Evolutionary Provocateur

Scientific Archives Free-Why Business Should Care

A Mensa member tipped me off to the resource offered by the Royal Society, free until December. It is the archives of their scientific publications going way back. If you love reading science this is a great opportunity. http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/index.cfm?page=1373

With increased receptivity to new science , which is really science that has been around awhile, science is becoming an important part of the basis for personal and professional growth work being done. This is imperative for effective learning to take place.

Most learning technologies have focused on the cognitive omitting the important emotional intelligences from which behavior is managed. Neuroscience and cellular biology are changing that, as business grasps that 'doing what has always been done and expecting different results' will not create the great leap out of reacting to outside threats.

To shift to the next level, business must embrace the creative mind more than the analytical which has excelled at taking things apart to the point where the interconnectivity gets lost. When the interconnectivity is lost so is the dynamic and an understanding of what powers the situation from the deeper levels.

This is not a time to be content with tinkering with superficial solutions. It is time to rattle the chain, bridge what looks to be irrelevant or possibly good theory, into expanding the corporate mind. As Danah Zohar's book, Rewiring the Corporate Brain, puts it restructuring and reengineering are surface solutions. The 'ra ra' motivational approach to change has to shift to the step- into-it kind of change.

"Deep transformational change requires that we literally rewire our brains, that we grow new neural connections." (Zohar). Neuroscience, quantum coherence, cellular biology all apply. There is no time like the present to utilize the knowledge to ramp up our ability to learn, expand and revitalize the corporate mind to achieve radical change.

Peter Senge Talk to the Vancouver Board of Trade

In conjunction with the Dalai Lama's opening of the Center for Peace, Peter Senge spoke to the Vancouver Board of Trade September 7th. His talk was particularly of interest to me as I work to introduce a fairly radical learning program. My interest lies in transforming how we humans see reality so that the big picture and all of its component dots can be seen beyond the boundaries of belief and fear. The key lies in removing barriers to performance held within individuals and the companies they work for. I wanted to see what the current thinking was.

Peter mentioned the need for us to think more intelligently about being interdependent. Environmental issues and other global issues were once considered either peripheral or irrelevant have now become strategic. About 5% of corporate leadership grasps that yet it is 4.999% more than previously. As he noted, we have a way of self-reinforcing how we see reality which limits visibility.

Any conversations which take the discourse beyond investment and profit typically creates panic amongst business so he was very quick to head that off with a quote from Peter Drucker. Drucker said profit is oxygen to a business. Without it you are out of the game. But if you think your purpose is breathing you are missing something.

Good point.

He also pointed out that the rational mind is really not useful for life decisions or for identifying your aspirations, one leg on the mastery stool. Thought + feeling are what really matter. Purpose is your reason for being; vision is what you are trying to achieve. Physically, Dr. Senge pointed out that neurons cluster in the intestinal tract (gut feeling), cardial sac (lead from the heart) and spinal cord (spiritual/energy conduit). HeartMath has used this knowledge to effectively assist people in learning stress management techniques (my note).

One solution is dialogue. Converse stems from the Latin conversae whcih means to turn together (nice image!). Which leads us into social neurology and how the brain works in social settings. We each have mirror neurons which reveal themselves through the tendency to mirror the person we are conversing with.  Daniel Goleman has done some work on this as an extension of his emotional intelligence work.

Peter also showed data re: global warming that was left out of Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth that starkly showed from 450 000 years of cycles that this one is not natural or normal.  Put simply, even implementing Kyoto would not be enough to equalize the CO2 emissions fast enough particularly at the rate politicians grasp the reality. It would take 60-80% reduction world wide to achieve an equal state.

James Lovelock's book Gaia's Revenge presents a fairly doomsday scenario, and there were two points highlighed: 1) there is a delay between the what happens and when the impact is felt and 2) given the scale and speed of change Lovelock could not see how humanity could survive. His focus was on disaster relief as the earth adjusts to the change in temperature.

At the same time, we have no idea about our own capacity to create the world anew. For years Demming tried to get business to understand that you can not substitute external motivation for the joy of work. When extrinsic motivation is used than the glue that holds it together is the fear of losing it. fear is a motivator for really short periods of time.

My Summary: more than ever it is time to provoke our own growth to truly explore what deeply held talent lies within and turn it loose so we can collectively tackle what cannot be done alone.

Culture from the Customer's Experience

Well it has been a busy summer apparently since nothing blogged since July when World Cup soccer and leadership was dominanting the attention span. To get back into the groove there were a couple of summer experiences that say a lot about a company's culture through the customer experience. First, in July my 18 year old daughter was in a car accident in Tofino, Vancouver Island where she had gone for a camping trip and to go surfing on the wild west coast. She was not hurt, nor was her passenger nor the gentleman who hit her thankfully. I was in Los Angeles and it was my car she was driving. She was credited by the man who hit her for having prevented injury to everyone which, for a young driver, is nice to hear. Everything that happens from this point on tells the story about 2 companies and their cultures.

The local representative for Budget was amazing. He could not, by policy, rent her a car as covered by the insurance but did everything he could to help move her and her stuff, along with her friend, to the campground and back and forth to settle things. The RCMP officer was also outstanding, helping her transport and setttle what needed to be settled. By the time the whole thing was done she reported it as a good experience since otherwise she would not have met so many nice people.

Meanwhile on my return to Vancouver I go to rent a car from Budget Rent a Car,and find out that she can not drive it unless i go to a particular outlet. The front line staffer was unsure of how to process the rental so she sold me insurance given uncertainty about how, who and whether the insurance company or VISA card coverage would cover it when it was an insurance claim. Two days later i learned that Budget was supposed to call to authorize transfer of the insurance to the rental. When i asked for a refund, the manager informed me i had to take it up with head office, (meaning fight for it) and that they would take it up with the insurance company. As easy as it is to bash the insurance company to make a long story shorter what was really going on was Budget did not train their front line staff to handle insurance claims but to sell the insurance (for the second time as it was already covered). From the managers response, the bottom line was that once we have the customer's money the customer needs to fight to get it back. There was no interest in ensuring front line staff knew how to prevent double selling from happneing again.

This has all the mark of a company fighting to survive. The policies and front line training is intended to sell not serve. Based on what the local rep in Tofino had done for my daughter I would have signed up for life out of appreciation. Based on the experience in Vancouver it is unlikely that I will deal with them again.

Fortunately, U-Rent to the rescue. My daughter had 3 jobs two of which started at 5 am. She needed a car to get there and U-Rent were fine about renting one to me with her as a driver. Problem solved.

Now to the insurance company. About 2 weeks later, after the car is towed back to Vancouver, in the body shop for repair I get a phone call from Total Loss Collision division to say that my car was declared a write off and that I would be compensated as per my policy. This was a departure from the direction i thought we were heading but hey.....after questioning what happened this seemed to be the route. On the Thursday before the long weekend I got a call giving me the amount (replacement value) and that a cheque would be delivered to me the following Tuesday. Thursday, after receiving the call,  I went over to the auto body shop to retrieve stuff left in the car. The auto body shop were pleased to show me how much progress they had made and estimated that the car would be available for pick up in about a week (it was 3 weeks). Big problem.

The body shop made a quick call to the insurance company and suddenly there will be no check. Tuesday morning i get a phone call saying bring the rental car back. There was more than one instance of having the rental car cancelled before the car was fixed but when I called to find out how my car was being repaired and written off simultaneously the cultural impact of cuts came to light. Somewhere not so long ago cuts had happened and when they were done, the new system put in place ensured that people no longer connected or coordinated with other people. Mixed messages are the result and i almost got my car replaced while it was being repaired.

From a business point of view it was not hard to see two cultural expressions of policy: Budget's is about selling not service and therefore it is in survival mode not apparently planning to be around for the longer haul. The insurance company was cut from the inside and that made them look pretty incompetent from a communications point of view. Wonder if the C-suite knows.