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You will see that to start us off, there is an overview provided by Helene, building on a request I originally made in the discussion.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).
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
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It's not that these people are simply not good people any more - there is a massive social influence going on. 
Authored by David Bovis (Founding Partner, PCC (Psychology of Culture Change) LLP