Harvard Business Review

Diane

Excellent question!

My perspective is that its not just about business leaders taking initiative to reach out to neuro/cognitive scientists or the other way round. It is about how multi-disciplinary one's education is. The current practice of not venturing beyond the narrowly defined set of subjects is the culprit.

Depth is necessary,and so is focus, but the lack of even basic awareness of other fields severely restricts the vocabulary with which one cognizes and articulates life.

Amongst programmers, there is a practice to learn one new programming language every year. Similarly business leaders should learn one new topic, preferably not connected directly to their field of work. That should broaden perspectives enough.

Again, thanks for the thought provoking post!

Diane,
I think collaboration across disciplines is sorely lacking in many fields where the benefits could be truly mind blowing. There is a lack of imagination and a "grindstone" approach to work across the boards that kills creative juices too early for folks dedicated to one field or another to look up and out vs. down and in. People's perception of time is as important as anything. We see work as a race - and he who slows down will surely be the loser. Policies in schools like No Child Left Behind don't help orient young people to think beyond the specifics of testing. So yes, I think exploring collaboration is an investment worth pursuing - particularly with respect to neuroscience. Why? Because one of the things that collectively "we don't know" is how people really learn. It is the "How we learn" race that impacts progress as much as anything. We are so far from understanding how the brain really works - but we should clearly use what is being discovered, and all fields, including business, could benefit.

Enjoyed the blog - good for you for jumping into the fray.
Janet Banks

I think there is value for business in funding such research projects, to better understand our consumers and how/why they respond the way they do and to understand the underlying neuro-dymanimcs, so that we can adjust our positioning.

Daine;
This is the topic I used to ponder upon very frequently and want to do something personally. As of now leadership thinkers / researchers / experimenters and brain scientists (Neurologists) and behavior scientists / learning experts all are working in their own domain very efficiently. All of their work is ‘Siloed’ and either they are working in their soils or a little expanding it without including the expert of the ‘ expanded silo’.
Sooner the convergence will happen the magical orchestra will start functioning to benefit all the fields and humanity as a whole. I think for proper convergence, experts should converge from one point (read topic). I have two research topics and two experts in my mind. Their work can be taken forward for further research by neurologist.
Two experts are Howard Gardener and WJ Reddin and their works are Multiple Intelligence and 3D leadership effectiveness grid (from Managerial Effectiveness) respectively,

Before Howard Gardener’s research ‘human intelligence’ was taken as one dimension. With his MI concept, Howard broke it into 8 different types of intelligences. So instead of calling a person is ‘Smart’, you have better way to explain that the person is ‘Logically’ or ‘Socially’ very smart. Here relating it to brain, we can infer that depending upon the ‘brains structure’ (a neurologist will have better word) capability of person should be judged and according to his suitability for the job, responsibilities can be defined under organization structure.
Seems nice – A neurologist will have a say in recruitment, promotion etc. and will suggest medication/ activity for aligning brain (competency as of now) and preparing the person for new responsibility.

WJ Reddin’s work on Managerial effectiveness challenges the conventional wisdom of Leadership. Normally we say a person is leader or non leader. As per 3D grid of Reddin, everyone has leadership quality as there are as numerous leadership styles. It says like my leadership quality is different from yours. You are good administrator and I am a good executive. We both are good in our field of leadership. Here again I think wiring in brain is important factor along with learning style and effect of external environment. All these are directly related to brain’s functioning.
So if a neurologist gives his research report about leadership style and brain, intelligence type and brain, learning style and brain. The things will move in proper direction and probably will spread quickly in the field of brain mapping for recruitment, situational management and brain’s food/activity, engineering of brain for a particular job etc.

I agree with you Diane. All disciplines need to cooperate in an effort to find solutions. One problem doesn't have a single origin. The brain is the most crucial part of a human being. It's our control center, and without it, nothing functions any more.
I work with people who have Alzheimer's disease. It's a progressive degeneration of the neurones, and as a result, they lose all the faculties that we take for granted every day. They don't remember how to dress themselves, they don't know how to hold a cup of tea. Eventually, it leads to a slow death after living like a "vegetable" for a while.
The brain is so important, and yet we know very little about it. And what about the soul? What's the relationship between the soul and the brain? Does a person with Alzheimer regain all his faculties once the soul exits the body? If one believes in life after death, this is an interesting question. If the brain stores all our memories, and is the center of our intellect and consciousness, maybe this knowledge gets passed on to the spiritual world in some kind of "thumbdrive".
These are questions that really puzzle me, and if anyone out there has any answers, please let me know…

Thank you all for your contributions. Mahash, I strongly agree with you that we all need multidisciplinary education more than ever. The Oxbridge approach in Britain, where students get a generalist education in subjects such as politics, philosophy and economics, is a wonderful way to broaden one’s learning. The problem is that the revolution in the neurosciences is happening so quickly that it virtually demands a complete absorption in the sciences. It’s become almost impossible for non-scientists to do more than dabble in the neurosciences. That’s why I think it’s so important for people like Hyman to make their ideas accessible to non-scientists.

A lot is at stake. As you point out, Isabell, the neurosciences are calling into question some of our fundamental assumptions about consciousness, individual and social responsibility, and what our grandfather’s liked to call soul. Law, for instance, is predicated upon intentionality. But if Hyman is correct when he says that the changes in addicts’ brains severely compromise their freedom of choice, then how are we to judge addicts in a court of law? Do we need new categories for assessing culpability: murder, manslaughter - and addiction to drugs? That’s a slippery slope!

To take a more pragmatic view for the moment, I share your hope Venkat that the neurosciences may help us understand our consumers better. That’s the aspiration of the neuromarkers. Unfortunately, the impact of neuroscience even on marketing has been very limited to date. Neuroeconomics is perhaps the area where there has been the greatest advances, but even here it is not obvious what the impact will be on actual decision makers in organizations.

Posted by Diane Coutu

Diane:

Your discussion of the need dramatically to increase interaction between leaders and neuroscientists has reminded me of the work of one of the most effective interdisciplinary thinkers of the 20th century -- the late Elliot Jaques. While I didn't agree with everything that I read of Jaques's work, I always found the breadth of his perspective intellectually challenging and provoking in a constructive way. He joined psychoanalysis, organizational research, and business knowledge. His iconoclastic conclusions in "Requisite Organization" forced many of us practicing and teaching leadership development in business to step back and consider our underlying assumptions about developing people for leadership roles in large-scale organizations.

I believe similar benefits -- if only to "awaken us from our dogmatic slumber" -- can be and should be derived from interdisciplinary interaction between leaders in all sectors of society and leaders in business.

One of the most effective business leaders I have ever encountered is Guy L. ("Bud") Tribble, who is an M.D and Ph.D. in biophysics and physiology. He was also a concert-level pianist. He led the development of the Mac and NeXTstep operating systems (now OS X). Bud's power as a leader of complex systems development was a function of his breadth and depth of knowledge in all fields in which he was expert. More leaders should have similar intellectual scope.

A second example is the late J. Irwin Miller, essentially the founder of Cummins, Inc. Mr. Miller read Latin and Greek, played a Stradivarius violin, led the architectural development of Columus, IN, participated in an array of charitable activities, and encouraged executives in Cummins to emulate his behavior. Moreover, he gave them the time and resources to do so, while they led the company he developed.

Interdisciplinary conversations open minds and expose new solutions to intractable problems. I can't begin to list what might be in my notebook of things I don't know and want to learn. However, I know that many of the gaps can best be filled by talking to tough people who care a lot about things that are hard to understand -- and who are from areas way outside my personal array of disciplines.

Phil Wilson

Recently there have been a number of books on behavioural economics. These explain that we are not always rational. Moreover, we are irrational in predictable ways. This has implications for a range of issues such as whether we give people the choice of opting in or opting out of programmes such as health insurance.

Until recently, we knew about our irrationality, but we did not know why. Neuroscience is starting to help us understand why we have an aversion to loss or why we are optimistic when we have high uncertainty. If we can get to the point of understanding why, the implications are going to be profound. I don't think it will matter whether Immelt has neursoscientists at Crotonville or not. HBR will be broadcasting the implications widely enough to affect us all.

One tentative conclusion from neuroscience is that we make decisions primarily through our emotional processes and use our reasoning processes to adjust from our emotional gut choice only if there is a strong rational reason to do so. This has huge implications for leadership and for the question Tom Stewart is asking in his blog about what leaders need to know.

As an aside, research I have been involved in on collaboration showed us that managers (probably all humans) have a surprising habit of reading negative implications into the behaviour of others, especially when the behaviour does not conform to expectations. I recently found a possible explanation for this from the Savanna Hypothesis. Because, on the African savanna, we suffered much more from Type 2 errors (presuming something surprising is benign when it is not) than Type 1 errors (presuming something is dangerous when it is not), we have a bias towards presuming the negative. This hypothesis, that we have a bias towards paranioia, ought to be possible for neuroscientist to confirm or refute. If confirmed it has huge implications for how we interact with our fellow humans.

Diane,
This is my second entry under this blog page. I have few observations about the discussion.
I think that a proper dialogue between neurologists and management theorist is essentially a requirement now. Everyone who is giving his/her opinion here is presuming it. So need is very much there and we don't need any 'proof of concept'.

So moving forward, we can discuss about how to approach. Historically this type of symphonies had happened (between two study field) but before reaching to symphony level there had been a lot of unsynchronized voices resulting in noise during transition period.
I think we are in this phase now.
Structuring and systemizing from the top is requirement at this level. Harvard being an institute of top repute can handle the role of leader, coordinator and collaborator.
Now creation of structure of research becomes starting point. Here in my opinion, human intelligence and leadership could be two fields in which both side of theorist can collaborate and plan the output of project as: system of brain and effect on leadership, behavior, intelligence, attitude and job suitability of a person.

Diane,

The things I know nothing of are more than the sand bits of the world. It is easier for a person to say such a sentence than to fully believe it. I think in order to believe such a sentence, one has to have been around for a while and has dug deep into a field(s) she loves. Not for any reward but due to eagerness to learn more. It is only then, in my humble opinion, that one becomes truly stunned of the things she is fully ignorant of. Mohamed Idris Alshafeiey , also a well known Arabic poet once said (rough translation): “Every time life teaches me the limitations of my brain and mind. When I gain knowledge I also gain knowledge of my ignorance .”

Regarding collaboration between neuroscientists and leaders, I think it has already started. However, I hope to see more of it in the future. Companies like GM and Boeing consult with some cognitive neuroscientists and psychologists before putting there products in the market. For example Clotaire Rapaille is one such cognitive neuroscientist/psychiatrist who actually started his carrier studying autistic children. Then he decided to switch to providing such consultations. Now he provides services to 50 of the Fortune 500 companies. He believes that people are driven by unconscious needs and impulses . In an interview with PBS Rapaille said: “People have no idea why they are doing what they are doing…so they try to make up something that makes sense…Why do you need a Hummer to go shopping… in Manhatten?”. Rapaille also claims that people have unconscious associations with brands they buy. He suggested that Wrangler and Hummer models have smaller and tinted windows because he says the “code” for SUVs is domination. He also worked closely with Boeing in designing the interior of their new 77 dream liner plane.

Also, with the major advances in brain imaging modalities such as fMRI, Neuroeconomics and Neuromarketing fields are gaining more spot lights. Academic and research institutions have already established labs and academic collaboration between different departments to tackle questions in such fields; Read Montigue of Baylor College of Medicine in Texas is known for his Pepsi vs. Coca Cola human brain imaging study. Other research intitiatives to tackle questions in Neuroeconomics and Neuromarketing have been established in NYU, Duke, Stanford,CIT, and other national universities.

Neuroeconomic and Neuromarketing researchers and interested individuals have established societies (i.e. Society of Neuroeconomics) and groups for the purpose of research in these fields. However, the progress in these fields have been hampered by ethical concerns among some groups such as Commercial Alert. In 2003 Commercial Alert objected to Emory University allowing BrightHouse, a marketing consultancy, to use the university's facilities for neuromarketing research.
Finally, as imaging technology advances allowing us to dig deeper into cognition, I think one of the main obstacles that will remain in front of open and professional collaboration between business leaders and neuroscientists is the ethical concern.

I would like to go back for a moment to Narendra’s suggestion earlier in this blog that neurologists should have a say in recruitment, promotion, etc. and could “suggest medication/activity for…preparing the person for new responsibility. ” That’s not my idea of collaboration but rather my nightmare. Do we really want companies to hire neurologists who can drug employees so that they fit into some norm that supposedly better prepares them for new responsibilities? (And who defines that norm anyway – that’s one of the questions in my notebook of things I know nothing about.) Would we want to medicate all the depressives, for example? And if we did, would we at the same time be weeding out some of our more creative people? That’s another thing for my notebook. Yet Narendra raises important ethical questions. Practically speaking, how do we begin to use the knowledge that the brain sciences are turning up? Imaging already shows that parts of the brains of sociopaths light up differently than the brains of non-sociopaths. What are we supposed to do with knowledge like that? If we could fingerprint potential sociopaths, should we force them to take psychotropic drugs(or worse)? You might think that these issues are beyond the business of business. But business people are among the most influential folks in the world, and we have to weigh in on the debates that are starting to go on now in society.

Elliot Jacques is one of my heros, too, Phil. As Carlo Strenger and Arie Ruttenberg discussed in an HBR article just last month on the existential necessity of midlife change, Jacques was famous not only for coining the phrase “mid-life crisis” at 48, but for living another 40 years, proving that it’s entirely possible to reinvent yourself and to live a creative, productive life well after your mid-life crisis! And, yes, Jacques did indeed combine psychoanalysis, organizational research and business knowledge, but one wonders what kind of synthesis, if any, he could have achieved between the neurosciences and, say, psychoanalysis. Eric Kandel, a Nobel laureate in Medicine, is trying to do just that, and one suspects that it almost takes someone of that brilliance and stature to adopt a truly interdisciplinary approach nowadays. That’s because it’s virtually impossible to get your hands around the neurosciences unless you have a solid knowledge of the sciences – and even then it’s a stretch. This isn’t the place to bemoan the sorry state of the American education system (though I’d like to hear from you non-Americans) but most of us talking here in this blog (all of us?) seem to be people who are reading about the neurosciences second, third and fourth hand. It’s as if we are living in the Middle Ages, getting all our information from the priests. Does that make anyone besides me uncomfortable?