J.D. Meier's Blog : Intellectual Horsepower

Sources of Insight is 6 Months Old

J.D. Meier — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 19:52:44 GMT

Sources of Insight is 6 Months Old. It's growing up fast. I'd like to say I have the perfect plan, and everything's gone as planned, but I don't and it hasn't. Life's funny like that. What I can say is that I've made the most of it along the way, and I continue to fail forward. Onward and upward.

Sources of Insight is my blog for sharing patterns and practices for skilled living. It's how I scale myself as I help others unleash their inner awesome. You can think of it as a collection of insight and action to get results for work and life.

Here's some key features on Sources of Insight:

Browse guest posts by best selling book authors
Download my Free eBook - The Zen of Results, a quick guide to getting your life back.
Browse my hand picked collection of top personal development books
Browse my hand picked collection of top personal productivity quotes
Browse my posts of insight and action to help you make the most of what you got.

The Placebo Effect Revisited

J.D. Meier — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 17:11:00 GMT

Just how much does your mind determine your body? In the NPR article, Hotel Maids Challenge the Placebo Effect, Maids start losing weight, once they change their mindset. They don't change their daily routine. They simply change perspective.

I like this article because of the new distinction in the placebo effect. In the past, the placebo effect is usually considered effective for subjective experience, such as feeling less pain, or feeling less depressed. In this case, it's about changing physiology, by changing your mind.

This article also reminds me of a friend who suddenly dropped a lot of weight. He said he couldn't lose the weight, no matter how much he worked out, until he one day saw himself thinner. Once he made up his mind, his body followed.

As Napoleon Hill would put it, "What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve."

Solution-Focused Questions

J.D. Meier — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 11:46:00 GMT

How can you use questions to improve individual performance? You can ask solution-focused questions. David Rock and Jeffrey Schwartz write how to improve non-performance by asking solution-focused questions in their article, "The Neuroscience of Leadership", in "strategy+business" magazine.

Don't Ask Problem-Focused Questions
Rock and Schwartz write:

"Let's go back to Mike, our pharmaceutical CEO. One of Mike's direct reports, Rob, has hired only three of his targeted six new team members this year. If Mike asks Rob why he didn't reach the goal, he will focus Rob's attention on the nonperformance. As a result of this attention, Rob might make new cognitive connections (also known as reasons) as to why he didn't find the new people. For example, 'All the really good people are taken by other companies,' or 'I don't have time to do the kind of recruiting we need.' Although these reasons that people were not hired might be true, they do little to support or foster any change."

Ask Solution-Focused Questions
Rock and Schwartz write:

"A more useful place to focus Rob's attention is on the new circuits he needs to create to achieve his objectives in the future. Mike could ask Rob, 'What do you need to do to resolve challenges like this?' Mike's questioning might provoke Rob to have an insight that he needs to remind himself of his annual objectives more regularly, to keep his eyes on the prize. If Mike regularly asked Rob about his progress, it would remind Rob to give this new thought more attention."

Key Take Aways
Here's my key take aways:

Focus attention on the solution. This doesn't mean ignore understanding the problem. It means, that rather than spending 20% of your energy on the solution and 80% on the problem, spend 80% on the solution and 20% on the problem. Keep moving forward, learning and adapting rather than sitting in analysis paralysis.
Use questions to get resourceful. By asking solution-focused questions, you switch your mind into a more resourceful state. Your brain suddenly starts drawing on all your resources internally and around you to solve the problem.

Two Reasons Why People Resist Change

J.D. Meier — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 11:14:00 GMT

Why do people resist change, even when it's for their own good? Your own body can work against you. If you know how your body works, you're better prepared to making key changes. David Rock and Jeffrey Schwartz write about two reasons that work against you, in their article, "The Neuroscience of Leadership", in "strategy+business" magazine. I've summarized my key learnings in this post.

Two Reasons Why People Resist Change

Attention effort.
Errors between expectation and actuality.

Attention Effort
Trying to change a hard-wired habit requires a lot of effort, in the form of attention. Your routine activities and tasks are handled by your basal ganglia which don't require conscious thought. When try to switch from a routine activity or task to new approach, it requires your prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex supports higher-level processing. It's your working memory. The problem is, your prefrontal cortex fatigues easily and can only hold a limited set of information "online" at a time.

Habits like how you sell ideas, run a meeting, manage others and communicate are comfortable routines. You could do them blindfolded. Theses routines are handled by your basal ganglia. It requires a lot of effort in terms of attention to change them. Many people find this feeling uncomfortable. See Working Memory vs. Routine Activity.

Errors Between Expectation and Actuality
Change triggers "error" responses. An error response is when you perceive a difference between expectation and actuality. Your error responses are generated by your orbital frontal cortex. Your orbital frontal cortex responds to errors in expectations (e.g. you expect something to be sweet, but it tastes salty). It is closely connected to your amygdala. Your amygdala is your fear circuitry. It's where the amygdala hijack happens. The amygdala hijack is the sudden and overwhelming fear or anger response.

The amygdala and the orbital frontal cortex are among the oldest parts of the mammal brain. When they are activated, they draw metabolic energy away from the prefrontal region, which supports higher intellectual functions. You're in fight-or-flight mode.

What this means is that while you're trying to make a change, and you need your higher-level processing (prefrontal region) to make that change, you're busy reacting in your orbital frontal cortex and amygdala, while they are starving your prefrontal region.

Key Take Aways
Here's my key take aways

Limit the amount of attention you need to make a change. This could include preparing ahead of time, using checklists, chunking up the learning, ... etc.
Find ways to switch from fight-or-flight to thoughtful learning. Controlling your "animal instinct" is an important skill. One way to develop this is a technique from Crucial Conversations called Master My Stories.

My Related Posts

Working Memory vs. Routine Memory

Working Memory vs. Routine Activity

J.D. Meier — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 07:07:00 GMT

Have you ever wondered why some things you can do on "auto-pilot" or without thinking, while other tasks are mentally draining? Your thoughtful tasks are using your working memory (prefrontal context), while your repetitive, familiar and routine activities are using your basal ganglia, which doesn't require conscious thought.

Prefrontal Cortex and Basal Ganglia
David Rock and Jeffrey Schwartz summarize the prefrontal cortex and basal ganglia in their article, "The Neuroscience of Leadership", in "strategy+business" magazine:

Prefrontal cortex - working memory, the brain's "holding area," where perceptions and ideas can first be compared to other information. Fatigues easily and can hold only a limited around of information "on line" at any one time. Promotes and supports higher intellectual functions. It's particularly well developed in humans and doesn't exist below the higher primates.
Basal ganglia - involved by routine, familiar activity. Functions exceedingly well without conscious thought in any routine activity. Any activity conducted repetitively (to the point of a habit) will tend to get pushed down into the basal ganglia. This frees up the processing resources of the prefrontal cortex.

Example
You can relate to this using driving a car as an example. When you first learn to drive a stick shift, it's a lot of thinking and processing. You're using a lot of your working memory (prefrontal cortex.) Once you get enough practice, it becomes a habit and you no longer have to think about your driving. At that point, you've baked the routines into your basal ganglia.

How To Use This
You can apply this in three ways: First, when you're learning something new, chunk it up so your working memory can handle it. Second, when you are getting overloaded, consider creating a checklist so you can "dump" your working memory. Third, when you are learning a new task and it feels awkward, rather than get frustrated, remind yourself that you're dealing with prefrontal cortex and you haven't move it to your basal ganglia yet.

Cutting Questions

J.D. Meier — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 18:50:00 GMT

How do you cut to the chase? How do you clear the air of ambiguity and get to facts? Ask cutting questions.

My manager, Per , doesn't ask a lot of questions. He asks the right ones. Here's some examples:

Who's on board? Who are five customers that stand behind you?
Next steps?
What does your gut say?
Is it working? Is it effective?
What would "x" say? (for example, what would your peers say?)
What's their story?
Where's your prioritized list of scenarios?

As simple as it sounds, having five separate customers stand behind you is a start. I'm in the habbit of litmus checking my path early on to see who's on board or to find the resistance. As customers get on board, my confidence goes up. I've also seen this cutting question work well with startups. I've asked a few startups about their five customers. Some had great ideas, but no customers on board. The ones that had at least five are still around.

At the end of any meeting, Per never fails to ask "next steps?", and the meeting quickly shifts from talk to action.

"Is it working?" is a pretty cutting question. It's great because it forces you to step back and reflect on your results and consider a change in approach.

Put Your Thinking Hat On

J.D. Meier — Fri, 18 May 2007 19:27:00 GMT

I'm a fan of using different techniques for improving thinking. Here's a write-up on Six Thinking Hats. This book presents a simple and effective thinking framework. What I like about the approach is that it's both effective for individuals as well as a team. What I also like about the approach is that rather than focus on trying to change personalities, it creates a way for different personalities to play well together. Imagine the time you'll save in meetings!

Because Six Thinking Hats uses the hats as a metaphor, nobody gets a label. Instead, the entire team can put on the relevant hat for the task at hand: white, red, black, yellow, green, or blue. Imagine the surprises you get when the dominantly data-driven put on their green hats and get creative. Better yet, imagine what happens when the overly optimistic put on their black hats and play the "devil's advocate"?

What's interesting is this type of mode switching already happens. For example, in security we use white hats and black hats. On my team, I often ask, "what's your gut say" to tap into intuition and emotions. If I see the team too optimisitic, I ask "why won't this work?".

I think having a simple set of metaphorical hats and rules for the game will really help improve thinking and collaboration, and avoid the stale-mates that can often happen in meetings. As the author puts it, you "think your way forward versus judge your way forward."