Gavin’s Friday Reads: Mismatch by Ronald Giphart and Mark van Vugt – Part 1

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Mark van Vugt is an Evolutionary Psychologist.  Evolutionary Psychology is the study of our evolution as a species and how that has determined how our brains function and our behavior.  Ronald Giphart is a novelist. 

The two authors ran across each other at the university where Vugt teaches – and where Giphart was visiting as a creative-in-residence. Giphart was intrigued by Vugt’s work and Vugt needed a better way of explaining his thinking. They came up with the term ‘mismatch.’ This book was a natural partnership to explain evolutionary psychology in a readable way.

Mismatch explores the ways in which our “Stone Age Brains” were matched for our ancient ancestors’ environment but now sometimes glitch up in our current environment.  

You see, evolution always relates to the current environment in which a species lives.  An individual or group that is better suited or more adaptable to a particular environment will outperform and out reproduce the less suited. That is, until the environment changes. Then different individuals or groups will have the upper hand.  

It’s interesting to consider, as this book does, all sorts of mismatches we have created for ourselves in our daily lives. Food and supermarkets are an obvious one. Our food no longer runs away so that we have to chase it and expend calories in the pursuit. We can just go buy a box of sugary cereal and eat that. The results are diabetes and tooth decay.

I am just going to focus on the part of the book that covers our work environment.

We humans have dramatically changed our environment.  We are no longer wandering across the African savannah in small groups as our ancestors did for most of the last 200,000 years. We were perfected for that environment, not the one in which we currently find ourselves.

Now we commute to work, punch a clock, get paid money for our labor, manage or have a manager, job descriptions, performance reviews, strategic plans, budgets, paychecks, and bonus programs all of which did not exist while we (and our brains) were evolving.  Biologically and neurologically, we are still the same creatures who traveled in small groups, shared food, and stuck together for protection from much stronger and faster predators.  

Evolution happens minimally and incrementally over at least a dozen or so generations and more likely tens of thousands of years. We have not yet begun to adapt to these new circumstances that we have created for ourselves.   

Genetically, we are lagging far behind. We are hardwired to view, process, and engage with the world in ways we need to understand better so we can adapt our work lives to ourselves, as real human beings.

Our fellow human beings are, in large part, what we have evolved to deal with.  The most common and consistent feature of our environment 100,000 years ago when our ancestors traveled together through the savannah and primordial forests was the other people in our groups. This has not changed. What has changed is the way we interact with each other due to the business operating systems we have invented.

“In the savannah there were no managers or middle managers.  Decisions were taken by the group, on the basis of consensus, not on the basis of hierarchy.  Modern organizations have become excessively formalized and institutionalized, which goes against our small group instincts.  Studies show that employees need a great deal of autonomy, a primeval preference for self-employment. People want to be left alone, they do not want some process supervisor breathing down their neck.  The same studies reveal that employees consider autonomy and social contacts more important than pay.  Our desires have not changed only the circumstances in which we operate.” – Ronald Giphart and Mark van Vugt

The good news is, we CAN better adapt our workplaces to ourselves. This will enable us to operate more in sync with how we are designed.

We thrive in groups of around 100 to 150 people. It is impossible for us to apprehend companies that are too big for our social brains

WL Gore, a global life sciences company

When a unit grows to a size of 150, a new unit can be set up that does the same work.  Everything in Gore is set up in small groups that are responsible for a segment of a process.  The groups choose their leaders. Every team has a leader, but he or she is chosen by the group itself on the basis of questions and requirements which were also answered by our ancestors: “Who should I follow?” “Who is best able to help me?” and “Who will teach me the most?”  

The Brazilian company Semco likewise works according to this ancestral philosophy and is also successful. Network governance is a method to cancel out mismatch.  Some governance experts believe that this is the organizational model of the future, but in fact it stems from our ancient past.

We are not homo-sapiens, thinking is not our strongest suit.  We are rarely all that logical.  We are homo-collaborens, the collaborative primate.  We have such a strong influence on each other that evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson says; that the smallest human unit is not an individual, it is a small group. We can’t survive without each other and as the african concept of Ubuntu suggests we actually call each other into being.  In different groups with different people I am a different person.  As Margaret Wheatley says this does not make me inauthentic it makes me quantum.

“What is crucial is the relationship created between two or more elements.  Systems influence individuals, and individuals call forth systems.  It is the relationship that evokes the present reality.  Which potential becomes real depends on the people, the events, and the moment.  Prediction and replication are therefore, impossible.  While this is no doubt unsettling, it certainly makes for a more interesting world.  People stop being predictable and become surprising.  Each of us is a different person in different places.  This does not make us inauthentic; it merely makes us quantum.  Not only are we fuzzy; the whole universe is.” Margaret Wheatley ‘Leadership and the New Science’

We are designed by evolution to sense what needs doing and to want to help our groups.  We are descendants of the highly collaborative people. We  carry those same collaborative, generous, and compassionate genes that made our ancestors groups successful. We have everything we need to be high performing groups and organizations. We need to reinvent those organizations in a more human way. Our ancient past is the key to our best future.

Cheers for Friday,

Gavin Watson, Chair, Conscious Capitalism Connecticut Chapter

Gavin Watson & Associates

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Gavin’s Friday Reads: Punished by Rewards by Alfie Kohn

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This book has been around for 25 years, challenging the old “carrot and stick” philosophy of how to motivate people. It’s still one of my favorites, and in my opinion deserves a read and a place on every manager’s shelf. For perspective, though, I’ll start with Deming, founder of Total Quality Management (TQM). You’ve probably heard of him. 

The present style of reward… squeeze(s) out from an individual, over his lifetime, his innate intrinsic motivation, self-esteem, dignity.  They build into him fear, self-defense, and extrinsic motivation.  We have been destroying our people, from toddlers on through university, and on the job.  We must preserve the power of intrinsic motivation, dignity, cooperation, curiosity, joy in learning, that people are born with.

W. Edwards Deming

As management legend goes (and every business school teaches,) Deming’s advice on manufacturing quality was falling on deaf ears here in the U.S. but he found a rapt audience when he took his ideas to Japan after WWII.  He is probably the key person responsible for the quality turn around in Japanese products.  This was most evident in the auto industry. U.S automobile quality was terrible, Japan was worse but they listened, and Toyota quickly became and is still now a dominant car maker in the U.S.  Honda, Subaru, Nissan and many others are also doing quite well.

What you may not expect from such a guru on manufacturing quality and performance is something like his quote above.  Deming comes out very clearly and firmly against extrinsic reward systems!

Here are a couple more Deming quotes to reinforce that point:

        ”The idea of a merit rating is alluring. The sound of the words captivates the imagination: ‘pay for what you get; get what you pay for; motivate people to do their best, for their own good.’ Well, the effect is exactly the opposite of what those words promise. Everyone propels himself forward, or tries to, for his own good, on his own life preserver. The organization is the loser.”

        ”The merit rating rewards people who conform to the system. It does not reward attempts to improve the system.”

The book Punished by Rewards is all about this. I return often to one of my favorite examples of how rewards backfire, pulled from its pages.

A group of psychological researchers is studying the effect of different sorts of rewards. The study is done using young children in a school setting. The study starts with the researchers handing out art supplies. It is a free period, so they can do whatever they like.  As you might expect, some kids run around the room, but a great number of them settle down to make some art. The researchers take note of which kids are engaged in artwork. With this baseline established, the next week begins the experiment.

The following week, kids who spent the most time doing artwork are randomly divided into three groups. The first is the control group. They are given the art supplies and just like the first week, they settle down to do art. The second group is a test group. They are told that if they do great artwork today they will be given an art appreciation award. This award is a ribbon of the sort schools often give out (I am sure you have seen them). This group settles down and does art just like the first group and just like they did the first week.  At the end of the period each child in the second group is given an “Art Appreciation Award,” as they have been promised  The third group is also given the art supplies and they settle down to do art.  At the end of the time they are all surprised by being given an Art Appreciation Reward. They were not expecting it! 

The third week rolls around and again the control group is given art supplies and they settle down and do art.  The second group is given art supplies and told that unfortunately “we are all out of art appreciation awards.” This second group proceeds to do almost no art. The third group is given the art supplies and told that unfortunately “we are all out of art appreciation awards”.  This group settles down and does the same amount of art as the first group.

What happened to the second group? They liked to do art.  They were randomly selected from kids who like to do art.  The third group did not get any rewards either and were told that there were none, but they did just as much art anyway.

The difference is subtle but obviously extremely important. The kids in the second group were given an IF=THEN reward.  If you do this = then you will get that.  The third group was given a NOW THIS! reward.  They were not expecting anything, and yet they got a reward.

The second group was doing something they liked doing. However, all the while they were doing art they were thinking about an extrinsic reward. And it was a really small thing, just a ribbon.

An if=then reward is an extrinsic reward.  It is essentially, as the title of the book suggests, a bribe.  The kids were all randomly selected from a group of kids who intrinsically liked to do art.  They quickly became trained not to do it unless there is something extra in it for them. They have been refocused on the reward instead of the art itself. As Deming says so well, “squeezing out their innate intrinsic motivation.”

One takeaway from this is that if I am being bribed, then the thing I am being asked to do must be something that people don’t want to do, hence the bribe for doing it.  

The third group was unaffected because they did not expect the reward, hence it did not become a bribe. They were still doing the art because they just liked doing it.  The presence of a reward or lack thereof the third week was therefore of no negative consequence.

One of the great joys in life is doing what we do well for the benefit of our group.

Gavin Watson

When our workplaces give us bribes to do what we do best and what we love doing it squeezes out the intrinsically rewarding nature of our work lives. If this continues to happen, as Deming says it will also destroy our motivation, self-esteem, and eventually our dignity.  Who wants to do that to anyone?

How many of our workplace systems are set up to extrinsically motivate us?

Now I know that some people may read this and think, “but I can’t get people motivated any other way!”  If that’s true, and to some extent I hear you and agree with you, it is not because people are born to be extrinsically motivated. It is rather because they were trained to become that way, through reinforcement over time.  Effectively, many managers have unwittingly “destroyed” what was not broken in the first place! Most of the destruction may not have occurred while they have been working in your company. It may have begun at school as Deming suggests and continued at other places they have previously worked.  This will take some time and patience to reset.

Knowing this, we need to reset work practices. Eliminate all extrinsic rewards (AKA bribes) from the workplace. Including even (and this might come as a shock!) the bribes considered essential to motivate that separate species of human, the “salesperson” who is usually the primary target of this bribery.  You want your sales people thinking about the customer’s needs and how your company can creatively help them, not how large their bonus is going to be. So, compensate them fairly, with an amount typical for a salesperson living where they are doing the work in your type of industry. I would also add in some great advice from Janet Yellin that you should “pay above average”.  This builds in a bonus, and takes the issue of money and fixation on bribes off the table and out of mind.  Your salespeople can now focus on doing what they love to do.  Find that sweet spot, where the company provides what helps the customer get their needs met. 

If=then rewards are particularly destructive.  “Now this!” rewards (the kind the third group of kids were given) can become “if=then” rewards if they are expected.  If every time you do something I surprise you with a gift card you will begin to expect a gift card when you do it.  It has now become an “if=then” reward.  If you do the thing and you don’t get a gift card you might even ask me why I didn’t give it to you.

Don’t let HR tell you (as my HR department did) that we need to set up a gift card reward system to reward ABC type behaviors predictably and equally with XYZ rewards, and that all managers should have a meeting and agree on the metrics we would all use consistently to give them out.  That’s the surest path to an If=Then reward system.  Treating people fairly is not the same as treating them equally.  We want to be treating people fairly.  Fairly means treated as the individual (i.e, distinctly different) person I am. Conformity does not equal fairness. 

Now, I do like surprising people with gift cards. Or just seeking out someone to thank for a job well done.  It’s fun! Just keep mixing it up.  

People should be coming to work for the intrinsic rewards. Two Intrinsic rewards are positive emotion and relationships.  So, a Hi-5 is a good thing.  Someone may be a consistent high performer and not get a lot of recognition, yet they are happily engaged in what they find fulfilling every day.  Work can be (and should be) its own reward.  Someone else who has been working really hard to learn a new job may just barely manage something for the first time.  It might be far from perfectly executed, and it may have taken them a lot of time to do it, but YEA! They did it!  Hi Five!

So am I saying eliminate all extrinsic rewards: bonus money, special parking places, a corner office, a company car etc?  

If it is an If=Then bribe to elicit a certain behavior then yes, that is exactly what I am saying.  If it is rare, spontaneous and unexpected, a fairness issue or a group reward that is OK.  

If for example everyone who works for the company for 20 years gets XYZ then you can keep doing that.  That is just a fairness thing.  It is not something you did as an individual to get it,   it is something related to the job or role you are doing and everyone who is in that same group doing that same thing gets the identical same thing no more or less.  That’s just fairness.  Fairness is good.  

It is also better to give rewards to groups instead of individuals.  That fosters group collaborative effort instead of selfish effort.  We don’t want to create a system in which an individual wins and “the organization is the loser” as Deming says.

The best sort of reward is a bonus (pizza for everyone on Friday, or a company trip, or whatever) to everyone in the company.  Afterall, everyone who showed up contributed to the company’s success that week.  It is best to give the same amount to everyone regardless of position, or possibly even more to those who earn less.  It will mean more to them, and we all like taking care of each other.  Leaders who take care of those who need it most are regarded much more favorably by their group.  If you want to instill loyalty, take care of the ones who need the most help.  We all care about and will protect our group when our group cares about and protects the most vulnerable among us.  It’s a sign of a healthy group.

In any case, sharing an if=then reward with everyone in the company, or possibly just the people in a given location signals that ‘we are a team, and we are all in this together.’  Which is exactly the message you want to send.  We may be thinking about this reward while we are doing our work, but we will be thinking of the good it will do for the others in the group.  It is not a selfish motivation now.  Now I am motivated by doing something good for my whole group.

Bottom line: If your people are not engaged in their work and not being intrinsically fulfilled it could be that some of the company “compensation” systems may be unintentionally getting in the way. Have YOU had an experience like this? Let us know! Leave a comment on this blogpost or email us at [email protected]

Cheers for Friday,

Gavin Watson, Chair, Conscious Capitalism Connecticut Chapter

Gavin Watson & Associates

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Dr Dolittle and Kermit: A Conscious Capitalism Rainbow Connection

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One of my favorite song lines is from the original Dr. Dolittle movie. Matthew is singing to young Master Stubbins, and one of the lines goes: “I know that what the Doctor tells me isn’t all together true, but I love every tale he tells me. I don’t know of any better ones, do you?”

I think Matthew hits the nail on the head. The stories might not be true, but they are really good stories.  

Most of us adults think that kids and imaginary magical worlds are fun stuff, but when we are adults we need to be based in reality and as adults we undoubtedly know what reality is. 

On the contrary, I think kids have a much better sense of reality than we adults do.  After all, most kids know when they are playing, make believe, don’t they?

We adults tend to get a bit confused on this. Think of the ancient mystery cults, for example, or the idea of divine right of kings whereby the king ruled because God said so.  A lot of adults used to believe this stuff. But surely we have got it all sorted by now right?

Modern business-people and lawyers are, in fact, powerful sorcerers. The principal difference between them and tribal shamans is that modern lawyers tell far stranger tales.

Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Yuval Harari gives as an interesting example: What about those Wizards called lawyers?  They write the correct spells on a piece of paper and get them signed and stamped with magical stamps and Poof! A corporation exists where there wasn’t one a minute before.  And then possibly a few years later an even more powerful wizard called a Judge decides she does not like the corporation so she has her cort scribe create another magical document and she signs it and puts her magical stamp on it and… Poof!  The corporation no longer exists! 

The people who were employees are still there, the suppliers, customers and even the former shareholders are still there.  The equipment and the building are all still there but the corporation is gone!  Very magical thinking and unlike the kids we don’t even know we are doing it.

Another song that comes to mind is the song co-written by Kenneth Ascher & Paul Williams called The Rainbow Connection.  You know the one Kermit sings while sitting on a log.  Why are there so many songs about rainbows?…Rainbows are visions but only illusions, and rainbows have nothing to hide…Somebody thought of it and someone believed it, and look what it’s done so far!

Maybe Conscious Capitalism is about doing some magic in the mythical world of capitalism and making it a better story.  If some of us think of it and more of us believe it imagine what it can do!  After all, since capitalism isn’t altogether true anyway I think we need a better story, don’t you?

TELL US WHAT YOU THINK! Leave a comment on this blogpost or email us at [email protected]

Cheers for Friday,

Gavin Watson, Chair, Conscious Capitalism Connecticut Chapter

Gavin Watson & Associates

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Gavin’s Friday Reads: How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates

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“I was surprised when I learned that what sounded like a small increase in the global temperature – just one or two degrees Celsius, which is 1.9 to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit – could actually cause a lot of trouble. But it is true: In climate terms, a change of just a few degrees is a big deal.  During the last ice age, the average temperature was just 6 degrees Celsius lower than it is today.  During the age of the dinosaurs, when the average temperature was perhaps 4 degrees Celsius higher than it is today, there were crocodiles living above the Arctic Circle.”

– Bill Gates, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster

This was the most shocking thing I read in this book.  I had to stop and read it again.  Crocodiles swimming north of the arctic circle.  The vision of crocodiles comfortably swimming where polar bears still do now was a shock to me.  We are already responsible for a 1 degree Celsius rise in average temperature.  We are easily on track to hit crocodiles in the arctic range by the end of this century.

I have been fixated on fuel efficiency since the early 70’s.  Maybe it was because I turned 16 and got my driver’s licence in the middle of the 1973 Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) oil embargo, during which gas prices nearly quadrupled.  With a new licence to drive and being the oldest child it became my responsibility to take the two family cars down to fill them up whenever they got below half a tank. 

For those of you who are too young to remember, fuel was in short supply.  To encourage saving fuel the law changed and, you were only allowed to fill up your car on certain days.  If your license plate ended in an even number then you could fill up on even numbered days and if it was odd numbered you could fill up on odd number days.  We were lucky enough to have several cars and license plates with odd and even numbers.

So I got to sit in long lines waiting for hours to fill up our cars.  One of our cars was a Ford Montego Wagon.  It was rated the lowest mileage car in the U.S. at the time.  It had a V8 450hp engine and got about 8 miles to the gallon.  It idled at a very high speed.  If you took your foot off the brake it would probably get to 35 mph without touching the accelerator.  Waiting in those lines for hours served to provide me with plenty of time to contemplate everything that was wrong with this picture.

My father also had a diesel Mercedes.  Not only did it get great mileage but he could pump fuel out of the home heating oil tank right into his car.  Most people don’t realize that #2 heating oil and diesel are the same thing.  This allowed my father to continue commuting to NYC from Greenwich Ct. every day without much inconvenience.

My first attempt at a more efficient vehicle was a three wheeled motorcycle I built in my college years out of a small Suzuki 60 cc dirt bike and a snowmobile frame.  Later on I bought a 1973 Porsche 914 and converted it to an electric car.  But lead acid batteries were quite heavy and due to all the lead I was moving around I only had a range of about 45 miles.  I had a 40 mile commute which was cutting it close so the car mostly sat in the driveway to be used on weekends.

By the late 80’s I was working at the family food business.  In the early 90’s bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) hit England.  In England up until that time to provide cows with protein, cows were being fed leftover cow parts mixed into their feed.  Brains and nervous system parts contained these things called prions which infected the brains and nervous systems of the cows who were fed this.  (gross right?)  It turned out that these prions could then be passed on to people.  Anyway they had to stop this and find another source of protein for the cows.  One of the sources was soy protein from the U.S.  Soy contains a lot of oil though which was believed to be not so good for the cows so the oil was pressed out and left behind.  Due to the glut of soy oil, soy oil prices plummeted. 

Eventually the price of soy oil was the same as #2 heating oil.  I wondered if our #2 fuel oil fired boilers that created steam for food processing would run on soy oil.  I found some articles that suggested it would, so one Saturday we filled up a 55 gallon drum with soy oil and brought it to the boiler room.  We hooked it up and the boiler continued to run as though nothing had changed.  So we began to run our boiler on vegetable oil until the price of it got too high again.

That got me thinking though, the boiler ran on #2 fuel oil and vegetable oil.  Diesel cars would run on diesel and on #2 fuel oil.  So could a diesel car run on vegetable oil?  It was early internet dial up modem days but I checked online and sure enough found some Sweedish farmers who were pressing the oil out of their canola seeds and feeding the meal to their animals and the oil to their diesel,  tractors, Volvo’s and VW’s.  All I needed to do was heat the oil to 140F and it would have the same viscosity as diesel and the engine would run the same.  

I could not find a used diesel car so I bought a new VW Golf in 2001 and converted it straight away.  For the next 10 years I drove to work on vegetable oil, a renewable fuel!

At the same time that electric Porsche was sitting in the driveway because it’s battery range was so poor, so I also converted the Porsche 914 to vegetable oil.  I installed a Yanmar 40HP turbo Diesel in it and with that car I won the 2006 NESEA TourDeSol prize for most environmentally friendly and highest mileage bio fuel vehicle.

All this to say that I have been obsessing about energy efficiency and climate change for decades.  Not only in my cars, but at work, and at home as well.

Gavin Watson

I really enjoyed reading Bill Gates’s book.  As he says in the beginning he is a technical guy so when presented with a problem he immediately looks for a technical solution.  He is also an optimist, (as I am, at least as far as technology goes).  We have a lot of solutions at hand already.  Some are actually less expensive than the fossil fuel alternative.  Heat pumps are a good example of this.  In these cases it is really a matter of getting the word out.  In other areas there are promising technologies that we can probably use but it will take a bit more time and investment to get us there.  There are new breakthroughs in solar, wind, and especially in batteries that are coming out almost every day.

I am aware that I am an imperfect messenger on climate change.  The world is not exactly lacking in rich men with big ideas about what other people should do, or who think Technology can fix any problem.

Bill Gates, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster

On the other hand there are big issues to overcome in some areas like making cement and steel, and the ways we do manufacturing and agriculture.  According to Gates we need to get to ZERO net carbon emissions in the wealthier countries by 2050.  We are currently adding 51 billion tons of carbon to the atmosphere each year.  (Just like the volcanoes were adding carbon to the atmosphere back in the days of the dinosaurs)  A 50% reduction in the wealthier countries is going to be the easy part.  We have some relatively easy things we can do to get us there like electric cars and heat pumps and less sexy stuff like caulking air leaks and insulation.  

But as Gates says “this is going to be really hard”. We have developing countries who will want and deserve to have a similar standard of living.  That is a lot more people who will need a lot more energy.  Since we wealthier countries are responsible for getting us into this mess it only makes sense that the burden for getting us out of this should also start with us. We need to be investing in numerous potential solutions that might or might not work out.  The benefit to this investment is that the countries who figure it out will have technology and goods they can export.  The Danes invested a lot in wind energy early on and they are currently the world’s largest exporter of wind technology and equipment.  

This same race to higher levels of expertise is happening in solar and to an even higher level in batteries.  Battery competition is exploding and whoever wins this development race will have car makers and others banging on their doors.  

Despite Gate’s admission to being a technical guy, this is a very readable book written in a conversational voice.  I have listened to Bill Gates speak, and as I read this I can actually hear him talking to me as I read.   The book is a good blend of why we need to do this, what we need to do, and how it can be done.  He is also clear on the technology that we have and the technology we will need to develop.  He presents the large numbers like 51 Billion tons of CO2 in terms you can get your head around.  He is both practical and realistic.  A good blend of how hard it is going to be and also examples of similar large scale transformations we have already accomplished in a similar amount of time.  He is quite humble admitting he is part of the problem and he knows it.  He is also genuine about admitting that there is a lot we don’t know about climate change.

Of course what we don’t know could mean it might be better than we think but it could also be worse.  We only have one planet and the future of generations of humans for the next 10,000 years or longer depends on us in this generation getting this right.

Bill has a lot of experience working with governments around the world through the work he has done with Melinda at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.  He understands the complexity of getting to consensus.

Global cooperation is notoriously difficult.  It is hard to get every country in the world to agree on anything – especially when you are asking them to incur some new cost.

Bill Gates, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster

The biggest problem we face is getting global consensus.  As a friend of mine says it is 90% attitude and 10% everything else.  As the wealthiest nation we need to get our attitude right and go first and set an example. This is the best way to get others to adjust their attitudes.

I think the book is great.  The details, the conversational tone, realism, practicality, and humility are all a good balance.  There are only two things that I think more time could be spent on.  The first is regenerative agriculture.  Not only do we need to modify our agricultural processes to emit less carbon as Gates suggests.  But we can also use agriculture to store carbon in the soil and improve farming at the same time.  This is something that is currently being done and it needs a lot more experimentation and research.

The other thing I would have added in are more creative ways we can conserve energy.  Conservation is not as sexy as solar panels and batteries but it is the first and most important thing.  There are a lot of opportunities in the details of how we live our lives that can make a big difference.  Gates does not expect us to be willing to change our lifestyle much and he may be right.  As a person who has modified and built his own vehicles out of frustration for what is available in the commercial market though I think that harnessing determination and creativity of all of us (especially young people) has a huge potential for positive impact.  I intend to continue to keep working hard on this issue.  People who are 18 years old now will be 50 in 2050.  I think we can expect big things from them.

Cheers for Friday,

Gavin Watson, Chair, Conscious Capitalism Connecticut Chapter

Gavin Watson & Associates

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Gavin’s Friday Reads: Blueprint by Nicholas A. Christakis

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If you have been reading my book reviews, you may be experiencing a bit of deja vu.  A previous post was also titled “Blueprint,” but it was by Robert Plomin.  You can find that review here. I suggest reading both, because the ideas go together (and not just because alphabetically these two works would be next to each other on the bookshelf!)

Plomin’s book is about each individual’s set of genes responsible for our unique personalities.  In essence. Plomin’s thesis is that (identical twins aside) we are unique individuals primarily because of our genetically determined innate characteristics. Anyone who had kids close together raised by the same parents in the same household knows this; they are very different.

Genes do amazing things inside our bodies, but even more amazing to me is what they do outside of them. Genes affect not only the structure and function of our bodies; not only the structure and function of our minds and, hence, our behaviors; but also the structure and function of our societies.

Nicholas A. Christakis, Blueprint

Christakis’s book, on the other hand, is about how we are the same.  Christakis is a sociologist at Yale and writes about how our genetic coding ensures the ways in which we tend towards social sameness. His argument is that our evolutionary success came about because we were predisposed to express particular qualities and behaviors in groups.  

This resonates, because, as you may have heard me say before, we are group creatures.  Our success depends on our group more than we care to admit.  It has been this way for hundreds of thousands of years, and it is probably even more true today than it was 50,000 years ago.  We are not likely to survive long on our own… but as a group we do remarkably well.  

Our individual differences in skills and abilities are essential for our group’s survival.  At the same time our survival and the group’s survival depends on cohesiveness of the group.  As suggested in last week’s review of An Everyone Culture, there is no tension between individuals growing in skill and self knowledge and the group’s success; it is one and the same thing, inextricably tied together.

Christakis is focused on the things that keep us together.  He calls it “the Social Suite”.  At the core of all societies are 8 critical things.  They are:

1. The ability to have and recognize individual identity

2. Love for partners and offspring

3. Friendship

4. Social networks

5. Cooperation

6. In-group preference

7. Mild hierarchy (that is, relative egalitarianism)

8. Social learning and teaching

Early in the book, Christakis illustrates the importance of these things.  We can’t of course test an hypothesis by setting up a control group in a social setting.  However sometimes natural experiments occur, and we can study those.  

He compares many instances of groups of people who have been shipwrecked.  Some of the groups did remarkably well even under very adverse circumstances.  All or nearly all of the people survived and were eventually rescued even years after being shipwrecked.  They did so he argues because they modeled these eight essential things for optimal group performance.  Other groups in arguably better circumstances, some who were even shipwrecked on the same island at nearly the same time (almost a perfect controlled experiment), had very few or no survivors because they did not embody these essential principles.

Just musing on some of these items in the “social suite” above will probably make it sort of obvious. Groups with authoritarian leaders who were not concerned about the lowest ranked members in the group did much more poorly than those led by more egalitarian leadership of groups who treated members with equality.  Bonds of friendship and social learning were also important.  The more skills and abilities everyone has the better off the group will be.

The social suite offers a successful, time-tested strategy for group living. Sometimes, groups cannot coalesce to express the social suite.  Nevertheless, they do not have any viable alternative to it.

Nicholas A. Christakis, Blueprint

In other words, he argues that this is the only successful strategy there is, with success equated to survival. We must embody these things if we are going to survive as a group.  

If you were going to be shipwrecked tomorrow would you choose to be shipwrecked with the other people in your company?  If not there is work to be done.

Admittedly, this is pretty strong stuff! And of course, in our daily lives we are not in such dire circumstances as a shipwreck (hopefully!) Therefore, we can sometimes get away with poor performance.

Without the social suite, we may survive, but our performance will be miserable.  And we will feel miserable.  Does this sound familiar?

Autocratic self centered people in leadership positions…people reluctant to share what they know for fear that the organization will no longer need them and will boot them out…lack of compassion and friendship at work… lack of trust in, and care for the group…fear of getting cut from the payroll when the chips are down…sound like a workplace you know of?

Think about it – there is no better example of the “chips are down” than being shipwrecked!  Some groups took care of everyone, even the very sick and injured who were unlikely to ever be much help.  These groups did far better.  Other groups almost immediately left the sick and injured behind.  These groups failed catastrophically, even though their circumstances were in many ways better.

Just because we are lucky enough not to be shipwrecked does not mean that we should not be doing everything we can to improve our groups.

When I compare the “Social Suite” with the prosocial core design principles, I see the same theme emerging.  And wouldn’t you want these things in your shipwrecked group?

Prosocial Core Design Principles (Elinor Ostrom)

  • Strong group identity and understanding of purpose.
  • Fair distribution of costs and benefits.
  • Fair and inclusive decision-making.
  • Monitoring agreed-upon behaviors.
  • Graduated sanctions for misbehaviour.
  • Fast and fair conflict resolution.
  • Authority to self-govern.
  • Appropriate relations with other groups.

And wouldn’t you want these qualities in the members of your shipwrecked group?

If you are a leader in your company, it is your job to make sure your group is “coalescing” around the social suite and the prosocial design principles. Or to put it another way, if you are engaged in the embodiment of these things, you are a Leader.  That is what leadership is.

Cheers for Friday,

Gavin Watson, Chair, Conscious Capitalism Connecticut Chapter

Gavin Watson & Associates

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Bringing Purpose to Your Business

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Purpose is more than a marketing tactic; it’s much more than a term thrown around at conferences. It is something that is so deeply embedded into our experience with a brand that it can drive individual and collective actions to create a better world. The feelings we get from being part of these interactions or even seeing them happen – feelings produced by our own brain chemicals – fulfill the deepest of human needs: connection, belonging, wellbeing, and meaning, to name a few.

So let’s explore what this can look like from both sides of the market.

Recruiting Talent

Research shows that monetary rewards only go so far. From the perspective of “where do I want to work?” Purpose – or meaningful work, is a more essential driver of employee engagement and therefore one of the key predictors for organizational success.  

The best human resources you can imagine are asking themselves questions like: Will this job give me the autonomy I seek, plus tools and support to get the job done right? Will my suggestions for improvement be taken seriously? Will I be able to look back and see tangible results for my efforts? You want to be sure that your organization appeals from that perspective.

Brands that can clearly articulate their purpose will attract employees who become deeply committed to one another and the company’s goals. They will, in turn, attract your greatest fans and lend discretionary time and energy to be brand ambassadors – on social media and in their daily lives. 

So your company brand purpose should:

  1. Describe the kinds of problems that you solve in terms that are immediately engaging and lead naturally to “calls to action”
  2. Define your value proposition as a set of high stakes: what good things will happen in the world if your business achieves its purpose? What bad things will happen if you don’t?
  3. Include all stakeholders.
  4. Make the old “vision, mission and values” more visceral
  5. Unite the head, hands and heart of your organization by connecting what you do and how you do it with WHY you do it and who benefits.

Finding Customers

Consumers are now in the position to push for social change with every purchase 

As we cruise the crowded marketplace, we make split-second decisions based on emotional connections associated with each brand. And every time we spend money, we are casting a vote for what kind of world we want to live in and leave to future generations. 

What does your brand say about you in these terms, compared to your competition?

When we consider the causes we are drawn to or inspired by – what makes them compelling? We find that brands do a good job when they draw people in. Enabling people to champion an underdog, for example, is an excellent strategy for animating purpose. So is filling a gap or providing visibility to an underserved group. 

During this time of great upheaval, opportunities for transformation are always at hand. More than ever before, customers select brands that align with their values. Show them that you care about the same things they do and together, your company and your customers will realize great potential. 

Examples of consumer-facing brands and the campaigns that highlight purpose by addressing important global issues and fighting societal ills:

So to sum it all up, Brands leading with a clear sense of purpose experience greater ease in talent recruitment, employee engagement and staff retention, higher productivity, and attract the right kind of customers.

Cheers,

Glen McDermott,

Executive Director, Conscious Capitalism Connecticut Chapter

Founder & CEO, Red Rock Branding

Feel free to schedule a consultation now to discuss how these ideas can apply to your organization! Contact Glen Now

Gavin’s Friday Reads: An Everyone Culture, by Robert Kagan & Lisa Laskow Lahey

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This book is by two Harvard organizational psychologists who go out in the field to research what they call Deliberately Developmental Organizations – or DDOs. These are companies that invest much more time and energy in their people’s development than most companies. It is also their central focus every day. DDOs do this because they know that it is essential for the people and the company to grow. Focus on development is what has created their success.

There is no tension between investing in the growth of their people and being profitable. It is one and the same thing for these companies. “Decurion’s Christopher Forman says “We do not see a trade-off, and the moment we consider sacrificing one for the other, we recognize that we have lost both.”

Better Me + Better You = Better Us

Robert Kagan and Lisa Laskow Lahey, An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization

Each of the companies used as examples in the book is a deliberate system that is all about growing people. Because the company focuses on this, as a consequence it also does extremely well.

If you ask someone in one of these companies whether they focus on the development of their people because it is the right thing to do or because they believe it is the best thing for the organization, people will look at you funny because for them it is a non-question. It’s both/and. The two go inextricably together.

There are engaging stories told about each of the companies in the book. I encourage you to read them. Each of the companies has unique ways in which it goes about consciously and deliberately engendering the development of everyone who works there. Even the leaders are not exempt from the process they have set up. 

The company’s other primary commitment—to radical transparency—goes much deeper than the glass office walls. Every meeting is recorded, and (unless proprietary client information is discussed) every recording is available to every member of the organization. Each office and meeting room is equipped with audio recording technology. For example, if your boss and your boss’s boss are discussing your performance and you weren’t invited to the meeting, the recording is available for you to review. And you don’t have to scour every audio file to find out whether you were the subject of a closed-door conversation. If your name came up, you’re likely to be given a heads-up, just so that you will review the file. In effect, there is no such thing as a closed-door conversation; everything is part of a “historical record of what is true.

Robert Kagan and Lisa Laskow Lahey, An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization

Most of us are familiar with the concept of child development.  We know that children grow in capabilities. At one point, kids like to play Peek a Boo. It is because they have recently discovered what Piaget called “Object Permanence.” Before this stage, things are just there sometimes and not there other times. When our brains figure out that the thing is now somewhere else but still exists, that’s object permanence. We take great delight in covering our eyes and everything is gone and then uncovering our eyes and it is still there!  How exciting!

Adults can grow. Around the age of 25 our frontal cortex is nicely formed. The wiring of this part of our brains begins in our teenage years and takes until our early 20’s. Our brains develop so slowly precisely so that they can be wired for our particular societal norms. That’s an evolutionary adaptation for creatures living in complex societies. During these years we are being socialized into our culture’s environment by parents, friends, and teachers. This results in what Keagan and Lahey call the Socialized Mind.  This is the young person who may have just started working in their first job. They are working out what is expected of them and how to fit in.  Keagan and Lahey describe this using the terms: “Team Player, Faithful Follower, Aligning, Seeks Direction, Reliant”.

The next level that most of us get to is the self-authoring mind. At this level we become more conscious, we wake up and realize that we have been socialized into our world view and it is not really our own.  Sometimes this starts to happen when people are in their 40’s as a midlife crisis which gives us a kick. We go on a hero’s journey to discover meaning and purpose and create our own view of reality. This is called the Self Authoring Mind. This is a journey to discover our own one best way to understand the world.  We use this perspective to change our environment. These are the terms used to describe this stage: “Agenda driven, learns to lead, has their own compass, own framework, problem-solving, independent.” While having your own compass and framework is better than being unconscious of the societal framework you were living in it can be limiting. It can be hard for people at this stage to hear information contrary to their personally developed worldview.

A very few of us get to the stage Kegan and Lahey call the Self Transforming Mind.  At this stage the person becomes aware of the many many other frameworks out in the world and that many of them are more complete and may work as well or better. They begin to shrug off the limitations of their own self-authored framework and explore these other frameworks.  This is a journey to discover many best ways. They use a framework to examine the other world views and continuously recreate their own framework to better reflect what they are learning.  This stage is described in these terms: “Meta Leader, leads to learn, multi-frame, holds contradictions, problem-finding, interdependent.”

If you are fluent in Conscious Capitalism, you will have heard that an organization can’t progress beyond the consciousness level of its leader. The three levels above show how true this is. I am going to exaggerate the descriptions below just a bit to make it clearer. In reality, it is usually not so black and white.

At the level of the socialized mind a company leader may be just doing what they were taught in business school or as part of an MBA program. They are following the social norms for running a business checking off all the boxes on the ‘how to run a successful business list’ that they were taught. If a person is at a supervisory or manager level they will be acting just like their first manager or supervisor did. That is the model they are following.

Hopefully at some point they wake up. Maybe it is a midlife crisis. They get to their 40’s and they ask, is this all there is? Is making money what it is all about? Maybe they have been treating their people like they are just a resource and they have a conversion experience where they realize that each of these people is someone’s precious child. Just like their own son or daughter. They begin to rethink what they were taught and they “Self Author” their own world view based on their own values. Their company begins to run much better. More people are engaged in their work. The company has discovered values and possibly even a purpose beyond profit.

As time goes by some leaders who are now comfortable in their Self Authored world view become confident enough to feel safe (and even excited by) exploring alternative views. They realize that their Self Authored view, their secret sauce, that gave them success is now probably holding them and their companies back. They realize that the world is a lot more complex than they once thought. They realize that they must begin continually trying new things.  They find joy in exploring possibilities and encourage others in their organization to do so also. They go way beyond their once-accepted way of doing work. They encourage others in their organization to lead from wherever they are and explore their own leadership views. They seek to continually recreate a framework that can be used to understand the other frameworks. Their own drive comes from a deep desire to learn and they want everyone else in their companies to be learning and growing also. Ultimately, they understand that all of these realities are our own creations, and therefore we are free to create new, more beautiful ones for people to enjoy.

Keagan and Lahey do share evidence to suggest that the higher the level of development of the company leader (and therefore others in the company), the better the company’s performance will tend to be.

Of course, this book is just another framework with which to look at ourselves, our businesses, and the world. I think it is a useful one. It certainly rings true to me as a person who loves learning new ideas and seeing how they fit together with my current understanding.  

Also, it seems that many of us are operating at one level in one area of our lives and at a different level in a different area of our lives. It could be more a matter of how much of the time we spend thinking at a particular level. For me, this indicates that it may not be so much a stage of development (like Piaget’s object permanence) but a subjective worldview that is holding us back, particularly in our work lives. 

If you would like to listen to a podcast on a similar vein I would suggest the Conscious Capitalist podcasts https://www.theconsciouscapitalists.com/  especially #24 Values and Consciousness with Richard Barrett and #26 Leaders get the Organizations they deserve which explores the journey to Conscious Leadership.

Cheers for Friday,

Gavin Watson, Chair, Conscious Capitalism Connecticut Chapter

Gavin Watson & Associates

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Gavin’s Friday Reads: 25 Quotes from Books I’ve Read

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If you’re anything like me, you have an ongoing list of quotes that you gather while reading. Today I’d like to share with you 25 quotes from a very long list. You may recognize a few of them if you been keeping up with my Friday Reads book recommendations. I hope you find them inspiring and thought provoking.

“Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.”

Richard Branson

“Conscious managers exercise a minimum amount of control. Their role is not to control other people. It is to create the conditions that allow for more self-management.”

John Mackey & Raj Sisodia, Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business

“Truly human leadership protects an organization from internal rivalries that can shatter a culture.  When we have to protect ourselves from each other, the whole organization suffers.  But when trust and cooperation thrive internally, we pull together and the organization grows stronger as a result.”

Simon Sinek, Leaders Eat Last

“The question is not how you can make better rules, but how can you support teams in finding the best solution.  How can you strengthen the possibilities of the team members so that they need the least amount of direction setting from above?”

Jos De Block

“When we see life as a journey of discovery, then we learn to deal more gracefully with the setbacks, the mistakes, and the roadblocks in our life.  We can start to grasp the spiritual insight that there are no mistakes, simply experiences that point us to a deeper truth about ourselves and the world.”

Frederic Laloux, Reinventing Organizations

“When success is measured solely in terms of money and recognition, when growth and the bottom line are the only thing that count, when the only successful life is the one that reaches the top, we are bound to experience a sense of emptiness in our lives.”

Frederic Laloux,  Reinventing Organizations

“When you force people into slots you get slot shaped contributions. You want to turn sheep into shepherds.”

Drew Williams

“If you create an environment where the people truly participate, you don’t need control. They know what needs to be done and they do it. And the more that people will devote themselves to your cause on a voluntary basis, a willing basis, the fewer hierarchies and control mechanisms you need.”

Herb Kelleher

“We need to put individuals before organizations. To do this we need to do the following:  1. Decentralize power whenever possible. 2. Emphasize community over hierarchy. 3. Ensure transparency in decision making. 4. Make leaders more accountable to the led. 5. Align rewards with contribution rather than with power or position. 6. Substitute peer review for top down review. 7. Steadily enlarge the scope of self-determination.”

Gary Hamel, What Matters Now

“Hierarchy of human capabilities at work. 1 obedience, 2 diligence, 3 expertise, 4 initiative, 5 creativity, 6 passion.  1, 2 and 3 can be rewarded externally by incentives or demands.  4, 5, and 6 are internally driven and can’t be demanded or required.  They are gifts that can’t be commanded.”

Gary Hamel, What Matters Now

“How many policies exist just to preserve the fiction that the higher ups are in control?  How many rules enforce standardization at the expense of initiative and passion while delivering few if any benefits?”

Gary Hamel, What Matters Now

“When you force people into slots you get slot shaped contributions. You want to turn sheep into shepherds.”

Drew Williams

“All human systems are self-organizing and naturally tend towards high performance provided the essential preconditions are present and sustained.”

Harrison Owen, Wave Rider

“High Performance is less a matter of doing something… but rather being fully and intentionally what we already are: a self-organizing system.”

Harrison Owen, Wave Rider

“Passion alone = flashy all sizzle and no steak.  Responsibility alone = simply boring.  Passion + Responsibility = Authentic Leadership.”

Harrison Owen, Wave Rider

“How Many policies exist just to preserve the fiction that the higher ups are in control?  How many rules enforce standardization at the expense of initiative and passion while delivering few if any benefits?”

Blair Vernon

The informal organization which does not appear on any organizational chart consists of the informal contacts among themselves that employees use to get things done.

Gary Dressier

“A good Game has 4 elements. 1. A clearly defined Goal. 2. Clear understanding of the rules. 3. a way to easily and quickly track progress towards the goal. 4players must opt in voluntarily.”

Jane McGonigal, Reality is Broken

Read my post on Reality is Broken.

“Let’s take golf to start.  As a golfer you have a clear goal: to get the ball in a series of very small holes, with fewer tries than anyone else.  If you weren’t playing a game you’d achieve this goal the most efficient way possible: you’d walk right up to the hole and drop the ball in with your hand.  What makes Golf a Game is that you willingly agree to stand really far away from each hole and swing at the ball with a club.  Golf is engaging exactly because you along with the other players have agreed to make the work more challenging than it has any reasonable right to be.”

Jane McGonigal, Reality is Broken
Read my post on Reality is Broken.

“The prevailing positive-psychology theory that we are the one and only source of our own happiness isn’t just a metaphor.  It is a biological fact.  Our brains and bodies produce neurochemicals and physiological sensations that we experience, in different quantities and combinations, as pleasure, enjoyment, satisfaction, ecstasy, contentment, love, and every other kind of happiness.  And positive psychologists have shown that we don’t have to wait for life to trigger these chemicals and sensations for us.  We can trigger them ourselves by… undertaking a difficult challenge… accomplishing something very hard for us…making someone laugh…or…being part of something larger than ourselves that has lasting significance beyond our individual lives.”

Jane McGonigal, Reality is Broken
Read my post on Reality is Broken.

“Playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.”

Bernard Suits

Everyone’s a manager here.  The job of managing includes planning, organizing, directing, staffing, and control, and everyone at Morning Star is expected to do all of these things.

Chris Rufer

It was a whole different business, nothing like I’d ever known, like night and day… Thirty seconds of play and I am on a whole new plane of being, all of my synapses wailing.

David Sudnow about playing the video game Breakout

“We have been conditioned to believe that the wrong things will make us lastingly happy.”

Sonia Lyubomirsky, The How of Happiness

Read my post on The How of Happiness.

Culture eats strategy for breakfast.

Peter Drucker

Cheers for Friday,

Gavin Watson, Chair, Conscious Capitalism Connecticut Chapter

Gavin Watson & Associates

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Gavin’s Friday Reads: Doughnut Economics By Kate Raworth

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This is about a new way of thinking about economics.  

The traditional economic model is just a model of an economy floating in empty space. The Doughnut economic model recognizes that the economy exists within the earth’s boundaries and is reliant on life and the resources that the planet provides.  

If we exceed what the planet can sustainably provide and adsorb eventually we crash the whole system.  As she says we take and use (sometimes we use just once) and throw it away.  “There is no away”.  Generations in the future are going to look back on us and ask did we know?  Previous generations did not know and therefore could not have drawn a model like this but we know.

Kate Raworth describes her idea in the short video below.

Below is the structure of Doughnut Economics.

The outer rim of the doughnut symbolizes the outer edge of what we can take from our planet and return sustainably.  The red fields illustrate by how much we are exceeding the earth’s ability to support us.

The inside of the doughnut is about fairness.  It is about human needs for food, water, and other goods as well as education, equity, and political voice.  The inner ring symbolizes the minimum boundary below which we should not let other humans fall.  The red in these areas illustrates how much we are failing on this.

Doughnut Economics 7 ways to think like a 21 century economist:

1. Change the goal (it is not continual GDP growth)

2. See the big picture

3. Nuture Human Nature

4. Get savvy with systems

5. design to distribute

6. create to regenerate

7. Be agnostic about growth

This is about discarding the old very limiting economic reality that has been taught to so many students and is running so many of our governments, and imagining a new one with a new picture.  

As Lisa Feldman Barrett said in her book 71/2 lessons about the brain, our ability to imagine different realities and believe in them so they become the new reality is our “super power”.  “Superpowers work best when we know we have them”.  

If we start to think of our economy as a doughnut and we know we are creating the economy then we are all economists and changing our reality based on our beliefs and actions.

About 1 hour in to the video above, Raworth talks about companies.  She says she is not particularly interested in product packaging, or how the ingredients are sourced, or how the employees are paid, though that is important.  She is interested in the company design.  “How the company is designed matters.  This will determine if the company is regenerative or not.”  This is more of a systems thinking approach. In systems thinking the thing we get is shaped by the process we use to get there.  In this thinking we should focus on setting up the system (company) properly instead of the details.  This will make it more likely we achieve and even exceed our expectations.

5 design traits of a company:

1. A living Purpose bigger than themselves

2. The network your company lives in.  What are the values of the network?  Does it reinforce or pull from the purpose?

3. Governance  Who is in the room when decisions are made?

4. How is the company owned?  By a family, a VC capital group, financially motivated shareholders, or shareholders who love who you are, and share your purpose.

5. How is the company financed?  Is finance in service to the purpose?  By people or institutions who are committed to the same purpose and a fair return?  Or just a maximum return?

Obviously there are a lot of similarities with Conscious Capitalism.  A higher purpose, shareholders who care about and support the purpose, and a stakeholder view which includes the planetary ecosystem as even more than a stakeholder.  In this model it is the ecosystem in which the economy lives and is dependent on. 

Cities (Amsterdam and Brussels) and even some countries are beginning to play with the doughnut economic model.  In a complex system a solution can not be put in place through central control.  It needs to evolve through experimentation.  It happens by variation, selection, and replication of the things that work.  (Recognizing that what works in some cases may not work in others.)  We can learn from each other.

For this reason they have set up this Doughnut Economics ACTION Lab for people to communicate what they are trying and how it is working.

Cheers for Friday,

Gavin Watson, Chair, Conscious Capitalism Connecticut Chapter

Gavin Watson & Associates

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Gavin’s Friday Reads: 7 1/2 Lessons About the Brain, Lisa Feldman Barrett

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This is a small, very short, easily read book by one of the lead researchers in psychology and neuroscientists of our time.  I read all 130 pages in one morning and I am not a particularly fast reader.

I hope my short version of the 71/2 lessons below inspires you to get a copy and read it.

Lesson ½ “Our Brains are Not for Thinking”.  Evolution “gave us brains to manage the systems going on in our bodies, (body budgets) and foster our efficient survival in the world.  Our brains are prediction machines.  Based on past experience and our view of “reality” Our brains predict what will happen in our environment.  Predictions are designed to keep us alive and to save energy resources.  Our predictive brains find it annoying when we don’t finish the…

Lesson 1 “We Have One Brain Not Three”.  We don’t have a Lizard brain for survival, a mid brain for emotions and one logical brain to rule them all.  We just have one brain.  There is no tension between three fictitious ideas.  Emotion and reason are not separate things.

Lesson 2 “Our Brains are Networks”.  Not every cell is connected to every other.  That would create what she calls a meatloaf brain.  A homogeneous mass not capable of anything interesting.  Our brains are also not like swiss army knives.  They are not a fixed set of tools pre wired together in a particular way that can do a few different things.  Our brains are networks.  When we learn something new a network is created.  If we use it often it is strengthened.  If we don’t use it the connections fade away.  A process of “Tuning and Pruning”

Lesson 3 “Little Brains Wire Themselves to the World.”  Unlike most species we develop late.  The whole wiring process takes about 25 years.  This allows our brains the flexibility needed to wire themselves for the environment and societies we are born into.

Lesson 4 “Your Brain Predicts (almost) Everything You Do.”  This is one of its main functions.  Based on current circumstances and past experience our brains are continually predicting our environment and planning our next moves, even executing the next moves before the sensory data of the “real world” is processed.   “Your brain is designed to initiate your actions before you are aware of them.” Predicting and acting is almost always ahead of understanding.  Fighter pilots talk of the OODA loop.  Observe Orientate Decide Act.  This is a misconception.  It would take far too long and you would end up dead.  Our brains use a Predict, Begin to Act, Correct, Predict again, begin modified action, correct again….. continuous system.  The only thing remotely like deciding is the prior experience our brains are drawing from to make the predictions.  This is where we have agency (free will) over our behavior.  We can decide what we learn and how we want to perceive the world and gradually train ourselves to see it that way.  Is it a world of scarcity or of abundance?  Both beliefs are true.  Which one are we going to choose to train ourselves to see more clearly?  This is what the Dalai Lama calls “perspective”

Lesson 5 “Your Brain Secretly Works with Other Brains”  We are a group species.  We need and affect each other more than we know.  Ubuntu is the idea that we call each other into being, this is really very close to the mark.  Solitary confinement is really a slow form of capital punishment.  We regulate each other’s brains and “body budgets”.  “Have you lost someone close to you through a breakup or a death and felt you had lost part of yourself?  That’s because you did.  You lost a source of keeping your body systems in balance.”  “The price of personal freedom is personal responsibility for your impact on others.  The wiring of our brains guarantees it.”  IE the freedom to say whatever we want comes with the responsibility of the effect our speech has on others.  Because we are social creatures we will all enjoy the fruits of uplifting speech or the suffering due to harmful speech.

Lesson 6 “Brains Make More Than One Kind of Mind”  We are not all the same.  We have different personalities, and on top of that our brains construct themselves differently when we are raised in a different society.  This is why immersing ourselves in a different culture where we don’t know the first thing about that society’s norms (or language) is so difficult.  What was automatic in our own society now needs to be learned again.  Understanding each other is going to be more critical to the future survival of humanity.  As Abraham Lincoln said “I don’t like that man.  I must get to know him better.”

Lesson 7 “Our Brains Can Create Reality”  “Social reality can alter dramatically, in moments, if people simply change their minds.  In 1776 for example a collection of thirteen British colonies vanished and was replaced by the United States of America.”  This is a super power that only we humans have.  We can create money, towns, and states, democracy and human rights just by believing it is so.  And just as easily we can lose something valuable if we cease to believe in it.  “We have more responsibility for our reality than we might realize.”  “A superpower works best when you know you have it.”

Cheers for Friday,

Gavin Watson, Chair, Conscious Capitalism Connecticut Chapter

Gavin Watson & Associates

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