Brain Science Can Lead Us Out of the Doldrums

Even the most cheerful optimists have got to be depressed by the economy. Every time we get data that suggests we’re finally coming out of the Great Recession, it’s followed by more that indicates we’re not, lately even in the same report. Perhaps we need to set aside the wishful thinking and just accept what we’ve got: an economy that isn’t falling off a cliff, but isn’t going to come roaring back any time soon.

It’s tough for the bipolar financial media to recognize that it is what it is, because there’s no news in a so-so status quo. It’s the really good or really bad that drives us to buy newspapers or visit websites. But it’s also tough for managers. Nobody gets rewarded or excited when earnings are flat, and most businesses have already cut all there is to cut to bump up their bottom line.

Part of the problem, we’re told, is that there’s no hot new technology like computers or the internet to help us dig out of the hole of debt we’ve created. But I think there is a hot new technology, not right in front of our noses, but behind them. Neuroscience’s incredible advances in understanding how the mind works have enormous potential to transform the way we run our businesses.

I’m not talking about pills that supposedly make us smarter, nor do I believe that using neuro-feedback to teach managers how to mimic the brain wave patterns of great leaders will make them great leaders. Such approaches are just too far out there for me or, I suspect, my clients. And while brain scans may help us understand what product features stimulate the release of the pleasure inducing dopamine, it’s still a long way from that knowledge to a product that will delight customers and make a profit. The real gains come from just factoring in how the mind works when we make business decisions.

A number of years ago, Ernst and Young came up with the tag line, “There’s not a business we can’t improve.” While a marketing campaign that insults the capability of potential clients is ill-considered, and evidence of not paying enough attention to the mind, the firm was correct in it’s assessment. Because our conventional way of thinking is flawed, according to neuroscience, it inevitably leads to flawed businesses.

I would bet anyone that has worked in the corporate world would agree that organizations are hugely inefficient and that much of what managers do is self-defeating. At the same time, there is a solid body of data on which organizational designs and management practices improve performance. The reason we don’t replace what doesn’t work with what does is exactly what the latest research in neuroscience teaches us.

Because the brain doesn’t record our experience of the world, as conventional wisdom asserts, but creates it, as neuroscience has established, we live in a world of our own making. But most of what we do as managers is based on the assumption that we all see things the same way. The feedback I give employees is objective and for their benefit, the rewards I dispense are generous, and this time I’m serious about change.

But employees don’t see things the same way as managers, so they don’t respond the way we expect. Our feedback comes across as punitive and is rejected, our rewards are so small they’re seen as insulting, and change is just more of the same. Worse yet, I see what I believe, so all I become aware of is evidence that what I do as a manager is effective. Given the self-deception our brains are capable of, we’re just not good judges of what works or doesn’t.

And much of what has been proven to work flies in the face of our common sense. Self-management improves performance and open organizations that give up the illusion of control outperform traditional ones. Engaging narratives are much more effective at changing minds than logical arguments, and inspirational visions trump measurable objectives in driving performance.

Because of the kind of thinking our culture has historically valued, we pay inadequate attention to the minds of those we interact with. In an objective world, there’s no reason to. But neuroscience teaches us that the world we live in isn’t objective, and if we take the lesson to heart, it dramatically changes how we manage.

Calculate the savings if managers no longer waste their time doing what doesn’t work, if we dispense with all of the organizational control systems people cleverly find ways to work around, and if we no longer spend money on change initiatives that don’t change anything. Now add in the increased productivity that comes from highly engaged people eagerly contributing their best thinking to further the success of the business. Factor in, as well, the increase in revenue that would come from designing and marketing products that leverage how and why customers make buying decisions, and the gain in market share that would come from strategies that confound the thinking of the competition.

The total would dwarf any savings coming from cost-cutting or the implementation of new information technology. This isn’t science fiction or some pipe dream of what the future will bring. We have the knowledge and the means to apply it today. In fact, there are companies already reaping the benefits of this new scientific approach, and not just in Silicon Valley but in the heartland as well.

No new technology indeed!

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Flattering Lies

My first corporate job was at the then cutting edge company, Digital Equipment Corporation. It’s founder and CEO was the legendary Ken Olsen. He was a strong advocate for employee empowerment, even before the term was coined, and was an iconic figure for the over eighty thousand people that worked for him at the time. One of his favorite maxims was that no one knows a job better than the person doing it, so they ought to decide how it should be done.

You can imagine how excited I was when after being with the company for about a year, I was invited to attend a strategic planning seminar with him. I was even more excited at dinner the first night when I realized that I would be sitting at his table. What an honor, and what an opportunity to learn from one of the most enlightened leaders of the time!

There were maybe eight other tables in the banquet hall, and I took my seat at Ken’s. After not too long, the conversation in the room grew animated as the wine began to flow. But not at our table. Ken was a Quaker and did not drink, so few of the senior managers at the table felt comfortable taking more than a sip or too.

As we started on our salads, Ken began a discussion with the manager of one of the company’s European subsidiaries. He opened with, “So why are your results off this quarter?” Another bite of salad and then another question, each becoming more and more intimidating.  By the end of the course, the manager’s salad was untouched and he was drenched in sweat. It was the most uncomfortable meal I had ever had.

When it was over, I joined the other managers at the bar and told them what I had just observed. All of them had worked closely with Ken for years and none were surprised by my tale. As one put it, “Ken has a way of stripping you naked and making you walk down main street.” For those of us at a remove, Ken represented everything right about the company. But when you got close, life could become a living hell.

As time when on, I learned more about Ken’s contradictory management style. One of my managers resigned for a lesser job elsewhere, unwilling to take any more.  My new manager, also a direct report, displayed all of the signs of excessive tranquilizer use.

Perhaps Ken’s odd style was displayed most famously when he gave an interview proclaiming that personal computers were idiotic and the company would never make them.  At the same time, over four hundred of the company’s engineers were busy designing a PC in a group code-named K.O. With poetic irony, Digital was eventually acquired by the low end PC manufacturer, Compaq, when the market for mini-computers started to shrink.

So Ken talked a good game, but didn’t practice what he preached. But I don’t believe that Ken was much different from most managers, or for that matter from myself.  We all fall victim to tricks of the mind.  We have a view of ourselves, our self-image, and we maintain it by ignoring or rationalizing away any information to the contrary. It’s called cognitive dissonance reduction.

I’ve argued that management based on the insights of brain science doesn’t demand learning any new complex algorithms. All it requires is that we hold the idea in our minds that we all create our own unique versions of reality, which will differ from those of others. And given the way the mind works, the idea will drive the appropriate behavior.

The problem is that our minds, through the process of cognitive dissonance reduction, deceive us into thinking we hold the idea in our minds when we don’t. We delude ourselves into believing that we’re highly empathetic and strong participative managers, and all we allow ourselves to become aware of is information that supports the belief.

Because of this penchant for self-deceit. there are fewer “enlightened” managers than one would expect, especially given the overwhelming data that links approaches like participative management to dramatic improvements in performance. Even worse, managers that believe they’re managing participatively, but aren’t, then see direct proof that such an approach fails.

Yes, keeping in mind a couple of the key insights that come out of brain science will lead to more effective management, but only when we also apply them to ourselves. Perhaps the best managers are the ones that think they’re the worst. It makes them question everything they do and never believe the flattering lies we all tell ourselves.

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Being Practical

A little while ago, I was walking down an isolated beach in the Caribbean when I met up with a young boy playing on the remains of a wrecked sloop. He was native to the island, which meant that he had been born there and was of African descent. The original natives, the Lucayans, had all been wiped out within a generation of Columbus’ landing in the New World, and African slaves had been imported to work the salt pans and sugar cane fields.

As we talked, he mentioned that he had just won the spelling bee at his school. I congratulated him and then asked if he’d ever seen the movie “Akeelah and the Bee.” The film is about a young African-American girl who competes in a spelling bee. I had watched it with my young daughters and they had found it very inspirational.  They both said it made them feel like they wanted to work really hard and excel at something.

The young boy had seen the movie as well, he told me, and he particularly liked how even though the white people had cheated, Akeelah had beaten them. I thought for a moment, and then remembered a scene where the parent of one of the contestants had indeed tried to coach her child from the audience.  At the time, it hadn’t struck me as very significant.

There is no question that the “white” people have behaved very badly in the Caribbean, both in the past and in the present, and any honest person will admit to some racial tension on this island paradise, on both sides. Race has always been fertile ground for irrational prejudices and unfair stereotypes. One has only to think of Obama’s comment about how his white grandmother was afraid of young black men on the street, while she was raising a young black man herself.

But what struck me most about my conversation with the boy was how different our perceptions of the movie were. We saw a different movie, selectively remembered different parts, and probably took away different messages. One could speculate that the messages would also drive different behavior.

For me, the most incredible discovery of brain science is that what happened with the perception of the movie isn’t the exception, but the rule. All of know that we have biases and that they affect the way we read situations, when we stop and think about it. But when that MRI first tracked the flow of information through the brain and we saw how the brain first disassembles sense data and then reassembles it with input from the areas of the brain responsible for our beliefs, attitudes, and desires, we realized that all of us are creating our own views all of the time, and there is no objective standard to measure them by.

The MRI didn’t necessarily teach us anything we didn’t already know, but it gave us the kind of scientific data that we consider proof, and the ramifications of the finding should transform how we behave. When we can’t trust our view as the truth, or be sure that others see things the way we do, we have to change the way we operate.

The science makes me humble. It teaches me that I’m not in sole possession of the truth, so I’d better seek out other ideas that will challenge mine. I can no longer feel righteous indignation over the words or actions of others, because they simply stem from a different view. When I’m interacting with people whose support I need, it’s no longer a question of what I want, but of understanding what others want.

So when I’m on my game and attending to the new view science gives us, I try to behave differently. I try not to judge others, but to appreciate their point of view, so I declare less and ask more questions. I try not to get trapped in the way I see things, but instead empathize first. I don’t expect my employees, my spouse, or my children to follow my direction, no matter how entitled or right I may think myself to be.

I’m not alway on my game, of course, although the tricks of perception might delude me into believing I am. So it’s an ongoing struggle. Many would see this as simply being polite or moral. But I also see it as practical. We are social beings, highly dependent on others, and anticipating where others are coming from is the starting point for figuring out how we can gain their support.

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