Evolutionary Provocateur

Music Moves Brain to Pay Attention

We spend a lot of time talking about how to make workplaces work when some of the answers lie in the simplest of solutions. Take music. A Stanford School of Medicine report documents the effect of baroque music on the area of the brain involved with paying attention, making predictions and updating events in history. In short, musical techniques that go back 200 years are effective in helping the brain organize incoming information.

If you have heard of brainwave entrainment then you would easily recognize that the effect of baroque music is to harmonize the brainwaves to the state and place where peak functioning occurs. This is a handy bit of understanding for workplaces where managers, employees are inundated with information and struggle to sort it out.

I am not saying that playing Baroque music will resolve the information overwhelm issue but there is no doubt that it can help much more than hurt. This tempts the idea to pipe Baroque music into workplaces and see the effect on productivity and well-being. Are any workplaces out there doing this?

The Kids Today Aren't What We Used to Be-Really!

I love Wayne Turmel's irreverent approach to human folly, particularly as it shows up in business. Wayne's most recent article on www.management-issues.com is about the kids today...hence this post. To Wayne's points I add my own comments. 

'They don't have any loyalty to an employer - right--they leave a job when it does not challenge them or use their talent to effect.

They don't know the meaning of hard work - Work was never meant to be hard. it is meant to be fun and challenging but not about grinding your way to the end of the day. Challenge is OK; surviving the day is not.

They are spoiled and self-centered - Fruit spoils. Kids. ... well if we gave them the idea that the world is handed on a platter then it is natural to expect that. Self-centered? There is no shortage of very self-absorbed senior workers. People who live in glass houses should not throw stones said Confucious.

They don't understand that business is a rough game and life is not fair - Well if that is not a belief about how the world looks I don't know what is. 

They have book learning, but no real experience - Real experience is the one with life and some of these kids have already lived several lifetimes worth. They bring an inherent wisdom, unless it has been crushed, suppressed or oppressed and an intuitive natural know-how which is also known as tacit knowledge. Many bring curiousity and a desire to learn. This is something that the older generations have lost. Learn and live!

In my books, the kids who went to alternative schools are the independent thinkers, the innovators and the ones you watch for emerging trends. The kids who went to mainstream school will tell you how to work the system to get what you want and what you have to put up with to get there. They are well aware of the game and decide whether they play or not.

Self-sacrifice is not in their agreement with life; nor is serving a company when it does not serve you equally. Makes sense to me.

Pure and outright entitlement...well we have plenty of business cultures, especially the ones backed by the right to exist, who can demonstrate what that looks like.

For Wayne's post see The Kids are Alright.

Without Curiousity The Cat(Issues)Keeps on Coming Back

Dr. Ellen Weber's post on Traits of a Brain Based Change Agent sites 10 characteristics of a leader one of which is to never stop learning. This makes sense and i am sure that anyone reading this would agree. Yet I have noticed in day to day interactions with people that there is an alarming lack of curiousity.  Relationships appear to be based more on what can you do for me, rather than how i can serve you despite all the training in networking people have received over time. This results in a rather superficial transactional relationship which really can't be counted on when the going gets rough.

In strategic alliance and partnering work, cooperatively managing anything depends on the capacity to learn together, put the tough stuff on the table and see what can be learned. The capacity to do so without making anyone wrong creates powerful solutions that all gain from in the end. Yet overwhelmingly there is predisposition to avoid learning from the tricky situations, gloss over them and find someone or something to blame for the situation.

There is a wonderful children's song and animation called the Cat Came Back which applies to the scenario where, if you avoid the deeper dynamic and causal elements, the issues you seek to resolve resurface as if you were riding a merry go round.

Learning is powered by curiosity. What happened to it?

Catching up with the Vancouver International Film Fest

I apologize to those regular or irregular visitors who have noticed I fell off the blog map for a few weeks. I am packing and purging and was buried in boxes...still am actually. In between times i managed to squeeze in some free film festival seminars as part of my quest to learn more about film as i move my documentary film forward to attract people who connect with its purpose.

Yesterday i attended a seminar about Diversity. One of the films presented was called Outsourced which i will catch tomorrow but why i mention it here is because it manages in a humorous way to wrap its arms around the culture of INdia in a wonderfully charming way. Through the story of an American tasked with familiarizing Indian call center workers with things like a hamburger brand, it allows the viewer to step into diversity not by dancing around the culture cognitively but by immersing you straight into the assumptions that get made and the comedic results that emerge. i highly recommend this film for any company who is outsourcing or who is commited to helping employees understand the world they work in from many different perspectives with no one culture needing to dominate.

It is a all gain perspective. For more information head to www.viff.org and look for Outsourced.