A series of notes for the Body, Brain, Business conference by Michael Soth – Part 1
Since the 1970's a slow and quiet revolution has been steadily gaining pace in our scientific view of how the human mind works. Our key speaker for the conference, Peter Russell (“The Global Brain”, “The Brain Book”), proposed a holographic view of the brain already about 25 years ago.
This was followed in the 1990’s by the ‘Decade of the Brain’ during which neuroscience threw off the shackles of 20th century paradigms and re-invented itself, rising like a phoenix from the ashes of a discipline which had been considered at a dead end just a few years earlier.
The revolution in modern neuroscience is now well-established and propelled into public awareness through best-selling books like Antonio Damasio’s “Descartes’ Error” and “Looking for Spinoza”, Oliver Sacks’ “Awakenings” and “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” or Steven Rose’s “The 21st-century Brain”.
However, it is a revolution that is only recently beginning to actually affect the field of psychological practice, and it has only minimally filtered through into business.
This was followed in the 1990’s by the ‘Decade of the Brain’ during which neuroscience threw off the shackles of 20th century paradigms and re-invented itself, rising like a phoenix from the ashes of a discipline which had been considered at a dead end just a few years earlier.
The revolution in modern neuroscience is now well-established and propelled into public awareness through best-selling books like Antonio Damasio’s “Descartes’ Error” and “Looking for Spinoza”, Oliver Sacks’ “Awakenings” and “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” or Steven Rose’s “The 21st-century Brain”.
However, it is a revolution that is only recently beginning to actually affect the field of psychological practice, and it has only minimally filtered through into business.
Out-dated psychological and human resource technologies
Most human resource departments, business psychologists, consultants and coaches, and therefore most business leaders and executives, rely on out-dated and anachronistic psychological principles, harking back partly to the mid-20th and in many ways even further back to the late 19th century.
We would not expect a 21st century business to perform well with index cards or manual stock-taking.
So how can we expect it to excel based on human resource technologies and psychological paradigms which are 60 to 100 years old? Would you do deliveries in a 1912 Ford?
In what other area of business would we dream to operate with technologies which are that antiquated ?
Let’s be clear that these outdated psychological principles do not operate in isolated, circumscribed, peripheral parts of an organisation. They are central to its creative and productive functioning. Our assumptions as to how human minds work (and especially how they do - or don't - work together) pervade every aspect of social and business organisation.
The competitive advantages of 21st century psychology
As is the case with all other form of innovation, business leaders who grasp and apply the principles of the brain-bodymind revolution will undoubtedly gain competitive advantage. Moreover, these principles by their very nature will enhance both sustainability and productivity.
Advances in mechanical and electronic technology are decades ahead of psychology and it is in the under-developed recesses of the human bodymind that the margins for improvement are greatest.
Advances in mechanical and electronic technology are decades ahead of psychology and it is in the under-developed recesses of the human bodymind that the margins for improvement are greatest.
