadership

In connection to what has been approached in the leadership/management discussion, this is a suggestion for how we experts, consultants, leaders internal/external can build a transdisciplinary case for the 21st century organization and leadership in our organizations gathering material to design something that we can use when “selling” change in our organizations or making our points in think-tanks, professional and social networks.

A framework for us to go out there, be the change we want to be, and help others be the change they want to be but can’t because they don’t know where to start… Please share your thoughts and help identify similar initiatives and the material to build this collaboratively.



>Objective:

Provide / produce High level material for leaders (current and potential, any person who wants to be challenged and see how things interact and where the trends are leading).


Based on thinking, questioning and exploration to create awareness on the intangibles that affects a company’s achievements and outcomes, provide the basis (material and interactive exercises) for learning how all the disciplines complement each other for more consciousness and effectiveness.



>Overview:

  • Right Brain and Left Brain meet. 
  • How the intangible affects personal and collective achievements and the balance sheet/P&L.

  • Debunk myths, deal with/decode the mass of emerging trends, what they mean for the 21st century management/leadership, company

  • How the learning can be applied.





>Outline:

1. Cognitive/neuroscience and science stuff;
Right brain/left brain, consciousness, cognitive functions (intuition, sensing, thinking, feeling), and other relevant concepts



2. Intangibles

Self, personality, identity, behavior, belief, culture, value etc…
Definitions, how they relate to each other, how they play out for self and organization



3. The philosophies/theories 
that underpin mental models and organizational models.

Cartesianism (rational), platonicism (sensing) etc…, debates on art and science

How this has shaped organization (Taylorism etc)



4. The challenges of the complex organization in a complex environment
and emerging trends; 
Employee engagement/empowerment
- 
Leadership/management
- 
Change
-Strategy
-Customer empowerment
- 
Sustainability



5. How the intangibles affect the outcomes 
HR/OD 
Strategy 
- Brand & customer loyalty

Stakeholders Relationships & Experience

Sustainability 



6. What next? Where to start

My Response

What we already cover in a structured fashion seems to tick many of the areas you highlight above, perhaps we could use PCC and our models and methods as the platform on which to build? 

I'd be happy to share ideas and collaborate with those also looking to support a paradigm shift in the approach to sustainable and transformational change for people in all areas of life, social, organisational, educational, political etc.

"The footprints of our past nudge us towards decisions and provide us our value systems by which we judge good, bad, right, wrong, positive or negative"

1.    Cognitive Science / Neuroscience;
NLP - CBT - PCT – Transactional Analysis and Popular Psychology and the latest findings from studies into Neuroscience will ideally all be understood (at least in principle), by leaders, to meet your objective.

i.e. ensuring leaders are provided the capacity to 'Think' the right way about intangibles and the links to benefit unavailable from our current business measurement and judgement methodologies.

Accepting our (PCC’s) BTFA cycle (Believe-think-feel-act) - which allows us to simplistically recognise that the way we behave, think and thus feel about our prevailing conditions is only relative to what we have been imprinted to believe, we can accept our individual realities are relative to our neural map of the territory, not the territory itself ...

requiring we start to build the picture' of neural maps and what impacts upon their formation.

i.e. we might benefit from recognising the 30+ areas of our visual cortex which process the ‘Video data’ required to accommodate the moving images of light received through our eyes, rely heavily on memory.

 – i.e. only a small part of what we think we see, we actually see, the rest comes from a rapid looping mechanism that relies heavily on memory to fill in the rest of the picture – making half of our reality at any one time a self-generated image, providing us the capacity to experience what are generally known as ‘Scotoma’s (blind spots) – i.e. we become blind to what we do not expect to see (because it doesn’t yet exist in memory).

If you don’t believe this, try counting the number of times the basketball players in white pass the ball on this YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahg6qcgoay4   

or get a husband to look for something his wife has moved (lol ;-))

"Today’s experience becomes tomorrow’s neural construct and memory reference point"

Being conscious of such issues in regards the design of our prevailing conditions  (Industrial / social / political) can help us reduce the opportunity for mistakes to be made by people, and increase the opportunities to maximise 'people performance'. 

Considering the 'People Process' (internally) we can acknowledge that, as humans, we function based on our unconscious philosophy of life (our beliefs formed through experience) - the only way to challenge and change this is to make our philosophical construct (map of the territory / beliefs) conscious – including what works and what does not work, at work (psychologically).

All aspects of this as a development approach, feature in the PCC methods and models.

Fundamentally, understanding the way in which our cultural and parental experiences of the world form our brains in regards to Bio-Survival, Emo-Territorial, Semantic and Socio-sexual imprinting phases, (fight-flight, dominate-submit, left-right brain preference (Left-Right brain being a term used in complete understanding that no-such thing exists in practice but helps frame principles) and attitudes toward relationships… are largely dictated by experience - with Genetics only featuring at a 'capacity to grow', not a 'how growth occurs' level).

This knowledge allows leaders to comprehend the basic infrastructure of the brain on which continuous Neuro-genesis takes place, whereby we find ourselves constantly re-checking our current sensory experience of the world with those impressions / imprints we have formed historically, relative to the framework generated by original stimulus (amygdala triggers of neuro-transmitters and the immediate related sanity check via control mechanisms that reference the hippocampus – the ‘checks and balances’ process missing in PTSD sufferers).

This internal process quite miraculously 'changes' our neural maps on an on-going basis - i.e. relative to experiments on Rats, it can be suggested that the hippocampus in mammals (incl humans), loses and replaces approx. 12% of it's mass and thus it’s synaptic connections (in the form of Axon to dendrite electrically stimulated chemical exchange) every month – meaning / suggesting ... we constantly update our neural construct of the world relative to the experiences we are exposed to - changing and challenging what we accept and understand as 'experience', then becomes the catalyst for philosophical change at a belief level - which links nicely to the next level item you list …

2.    Intangibles
Self concept - comprising self ideal, self image and self esteem (according to Brian Tracey in his 1989 Phoenix Seminar "The Psychology of success" - inspired by Napolean Hill, Andrew Carnegie, the Bible and relative studies into Psychology from around that time).

This is our opinion of self and the world relative to imprints from the polar opposites of Fear and Love during the imprinting phases listed above. In a social and organisational context - the prevailing 'attitudes' inherent to individuals (due to negativity bias - fight or flight dominance at a limbic level as a survival instinct), established during imprinting phases are never (rarely) challenged, as the individuals experience of the world becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy (including anticipated conditions at work).

We thus only react to prevailing conditions in the same way we have always reacted to them, our actions form the world around us and the cycle perpetuates.

To break this cycle and reduce the fear based responses we might otherwise stimulate in our employees, we have to change their psychological experiences which will form their neural construct; which means challenging the judgement mechanisms, the fear based messages provoked by systems, attitudes, and leadership practices, (the 'human-system' psychological relationship and relative communication quality) 

…. NOT! the stand alone, isolated, process and procedure changes, we have historically become focused upon in regards to Continuous improvement and organisational change, largely proven to be unsustainable.

To make such practical changes to these aspects of our outside worlds, we have to change our belief about them in our inside world (our neural construct / map of the territory) …  which can be seen to be a bit of a catch 22 and would indeed be so, if we ONLY had experience as a method of formation, but we also have education and imagination that we can use to challenge what we consider 'the truth' about our worlds, (The argument that we have to change the outside world 1st and in isolation is the cause of practitioners pursuing the ‘application of tools and techniques' as an approach for the last 39yrs since TPS was first introduced as Quality Circles) - the 'truth' is 'both sides of change are required in balance - we have to address change as it appeals to 'people' via what we loosely term 'right-brain and left-brain'.

NB; we’ve tried to change the external with little success to date (most studies showing around 66-75% of ALL change initiatives failing), so it’s time to learn from this experience globally and try something new … 

It’s time to reverse the approach to change and focus on a change to the internal world first (or in harmony with change to the outside world), such that the subtle difference between systemic attitudinal change and process and procedure change, as it impacts on people can be adequately considered. 

i.e. we are talking here about the difference between changing the external materials with which we surround ourselves and changing the internal opinion of individuals relative to an external locus of control – which is an internal, psychological change, linking directly to deeper issues of responsibility and trust. ... leadership approach .. attitudes ... systemic judgement ... assumption ....

Understanding neuroscience now helps us scientifically understand exactly how we might achieve this and subsequently build our systems to support such a change to both the internal and external, left and right brain worlds, in which we exist.

To understand what provokes such fear based reactions in a business context, enables all issues to come under consideration at a neuro-scientific / psychological level, such that we challenge our basic modus operandi. (Std cost accounting – setting strategies, relying on I.T. solutions in the form of MIS / ERP etc.) …. 

These and other ‘approaches’ that are openly accepted as the ‘way’ to get the best from a business, are addressed and reconsidered at this level, in regards to being effective, or not, psychologically, and from a ‘brain formation’ perspective – i.e. good or bad in relation to getting the best performance and reactions from people … we might talk about ‘Systemic Human Engineering’ (SHE)

Simply put – once we provide leaders the capability to understand how the brain works, we can help them comprehend the debilitating impact any form of ‘Fear’ (from the introduction of anything ‘new’ and any ‘assumption’ that reduces the quality of communication and feedback) has on a persons reaction to the world (Sporadic and violent events and / or chronic ‘it’s just the way we do things around here’ type events / conditions, can all provoke ‘Fear triggers’ which inhibit immediate performance capabilities and also set people up to unconsciously oppose change).

Once Fear is fully understood at this level, and fear triggers in relation to HTM (Hierarchical temporal memory) and the algorithmic computation structure of neurons is considered, we can properly appreciate the human requirement for feedback mechanisms which are fundamentally restricted by the majority of ‘Best practice’ business approaches / strategies & structures.

Once we establish a new ‘belief’ (Root cause of our BTFA cycle) in what works and what doesn’t work and what is good or bad (philosophically, i.e. at a neural level) in relation to maximising organisational performance we can further investigate, in the same level of detail, what it takes for people to practice the development of metacognitive skills, and understand ‘Blame’, Justification, association and other ‘negative emotion’ based negative cycles that self-perpetuate, unconsciously supported by the majority of current systems and approaches utilised to ‘control’ – once we get leaders to understand this, we can move onto the neural understanding (regards chemical release between neurons – e.g. Cortizol, Dopamine, Noradrenalin etc.) of ‘Trust’ / taking responsibility / leading by example and other ‘Team /Self /System’ relationship issues.

3.    History & the origin of current philosophies and theories
To challenge all of this, we ideally need a reasonable grasp of the history that precedes it, so we can understand how we have come to be where we are in regards organisational performance (as a race on this planet today) – as you say – we need to understand Taylorism, but we (PCC) go further than this and make the 1st module of our course about history, such that people can set their own context – incredibly important in providing foundations on which all other knowledge canbe based and so it comes early on, but not quite 1st in our course construct. 

We cover East and West history, from Sun Tzu through the Edo and Yayoi periods – Miyomoto Musashi and the influence of Shinto incorporating Taoism and Confucianism through the Tokugawa period and up to and including Toyota’s formation from Toyoda Spinning and Weaving ….

+ we go back to Pythagoras, Aristotle, Logic / syllogisms, and the scientific model that developed through geometry, developments in Mathematics and the last 230yrs of the industrial revolution, (both sides of the pond), to help our delegates understand the neural construct differences that have historically been seen in an approach to life, between East and West (+ we include latest Neuro-science here too, to show that in MRI scanning there is a physical difference to be seen in the workings of the brain of an Eastern person and a western person exposed to the same stimulus) ... 

proving in some ways Iain McGilchrists recent posit (BBC Radio4 and the RSA) that there is a left brain dominance perpetuated by left brain experience provided by the western world at large, which I also suggest is now having a detrimental impact on the East, as those in China / Japan and surrounding nations are more and more exposed to ‘Western’ influence via international business and capitalist materialism.

Once all of this is understood, then all of the points in your items 4 & 5 can be addressed.

We suggest this is considered as ‘Setting a psychologically congruent strategy’ which then provides leaders the capacity to design an approach that systemically promotes Ownership, engagement, empowerment etc. moving organisations away from ‘on-going maintenance’ of change and into a realm of self-perpetuating progress and flexibility. 

This is made possible where the prevailing ‘management and control’ mechanistic design, consciously removes the fear triggers that inhibit this ‘culture’ in all other businesses as they have been constructed to exist to date. 

Following PCC training, leaders are consciously able to better consider and design their systems and approach to help reduce and remove performance anxiety which itself becomes detrimental to performance and positive organisational outputs – perpetuating more negative systemic loops following the.... ‘increased control mechanisms – inhibited human performance – increased control mechanisms’ loop / model, that business has come to openly accept as ‘Good’ in the absence of this knowledge.

To pop all of that into laymans terms - the majority of managers / leaders i've worked with over the past two decades still default to the outdated opinion, that you can only control through fear and 'being nice' to people is for wimps ... failing to see, if people are provided conditions in which to 'feel' better, they perform better ... we might highlight an old adage here "A productive workforce is a happy workforce" and consider the hawthorne effect - where we see empirical proof that people only need to be listened to and genuinely valued to get the best from them ... modern approaches to 'control' seem to ignore this 'human' aspect to consider - which we can now prove via psychology and neuroscience - this is no longer a matter of opinion, modern science provides us the facts we 'logically and culturally' demand - understanding people thoroughly will increase performance and profits!

Once such prevailing conditions exist and ‘the culture’, is provided the prevailing emotional and practical conditions required (i.e. in which, those who form said culture via interacting beliefs, thoughts, emotions, attitudes and behaviours, become comfortable with change, self and systems), an on-going improvement to conditions is automatically realised - true Kaizen!

(Where emotionally intuitive comfort, in a constantly changing environment also promotes raised levels of  creativity, innovation and thus problem solving & a capacity to react flexibly to the market and macro-culture – thus reducing costs, increasing positive outputs etc.) for various neural-construct reasons I won’t go into here.

An example of the benefit that occurs at a neural level from the lack of systemic fear triggers, is where we see the removal of causes, that would otherwise see the Ventro-lateral prefrontal cortex slamming on the ‘brain brakes’ (glucose redirection into the limbic system to ensure the cerebellum is priming muscles to run away or kill something – see David Rock on Google talks) which as a fear based reaction / defence mechanism, stops rational logical thoughts, mixed with imaginary thoughts from occurring (the best type of left-right brain dualism for making leaps that lead to solutions / conceptualisation).

Ultimately – All of our decisions come down to anticipated reward
(a subjective [based on previous imprinting] good outcome vs a subjective bad outcome)

It’s only when ‘Leaders’ can perceive the benefit that comes from designing their systems and approaches, (regardless of what they are currently comfortable with) to provoke beneficial Neuro-genesis in others, systemically, can we get to a point where we design prevailing conditions in which people can thrive. 

This even gets us to a point where we can challenge the neural sense of reward structures, because due to the human brain becoming acclimatised to the dopamine release provoked by anticipation, if rewards are ‘structured’ it has a negative impact on the degree of pleasure experienced when they are received – hence an impromptu ‘good job and a pat on the back is often more motivating than a regular reward of thousands of pounds – leading to highly rewarded individuals becoming quickly dissatisfied with their reward – look at the approach to the financial market reward mechanisms that have come under such scrutiny lately.

(Listen to the iTunesU free podcast 'Money and Emotions' produced by the European funded investigations being carried out by Prof Mark Fenton O'Creevey into emotional impact on financial decision making in the finance sector).

As for some of the studies into ‘Skills for sustainable communities’ – the fundamental premise of the study is already flawed by logic before it’s started.

The title of such studies would better direct events if they were to include some of the issues alluded to above – “i.e. we would be better off conducting studies into “Beliefs and a way of Being for sustainable communities”

Ultimately, we have to ‘believe’ the skills we have are not sufficient before we will ‘want’ (have passion / desire – advance toward) the idea of learning a new ‘Skill’ – if ‘New’ triggers ‘Away from’ reactions at a limbic level, the skill will never change the ‘behaviours’ (the performance) of the people being trained.

This is why, although it is not popular language to use in the current market, we talk more about changing the belief in leaders, rather than providing them new ‘skills’ – we address the bit of the iceberg under the waterline, not the surface level issues.

I see that with this approach, already being provided in a structured way, we are addressing those points you cite in the framework.

I’d be interested in your thoughts.
Regards
David