In Data We Trust

So much of what we’re learning from neuroscience can’t help but strike us as utterly fantastic, like the fact that the world we experience exists only in our heads, or that reason has little or nothing to do with how we make decisions.  At the same time, those that are trying to draw practical applications from the research often end up sounding like self-help books.  When we are advised to think positive thoughts, or win friends by stepping into the shoes of others, it sure sounds like Norman Vincent Peale and Dale Carneige.

This makes it difficult to see the latest research as offering anything of value, or at least anything that’s new.  In truth, most of what we’re learning and the advice it generates can be found in Plato’s writings.  But there is a major difference: we now have hard scientific data to back up the claims.  It’s one thing to accept on faith that being clear on our values will enable us to lead a good life.  It’s quite another thing to know that high level ideas embedded in neural networks will chemically key the firing of lower level thinking and behavior aligned with them.

Because regardless of questions about its role in decision-making, our conscious reasoning can direct our attention.  If we’re logically convinced that big ideas are important, we’ll spend more time attending to them.  When we know that there are mirror neurons that enable us to empathize, and that they’re missing from people suffering from autism, we’ll be a little more willing to direct our attention to what those neurons can teach us.

While the more we learn about the brain, the more we recognize how little conscious control we have over it, we can direct our attention and we can improve our ability to focus.  Meditation has been shown to help children with ADD, and Eric Kandel’s work has demonstrated that the more we use a neural network, the stronger it becomes.  With practice, we become better at any skill, physical or mental.

While Napoleon Hill’s classic Think and Grow Rich may have oversimplified the path to success, our thinking can change the way we see the world, the way we act, and the way others see us.  While it takes discipline to focus our minds on positive outcomes, at least now we have reasons to give it a try.

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Values Investing

Last week, Benedict Carey wrote in the New York Times about a study on the performance of inner-city middle school children.  Researchers found that students who wrote a fifteen minute essay on the values that were important to them significantly improved their academic performance.  While the study was quite limited in scope, I wonder if there isn’t an application to business.

Our values are embedded in high level neural networks in the brain.  It’s been found that such networks can key the firing of ones at lower levels responsible for our decision-making and behavior.  When attention is drawn to our values by a writing exercise, perhaps it stimulates parts of the brain that make us a little smarter or work a little harder.

If so, it might make sense for managers and employees to spend a little bit of time every so often on remembering the values that are most important to them, and on clarifying the link between their work and those values. It just might help them perform at a higher level.  Even the smallest improvement would be a huge return on the investment of time required.

I realize my proposal might sound a little bit too soft for hard-nosed business people.  But the more we learn about how the mind works, the more we’re able to realize its fullest potential, and profit from it  This research demonstrates a link that even the most results-oriented of us should exploit.

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