of your time doing
▪ you feel you have enough time and energy at the end of the day to devote to those things that give you pleasure and mean most to you.
Media business commentators such as Alan Kohler in Australia love to discuss the reasons why various businesses are or are not performing well. A commentator will note the links between profit margins, profit forecasts and ASX performance, but until fairly recently there has been little research into which specific elements of human behaviour contribute to high performance.
A study published by the Society for Knowledge Economics in 2011 revealed some fascinating insights into what makes the biggest difference to how well a business performs. Cutting through all the business-speak, Steven Vamos, President of the Society for Knowledge Economics, summarised their findings nicely:
The study shows that leaders in higher performing organisations prioritise people management as a key priority, involve their people in decision making processes; are more responsive to customer and stakeholder needs; encourage a high degree of responsiveness to change and learning orientation, and enable their staff to fully use their skills and abilities at work.
High performing organisations are not just much more profitable and productive, they also perform better in many important “intangible attributes”, such as encouraging innovation, leadership of their people, and creating a fair workplace environment.
From the survey of 5601 employees from 78 Australian organisations who participated in this study, it was revealed that the highest performing workplaces enjoyed a 12 per cent higher level of productivity, which translated into a profit margin roughly three times higher than found in low-performing workplaces.
The key differences were all derived from human interaction and behaviour.
How we think and how we work as a consequence are hugely influenced by our mood, health and interactions with others.
The currency of the digi-age is our mental capital and wellbeing. We have lived through a number of different eras: the agricultural age, the industrial age, the technological age – and now we sit squarely in the Age of Appquarius. It's also the age of the brain and thinking, when the human brain will differentiate itself through imagination, innovation and creativity.
Today it's important to ask what changes you wish to see, and how you can achieve them in the context of understanding that:
▪ change is hard and the brain resists it
▪ effective change in a global economy requires all of our social, emotional and cultural intelligences to work collaboratively
▪ changing how we relate to and communicate with others at an interpersonal level is required to boost collaboration.
This is why organisational health and intelligence must be managed now for organisational survival. Economic conditions are tight, the marketplace is noisy with increasing global competition, and confidence remains low. We can't imagine the speed at which our future brain will operate, or the speed of future change. But the pace of change will continue to challenge us, so we will have to adapt fast, and in the right way to keep up.
What we do know about change is this:
▪ It's happening all around us. It is normal, expected and often desired.
▪ It's neverending. Change invariably leads to further change.
▪ It's tiring. Too often, change strategy takes a lot of effort and distracts from other important work on hand, which can lead to change fatigue.
▪ It isn't always for the good. Knowing how to differentiate the good from the bad or the ugly is sometimes hard, and it can often not be determined until tested. There will always be an element of risk involved.
▪ It can be hard work.
However, change is essential as an adaptive process that leads to growth and opportunity. People sometimes talk about change management, but change isn't ‘managed’ at all. It is chaotic and ever evolving. Instead of managing it we need to lead it – and to lead it courageously.
While change has always been with us, its trajectory and pace have reached levels never previously experienced. That's not to say we can't keep up, but we do face a big challenge. Every generation reflects fondly on ‘the good old days’, when the world was simpler and moved at a slower pace. The reality is that people in the good old days would have felt the pressures of change too.
Just how much the pace of change has accelerated is reflected in the fact that the average person has more information at their fingertips today than the president of the United States had 20 years ago. The Ten Pound Poms took six weeks to reach Australia by boat. Today the flight between London and Perth takes around 19 hours. First-class post was deemed worth the extra cost of getting your letter to its destination a day or so sooner. Today we exchange information and news in a matter of seconds with just a few keystrokes.
That's why going back to the basics of understanding how to create a fit and healthy brain has to be the starting point of any new development. Getting the foundations right first (see figure A) means it's then far easier to evolve towards operational excellence.
Figure A : the three parts of a high-performance brain
Part I of Future Brain (the first four chapters) is devoted to creating a high-performance brain based on the key lifestyle choices of nutrition, exercise, sleep and flexing our mental muscle.
Part II examines how to operate a high-performance brain by addressing how we focus, how we can actively choose our mindset, how to stress ‘right’ and how to notice more.
In part III we look at how our relationships integrate our understanding of how to be more changeable, innovative, collaborative and effective in leading others and ourselves.
The benefits of creating our own high-performance brain include regaining a sense of control, better managing our time, and gaining a greater sense of achievement and overall happiness. Being simply happy – not deliriously ecstatic, but rather experiencing a quiet contentment connecting us to a deeper sense of purpose and meaning (see figure B) – is no longer such a common experience.
Figure B : getting to a high-performance brain
If you are aware that you are not performing at your best, or you want to increase your brain's ability to engage and innovate, this book is designed to assist you in your strategic thinking. You have been smart enough to come this far, so you are already on the right path to high-performance thinking!
My hope is that this book will open your eyes to the wonder and magic of your own brain (see figure C). While the 12 keys will be explored separately, each adds synergistically to the others. Not every key will be of equal relevance to you. Once you have established the foundations of a brain-healthy lifestyle, I suggest you focus on those elements you believe will most help you to create, operate and enjoy the benefits of a high-performance brain. It is your choice. Yours.
Remember,
