I have been tardy in keeping up with Stephanie West Allen and Jeffrey Schwartz's new initiative, Brains on Purpose.

When I did start reading it this morning, I got immersed in reading back through Stephanie's material. One of the many things that struck me was the post on naming feelings, following on from a flurry of articles on the subject in Scientific American, The Daily Telegraph and other titles.

One of the most powerful lines in the first Batman film was when Jack Nicholson's Joker says: "I have a name for my pain." I was never quite sure why it was so resonant.

This whole emerging area of neuroplasticity , which West Allen and Schwartz explore in Brains On Purpose, with particular regard to conflict resolution, shows the power of naming feelings in helping to damp down unhelpful emotional patterns - patterns that lead to conflict or distraction from purpose - and amplify constructive emotional patterns; kind of a 'brain, heal thyself' approach.

I was attracted to this work through Schwartz and David Rock's work on what they call the Neuroscience of Leadership - based on the new theory that the brain changes shape according to our experiences and thoughts and feelings.

The neurons themselves don't change, according to the theory. But, the web of synapses between them thickens and grows where our focus of attention is greatest. Which is why, for example, when famously opinionated London Black Cab drivers like to think they have bigger brains than anyone else, it turns out they are right. The hippocampus in their brain is larger than in the average person, because before they earn their cab driver's licence they have to learn The Knowledge - hold a mental map in their heads of every street in London and the shortest routes from place to place.

I've based the Leadership Hub on the principle of the power of attention in building up synapses, borrowing Rock and Schwartz's principle that we learn best in small doses - maybe fifteen minutes a week.

Nature versus Nurture is beginning to look very much like last century's argument. As so often, the answer looks increasingly like 'and' rather than 'either/or'.

More, below, on self-organizing systems that shape themselves and grow as they are used.

Labels: neuroscience of leadership

Had an 'Aha!' moment in Oslo with my friend Marion this weekend when we realised we are both working on self-organising systems, in which usage and participation allow the shape of the system to emerge.

The one I'm working on is The Leadership Hub, which is in its pre-launch testing phase at the moment,while Marion's is her Star Wards initiative, which has already got almost 100, or twenty-five percent, of the country's acute mental health wards signed up to it, after only being launched a few months back.

Marion is a social entrepreneur whom I learn an awful lot from. For the Star Wards initiative - which centres on offering 75 clever and practical ideas for improving the quality of life on acute mental health wards - Marion came up with three degrees of change that participants could aim for, depending on how ambitious the participants are - Tweaking, Turning and Transforming - and mapped the 75 ideas for action into the three categories. Very clever and inspiring stuff.

I'm fascinated by how some catalysts for change can, like Marion, reach in from the outside and make a massive change happen very quickly.

Here's her description of how Star Wards seemed to go viral so rapidly by drawing on the behaviour of Mao and geese: Revolutions and Flocking

Labels: change agents

I hate the classic distinction between leader and follower. Dee Hock, the founder of Visa, neatly dances us out of it with this beautifully-argued passage from Birth of The Chaordic Age:

"In the deepest sense, distinction between leaders and followers is meaningless. In every moment of life, we are simultaneously leading and following. There is never a time when our knowledge, judgment, and wisdom are not more useful and applicable than that of another. There is never a time when the knowledge, judgment, and wisdom of another are not more useful and applicable than ours. At any time that "other" may be superior, subordinate, or peer.

"Everyone is a born leader. Who can deny that from the moment of birth they were leading parents, siblings, and companions? Watch a baby cry and the parents jump. We were all born leaders; that is, until we were compelled to go to school and taught to be managed and to manage.

"People are not 'things' to be manipulated, labeled, boxed, bought, and sold. Above all else, they are not "human resources." They are entire human beings, containing the whole of the evolving universe, limitless until we start limiting them. We must examine the concept of leading and following with new eyes. We must examine the concept of superior and subordinate with increasing skepticism. We must examine the concept of management and labor with new beliefs. And we must examine the nature of organizations that demand such distinctions with an entirely different consciousness.

"It is true leadership; leadership by everyone; leadership in, up, around, and down this world so badly needs, and dominator management it so sadly gets.

- Dee Hock, Birth of The Chaordic Age

There is a raft of leadership literature on how to make an impact in your first 100 days (or sometimes it’s your first 90 days), the received wisdom being that you have to make your mark hard and fast as a new leader.

I've always thought this isn’t just slightly wrong; it is totally wrong. I thought it was just me who thought this, so was relieved to hear Michael Eisner, who led Disney for twenty years, make the same point, talking about his first 100 days at Disney:

“The first piece of paper I was given listed nineteen people to be fired. I didn’t fire them. I played it cool...I moved slowly. Some of those nineteen people are still there well over twenty years later.

“In fact I started so slowly I lost the first day trying to find my first board meeting. I’m a New Yorker. I’m driving around California and I had to call my lawyer and ask ‘Where is Disney?’

“The first big meeting I had was on a film set with 3,000 Disney people, where I introduced myself and told them I was interested in meeting everybody.

“Then I asked questions. Again, take it slowly. Then trot. Then run. Then gallop. Then get completely out of control."

So, new leaders anxious to make an impact in their first 100 days, please note…that you shouldn’t. Making an impact is all about you. Learning first then doing the right thing is all about the context you have inherited.

But, don’t you love that closing line of Eisner’s? If you are looking to make big changes, it’s a powerful mantra:

“Take it slowly.
Then trot.
Then run.
Then gallop.
Then get completely out of control.”

Eisner was talking at ECMW 2007. I'm looking forward to hearing him again at Leaders in London. He's been largely demonised due to his apparent inability to get on with people, and his critics cite a God complex. But, I think there's a lot more to him as a leader than just a rampant ego.

Labels: first 100 days, new leaders