Today’s Session: Today’s Sponsor:

Business
Impact & the
Human Brain:
Hidden Perspectives
that Impact Profit

May 16, 2012

Tips for the Webinar:

Tweeting? Please use this tag: #NeuroBusiness

(800) 263-6317 or (805) 690-5753

Today’s Speaker:
Dr. Srini Pillay, M.D.
CEO
NeuroBusiness Group

• Specialist in the brain science of business

• Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical

School

• Invited Faculty, Harvard Business School

• Helps companies reach their goals by coaching strategy

acceleration, change management, innovation, sales
optimization and stress management

• Author, “Life Unlocked: 7 Revolutionary Lessons to

Overcome Fear”
Business Impact and The Human Brain
Hidden Perspectives that Impact Profits©
by
Srini Pillay, M.D.
CEO: NeuroBusiness Group (NBG)
Assistant Clinical Professor: Harvard Medical School
Invited Faculty: Harvard Business School
Award-winning author: Life Unlocked: 7 Revolutionary Lessons to Overcome Fear
Author: Your Brain and Business: The Neuroscience of Great Leaders
 Focus
Why brain science matters in business
Since we cannot change reality, let
us change the eyes that see reality.
Nikos Kazantzakis
THE EYES
THE BRAIN
 Three aspects
 How the brain processes information in your
strategic vision

 The difference between listening and learning:

how this impacts your brain and budget

 How fear, uncertainty and risk impact the brain

during times of economic volatility
How the brain processes information in your
strategic vision
What percent of business strategies
are successfully executed?

A. 10%
B. 30%
C. 50%
D. 70%
E. 90%
 Strategic speed
Only 30% of business strategies are successfully
executed and of those that are most CEOs
believe the process is too slow (Davis et al.
2010)
 Vision
Statement

Plight of Leaders
 Vision
Statement

Plight of Leaders
 Vision
Statement

Plight of Leaders
 CONSCIOUS LEADERSHIP
Only 30 percent of strategic initiatives are
successfully executed. Of those that are, most CEOs
view the process as too slow.
 CONSCIOUS LEADERSHIP
Only 30 percent of strategic initiatives are
successfully executed. Of those that are, most CEOs
view the process as too slow.

UNCONSCIOUS LEADERSHIP
 CONSCIOUS LEADERSHIP
Only 30 percent of strategic initiatives are
successfully executed. Of those that are, most CEOs
view the process as too slow.

UNCONSCIOUS LEADERSHIP
 Execution requires instantaneous recall and
effective learning
 Fear, uncertainty and risk impact execution
 NeuroNugget
 When execution is too slow, consider
unconscious obstacles that may be
holding people back

 Specifically, understanding the conscious

and unconscious processes of clarity,
unity and agility is critical to enhance
strategic speed
The Difference Between Listening and Learning:
How this impacts your brain and budget
Do you spend your money on inspiring
workshops that have too nebulous an
impact on the company as a whole?
 Training budgets
 UK: 93% of companies plan to maintain or
increase their budgets over the next 12
months (Skillsoft, 2012)

 US Federal agencies: $5 billion for training

(Overman, 2009)

 6.6% of CEOs: ROI

Re-examining training from a brain perspective
 Delivery ≠
Goal achievement
Why do learning programs seldom deliver
what is expected?
 Current approach
 Rapid instructional design

 SME

 Customized Training

 Technology and automation

When It Does Not Work
 New content

 New training modality

 Preferable
 Learning specific training

 Brain-directed learning
Stages of Learning
Stages of Learning
Stage 1: Listening
Stage 2: Short-term memory
Stage 3: Long-term memory
Stage 4: Compressed file
 Effective Training
 Information must be retrievable (at
least stage 4)

 Spontaneous recall

 Prepared for action: switch-cost

 Action-based learning
 Practical Significance
 Learning must be designed to be
relevant and easily retrieved

 Repetition

 Intrinsic motivation

 Commercial (Ashley-Timms, 2012)

How often does training translate
into lasting change for your
organization?
A. Always
B. Often
C. Sometimes
D. Rarely
E. Never
 NBG: Link-n-Lock

Workshop Strategy
 Example: Sales
Sales are suboptimal

How much of your resources do you want

to invest in sales training vs. training
innovation on teams for a new product in
the pipeline?
 Example: Sales
 Sales training on effective customer
relationships and experience (empathy:
cognitive and emotional)

 Sales training on team alignment (collective

intelligence)

 Sales training on conscious and unconscious

factors that impact motivation
NBG: Built to Last
 Example: Sales
 How will you ensure that your sales managers
and frontline workers remember what they
learned?

 How will you ensure that they retrieve

information when it is relevant to do so?
 NeuroNugget
 Training is likely to be effective only
when it is relevant, digestible and
retrievable
 Understanding how the brain learns
is crucial to the effective delivery
and implementation of human
capital development
 Example
 The brain has an inverted U-shaped
response to learning under stress

 The brain is prone to decision-making

biases: e.g. prudence, sunk-cost

 Under high-risk situations, there are five

brain-based processes of learning to
increase corporate agility
How fear, uncertainty and risk impact the brain
during times of economic volatility
Fear and The Human Brain
 Basic Principle

O msec 1O msec 3O msec 150 msec

 Basic Principle

O msec 1O msec 3O msec 150 msec

Nothing Unconscious Conscious

Condition 1
Conscious Fear

150 msec

Low Profit
High attrition
General economy
Home life is difficult
Next round of cutbacks
 Amygdala Activation

150 msec

Low Profit
High attrition
General economy
Home life is difficult
Next round of cutbacks
Amygdala
Condition 2
Unconscious Fear

<30 msec
What types of unconscious fears come up in
crisis?
 Amygdala Activation

30 msec

Death
Failure
Success
Condition 3
Cortical Blindness

150 msec
Cortically Blind

150 msec
Why does this matter?

Amygdala connects to frontal lobe

- Attention
- Decision-making
- Risk-reward assessments
- Innovation
So what?
Do you have a systematic
intervention in place to increase
productivity when stress or anxiety
is high?
A. Yes
B. Somewhat
C. No
Practical Significance

Amygdala connects to frontal lobe

- Attention
- Decision-making
- Risk-reward assessments
- Innovation
Practical Significance

Amygdala connects to frontal lobe

- Attention
- Decision-making
- Risk-reward assessments
- Innovation
Amygdala Interventions
 PFC Interventions
Safe FRAME

•Re-Solve existing conflicts

•Re-Assess the situation
•Re-Focus after a brief rest
•Re-Engage relevant people
•Re-Frame the problem and solutions
Examples
 Brain Message 1
I must innovate but my budget is
restricted

vs.

How do people with restricted budgets

innovate?
 Brain Message 2
I have diminished resources

vs.

I need to leverage my diminished resources

effectively
Brain Message 3
ATTENTIONAL UNITS IN THE BRAIN
 THREAT

FEAR

ATTENTIONAL UNITS IN THE BRAIN

 Budget cuts
THREAT Being fired

FEAR

ATTENTIONAL UNITS IN THE BRAIN

 Innovation
THREAT Growth

REFOCUS

ATTENTIONAL UNITS IN THE BRAIN

 Brain Message 4

IRONIC PROCESS THEORY

(Wegner, 2009)
 Message Packaging
I MUST NOT MESS UP ON THIS
PROJECT
vs.
I MUST FOCUS ON GETTING THIS
RIGHT
 Examples
 White Bear Suppression Inventory

 Soccer Players Trying to Score a Penalty

 Forbidden Romance

 Yips

 Red wine
Brain Message 4
What is impossibility?

Inability to conceive of or
imagine a situation
 4:03.6
3:59.4

Roger Bannister
 Main Lessons
 Things change as you get closer to your goal

 Once you believe something is possible, you

try harder
 Main Lessons
 Things change as you get closer to your goal

 Once you believe something is possible, you

try harder
 Relevance
 Are your leaders, managers and
frontline workers effectively trained
to identify and deal with conscious
and unconscious fears?

 Can they use this training to apply

practically to their work?
 NeuroNuggets
 Conscious and unconscious fears
affect how you frame brain messages

 Learning how to frame brain

messages to your unconscious is
critical for new action and change
Uncertainty and Risk and The Human Brain
A B
 A B

Uncertainty Certainty
 A B

Uncertainty Certainty

75% overestimated
how often they would see
aversive pictures
 A B

Uncertainty Certainty

Disgust and conflict

Sarinopoulos , et al. 2010 Cereb. Cortex
 NeuroNuggets
 Uncertainty distorts judgments and
makes you more negative

 This presents to you as reality

 Making controllable things more certain

changes your brain lens
Overall Conclusions
 Clarity
Unity
Agility

Brain-based strategic speed

Link-n-Lock

Action-based learning

Built-to-Last

Brain-based learning
Brain-based management of
fear, stress, uncertainty
 Q&A

Contact:
info@neurobusinessgroup.com

www.neurobusinessgroup.com
Upcoming Webinars:
• May 22: Leading Enterprise-Wide Change:
Inspiration to Implementation

• May 31: The Case for Live Virtual Training

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Thank You!

 On behalf of Training Industry, Inc., thanks to:

 Today’s Speaker: Dr. Srini Pillay

 Today’s Sponsor: NeuroBusiness Group

 All of you for attending

 Questions or Comments? Please contact Tim Sosbe:

tsosbe@trainingindustry.com