"Real living is living for others" - Bruce Lee
Top 1% organisations - the ones who achieve outstanding results consistently for many years irrespective of who their leader is - all follow sound principles of neuroscience, though most of them don't realise it!
Their leadership teams understand intuitively how to behave and how to create the right conditions for people to thrive and excel irrespective of their limitations. In so doing they replicate the ideal conditions for which the brain is still adapted - the nurturing, communal, protective environment in groups of 40 to 50 hunter gatherers which marked our forefathers for 98% of the last 250,000 years.
The encouraging news is that any of us can learn these principles and as a result dramatically improve our performance and well-being in all aspects of our lives.
I call this working with, rather than against, the 'grain of the brain'.
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In my recent blog How the brain works and why you should know I outlined the development sequence and 4 level hierarchical structure of the human brain, and discussed the work of Dr Bruce D Perry and his team at the ChildTrauma Academy in Houston TX, using their Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics (NMT).
An understanding of the basic structure and evolution of the brain provides a clear explanation of how it works, literallly from the bottom up. It explains why human behaviour is still largely instinctive and unrestrained, whatever we're told to the contrary, since it is driven by the fight or flight instincts hard wired into our brainstems – the lowest, primitive level of our brains.
Whilst the brain is a superbly and unfathomably complex organ we constantly delude ourselves by assuming that our relatively immature upper brain (neocortex) has given us mastery over ourselves and our environment. This self-delusion is at the root of endless, repeated, painful and avoidable human failure.
Understanding the brain’s 4 level hierarchy highlights the futility of appealing directly to ‘reason’ (i.e. the neocortex – the least evolved part of the brain) without taking the essential path through the lower reaches of the brain where all incoming stimuli are first processed. This route through millions of years of pre-human and (very) latterly human evolution cannot be bypassed. Visually one can imagine it as very sensibly walking down one side of the mile wide Grand Canyon, crossing the river, and climbing the other side, instead of trying to jump across it! Yet in effect that's what each of us tries to do dozens of times a day when we communicate 'neocortex to neocortex' and then wonder sometimes why we've been misunderstoood, often profoundly.
Top 1% organisations and their leaders follow sound principles of neuroscience - most of them without realising it. They understand intuitively how to stimulate others to excel in spite of their limitations by working with, not against, the neurological grain. They communicate sensitively, their motives are non-threatening, they care about the well-being and advancement of their people, whom they treat as an extended family, and they foster strong attachment to affiliative cultures in which everyone from diverse backgrounds and generations works together supportively.
In recent weeks I’ve blogged about the benefits of re-integrating wise and experienced older people into organisations, the vital balancing role of women in business, the holistic and humble way in which the leaders of Top 1% organisations think and behave, the immense damage done by self-serving and self-indulgent behaviour in business, the predisposition of intellectually gifted individuals and groups to repeat the elementary errors of their antecedents over and over again, and other related topics. Thanks to my day spent listening to Dr Bruce Perry I now realise that an emotionally and socially intelligent approach to work and business is built on sound neuroscientific principles.
The implications are profound and far-reaching, almost too great to comprehend. I’ll return in future to the implications for organisational excellence, but here's some food for thought:
- Neuroscience explains the sheer folly in evolutionary terms of selfish strategies intended to exploit fellow humans for personal and tribal gain. The human brain has evolved over millions of years to be highly adapted for co-operation for survival and growth. When factions or individuals pursue their own goals to the detriment of wider society the results are invariably catastrophic, eventually if not immediately, since it ultimately provokes aggressive ‘fight’ responses in others. Simple examples of game theory also confirm this. The famous evolution sound bite - ‘Survival of the fittest’ - is often stolen by egotists to justify their behaviour, but In fact it is a term correctly applied to species as a whole, not to individual members, and therefore it depends on co-operation.
- We can see macro-economically why the gross distortions caused by unfettered capitalism and political power cause hatreds, wars, retribution, blood-letting and societal breakdown. Most societies have cultivated their world view, religious beliefs, etc. over thousands of years and when these necessary support structures for Levels 1, 2 and 3 of the brain are threatened, eroded or destroyed then the fight response for self-preservation becomes inevitable. The result in absolute or relative terms is a zero-sum game, because such anti-social behaviour flies in the face of neurological reality. Marvellous though they may be our brains cannot accept any form of reason at Level 4 (the neocortex) when Levels 1, 2 and/or 3 believe they are under attack. Hence the vast majority of debate and argument truly is a complete waste of time and energy. You can only change someone’s mind if you remove or alleviate the threat that a different viewpoint represents to Levels 1, 2 and/or 3. And of course you cannot actually change someone’s mind – they can only change it themselves!
- Forward-thinking companies increasingly recognise that Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a valuable necessity that they should embrace, not an onerous duty they must half-heartedly fulfil. Neuroscience helps us to see why – organisations need to be actively involved in improving their communities and society generally. All of their stakeholders, including their customers, have brains that are essentially hard wired to need it.
Top 1% organisations are the modern-day equivalent of those multi-generational hunter-gatherer groups of early human history. They are environments in which everyone feels secure at all neurological levels, and therefore able to learn and thrive. This then is the challenge for leaders – to have the insight, courage and determination to create and sustain such fertile conditions.
I recently heard a wonderful practical example of this in an award-winning edition of BBC Radio 4’s business programme ‘The Bottom Line’. Evan Davies interviewed three UK business leaders who practice ‘Upside Down Management’, the title of a book written by one of them, John Timpson, Chairman of the eponymous shoe repair and key cutting High Street retail chain.
Upside Down Management involves inverting the triangle – putting the people at the front line in charge. In a fascinating discussion John Timpson explained how he chanced upon the idea when his main competitor was sold to a powerful Swiss bank with very deep pockets, who then refused to sell him the UK operation. He realised that to compete his company would have to offer superb customer service, so he decided to empower local teams to do whatever was needed to keep the customer happy or to resolve complaints.
The most extraordinary point in the programme came when John Timpson revealed that the company employs convicted criminals, including murderers! In some cases they have been released from prison, in others they come on day release and return to prison at night. This has been going on for years. 80% of the convicts are still with the company 1 year after hiring. His son James, the CEO, masterminded the programme. 67% of convicted criminals re-offend within 2 years of release from prison, but amongst those prisoners who find a steady job in a non-judgemental environment the figure drops to 19%.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. John Timpson said that the company continues to have one record year for sales and profits after another.
The emerging field of neuroscience offers us fascinating insights that may transform our understanding and behaviour for good. Top 1% leaders and organisations know exactly what they’re doing; neuroscience helps us to see why!
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If this blog is particularly relevant to you, your organisation, or to someone else you know, I may be able to help or advise. I strive to be a smart giver – Adam Grant’s excellent book “Give and Take” (2013) explains why smart givers are the highest 25% of achievers in all walks of life. They go out of their way to help others, intelligently, without allowing themselves to be widely exploited. In this way they inspire higher performance and create sustained new value through collaborative exchange.
My business Resolve Gets Results provides commercial expertise, leadership capabilities and in some cases financing to different sized businesses with long-term growth potential. I work with a superb small team of Board-level professionals, each a leader in their field with over 30 years’ business experience. We are based in the UK but have international business backgrounds, in my case including 5 years in the United States, where I ran a high growth machinery sales and service business.
You can find my contact details under the ‘Contact info’ tab near the top of my LinkedIn profile.
Mark Ashton
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