Articles

The Neuroscience of Leadership

Breakthroughs in brain research explain
how to make organizational transformation succeed.

By David Rock and Jeffrey Schwartz

Mike is the CEO of a multinational pharmaceutical company, and he’s in trouble. With the patents
on several key drugs due to expire soon, his business desperately needs to become more
entrepreneurial, particularly in its ability to form internal and external partnerships to reduce time-
to-market. Yet his organization has a silo mentality, with highly competitive teams secretly working
against one another. How can Mike change the way thousands of people at his company think
and behave every day?

Businesses everywhere face this kind of problem: Success isn’t possible without changing the
day-to-day behavior of people throughout the company. But changing behavior is hard, even for
individuals, and even when new habits can mean the difference between life and death. In many
studies of patients who have undergone coronary bypass surgery, only one in nine people, on
average, adopts healthier day-to-day habits. The others’ lives are at significantly greater risk
unless they exercise and lose weight, and they clearly see the value of changing their behavior.
But they don’t follow through. So what about changing the way a whole organization behaves?
The consistently poor track record in this area tells us it’s a challenging aspiration at best.
During the last two decades, scientists have gained a new, far more accurate view of human
nature and behavior change because of the integration of psychology (the study of the human
mind and human behavior) and neuroscience (the study of the anatomy and physiology of the
brain). Imaging technologies such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron
emission tomography (PET), along with brain wave analysis technologies such as quantitative
electroencephalography (QEEG), have revealed hitherto unseen neural connections in the living
human brain. Advanced computer analysis of these connections has helped researchers develop
an increasing body of theoretical work linking the brain (the physical organ) with the mind (the
human consciousness that thinks, feels, acts, and perceives).

The implications of this new research are particularly relevant for organizational leaders. It is now
clear that human behavior in the workplace doesn’t work the way many executives think it does.
That in turn helps explain why many leadership efforts and organizational change initiatives fall
flat. And it also helps explain the success of companies like Toyota and Springfield
Remanufacturing Corporation, whose shop-floor or meeting-room practices resonate deeply with
the innate predispositions of the human brain.

Managers who understand the recent breakthroughs in cognitive science can lead and influence
mindful change: organizational transformation that takes into account the physiological nature of
the brain, and the ways in which it predisposes people to resist some forms of leadership and
accept others. This does not imply that management — of change or anything else — is a
science. There is a great deal of art and craft in it. But several conclusions about organizational
change can be drawn that make the art and craft far more effective. These conclusions would
have been considered counterintuitive or downright wrong only a few years ago. For example:

1.Change is pain. Organizational change is unexpectedly difficult because it provokes
sensations of physiological discomfort.

2.Behaviorism doesn’t work. Change efforts based on incentive and threat (the carrot and the stick)
rarely succeed in the long run.

3.Humanism is overrated. In practice, the conventional empathic approach of connection and
persuasion doesn’t sufficiently engage people.

4.Focus is power. The act of paying attention creates chemical and physical changes in the
brain.

5.Expectation shapes reality. People’s preconceptions have a significant impact on what they
perceive.

6.Attention density shapes identity. Repeated, purposeful, and focused attention can lead to
long-lasting personal evolution.

Change Is Pain

“Why do people resist change so stubbornly, even when it’s in their own interest?” wonder CEOs
like Mike. Changing the way others go about their work is harder than he has expected. New
advances in neuroscience provide insight into why change can be so difficult, and there are
several key findings.

The first has to do with the nature of human memory and its relationship to conscious attention.
Working memory — the brain’s “holding area,” where perceptions and ideas can first be
compared to other information — is frequently engaged when people encounter something new.
When you see a new product on a supermarket shelf and rationally compare its benefits to a
product you already use, it’s your working memory that takes in the new information and matches
it against the old. This kind of memory activates the prefrontal cortex, an energy-intensive part of
the brain.

The basal ganglia, on the other hand, are invoked by routine, familiar activity, like putting an
often-purchased product into a supermarket cart without consciously paying attention, and
perhaps without later remembering having picked it out. This part of the brain, located near the
core, is where neural circuits of long-standing habit are formed and held. It requires much less
energy to function than working memory does, in part because it seamlessly links simple
behaviors from brain modules that have already been shaped by extensive training and
experience.

The basal ganglia can function exceedingly well without conscious thought in any routine activity.
In contrast, working memory fatigues easily and can hold only a limited amount of information “on
line” at any one time. Therefore, any activity conducted repetitively (to the point of becoming a
habit) will tend to get pushed down into the basal ganglia, the habit-center part of the brain. This
frees up the processing resources of the prefrontal cortex.

After just a few months of learning to drive a car, people can typically drive “without thinking.” If
they then try to drive on the other side of the road, say in another country, the act of driving
suddenly becomes much more difficult. The prefrontal cortex must now be used to keep track of
the action. Many travelers never want to undergo this experience. Similarly, for those used to an
automatic transmission, the first time driving a car with a standard transmission can be a nerve-
wracking experience. (Indeed, the basal ganglia area operates like an automatic transmission,
shifting among patterns of deeply held thought.)

The same cognitive dynamics come into play when people face other types of stressful
experiences, including any strategic or organizational change. Much of what managers do in the
workplace — how they sell ideas, run meetings, manage others, and communicate — is so well
routinized that the basal ganglia are running the show. Trying to change any hardwired habit
requires a lot of effort, in the form of attention. This often leads to a feeling that many people find
uncomfortable. So they do what they can to avoid change.

The second reason change is hard relates to basic brain functioning. Human brains have evolved
a particularly strong capacity to detect what neuroscientists call “errors”: perceived differences
between expectation and actuality. When a child (or an adult, for that matter) is promised a
sweet-tasting treat and then discovers it tastes salty or bitter, the brain emits strong signals that
use a lot of energy, showing up in imaging technology as dramatic bursts of light. Edmund Rolls
first illustrated this at Oxford University in the early 1980s, with a study involving monkeys. Dr.
Rolls found that “errors” in the environment produced intense bursts of neural firing, markedly
stronger than the firing caused by familiar stimuli.

These error signals are generated by a part of the brain called the orbital frontal cortex. Located
above the eyeballs, it is closely connected to the brain’s fear circuitry, which resides in a structure
called the amygdala. (The amygdala is the source of the “amygdala hijack,” the sudden and
overwhelming fear or anger response described in layman’s terms by Daniel Goleman in his
popular book Emotional Intelligence.) The amygdala and the orbital frontal cortex are among the
oldest parts of the mammal brain, remnants of evolutionary history. When these parts of the brain
are activated, they draw metabolic energy away from the prefrontal region, which promotes and
supports higher intellectual functions. The prefrontal region is particularly well developed in
humans, and doesn’t exist at all below the higher primates. Error detection signals can thus push
people to become emotional and to act more impulsively: Animal instincts take over.
People with the syndrome known as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have error detection
circuits that have gone into overdrive. Their orbital frontal cortex sends a constant, incorrect
message that something is wrong (“My hands are dirty”). The individual knows, on one level, that
the message is incorrect. But the alarm is so compelling, it’s hard to resist trying to fix the
situation (“I must wash my hands”), so the person keeps trying to fix it. The more the individual
tries to fix it, the more entrenched those neural circuits become in the basal ganglia; any
immediate “solution” (washing hands) reinforces the entrenched circuitry, making the problem
worse. Even among people without OCD, just trying to change a routine behavior sends out
strong messages in the brain that something is not right. These messages grab the individual’s
attention, and they can readily overpower rational thought.

It takes a strong will to push past such mental activity — and the same is true on the level of
organizational change. Try to change another person’s behavior, even with the best possible
justification, and he or she will experience discomfort. The brain sends out powerful messages
that something is wrong, and the capacity for higher thought is decreased. Change itself thus
amplifies stress and discomfort; and managers (who may not, from their position in the hierarchy,
perceive the same events in the same way that subordinates perceive them) tend to
underestimate the challenges inherent in implementation.

Behaviorism Doesn’t Work

Many existing models for changing people’s behavior are drawn from a field called behaviorism.
The field emerged in the 1930s and was led by psychologist B.F. Skinner and advertising
executive John B. Watson, building on Ivan Pavlov’s famous concept of the conditioned
response: Associate the ringing of a bell with food, and a dog can be made to salivate at the
sound. The behaviorists generalized this observation to people, and established an approach to
change that has sometimes been caricatured as: “Lay out the M&Ms.” For each person, there is
one set of incentives — one combination of candy colors — that makes the best motivator.
Present the right incentives, and the desired change will naturally occur. If change doesn’t occur,
then the mix of M&M colors must be adjusted.

Yet there is plenty of evidence from both clinical research and workplace observation that change
efforts based on typical incentives and threats (the carrot and the stick) rarely succeed in the long
run. For example, when people routinely come late to meetings, a manager may reprimand them.
This may chasten latecomers in the short run, but it also draws their attention away from work
and back to the problems that led to lateness in the first place. Another manager might choose to
reward people who show up on time with public recognition or better assignments; for those who
are late, this too raises anxiety and reinforces the neural patterns associated with the habitual
problem. Yet despite all the evidence that it doesn’t work, the behaviorist model is still the
dominant paradigm in many organizations. The carrot and stick are alive and well.

Humanism Is Overrated

The next big field to emerge in psychology after behaviorism was the humanist movement of the
Sirius Meetings www.siriusmeetings.com 434-977-8400 email: info@siriusmeetings.com
1950s and 1960s. Also called the person-centered approach, the field was inspired by such
thinkers as Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow. This school of thought assumed that self-esteem,
emotional needs, and values could provide leverage for changing behavior. The prevailing model
of humanist psychology involved helping people reach their potential through self-actualization —
bringing forth hidden capacities and aspirations. Therapists and trainers left behind the carrot and
stick and focused on empathy. They listened to people’s problems, attempted to understand them
on their own terms, and allowed a holistic solution to emerge.

In theory, an effective solution might well emerge from the person-centered approach. But there is
rarely time to go through this process with employees, and no guarantee that it will produce the
desired results. True self-actualization might simply lead someone to quit his or her job.

Moreover, in practice, the humanist approach leads to an emphasis on persuasion. The implicit
goal is to “get people on board” by establishing trust and rapport, and then to convince them of
the value of a change. Performance management training manuals on administering annual
appraisals often counsel managers to “deliver constructive performance feedback.” Translated
from the jargon, this means, “Politely tell people what they are doing wrong.” Though colored by
humanist intent, this approach is, in its own way, as mechanistic as behaviorism. It assumes that
if people receive correct information about what they are doing wrong, and the right incentives are
in place, they will automatically change.

But the human brain can behave like a 2-year-old: Tell it what to do and it automatically pushes
back. Partly this phenomenon is a function of homeostasis (the natural movement of any
organism toward equilibrium and away from change), but it also reflects the fact that brains are
pattern-making organs with an innate desire to create novel connections. When people solve a
problem themselves, the brain releases a rush of neurotransmitters like adrenaline. This
phenomenon provides a scientific basis for some of the practices of leadership coaching. Rather
than lecturing and providing solutions, effective coaches ask pertinent questions and support their
clients in working out solutions on their own.

The power of changing behavior by asking questions goes back to Socrates, but even the
Socratic method can backfire when it is wielded by someone in authority who is trying to convince
others of a particular solution or answer. Leslie Brothers, a psychiatrist–neuroscientist and author
of Friday’s Footprint: How Society Shapes the Human Mind, has demonstrated that the brain’s
structure predisposes us to be socially oriented. Newborns experience a form of empathy, and at
six months, well before they can speak, infants experience advanced socially oriented emotions
like jealousy. When someone tries to politely tell people what they are doing wrong and phrases
the criticism as a question (even one as seemingly innocuous as, “What made you think that
solution would work?”), subconscious alarm bells ring. People can detect the difference between
authentic inquiry and an effort to persuade them.

Neither the behaviorist perspective nor the person-centered approach has been sophisticated
enough to provide a reliable method for producing lasting behavior change in intelligent, high-
functioning workers, even when it’s in their own interest to change. It’s time we looked elsewhere.

Focus Is Power

Some of the biggest leaps in science and industry have emerged from the integration of separate
fields. When the study of electricity and of magnetism coalesced to become the science of
electromagnetism, the field gave us the electric motor and generator, which in turn sparked the
Industrial Revolution. To understand how to better drive organizational change, we turn to another
nexus, this time between neuroscience and contemporary physics.

Neurons communicate with each other through a type of electrochemical signaling that is driven
by the movement of ions such as sodium, potassium, and calcium. These ions travel through
channels within the brain that are, at their narrowest point, only a little more than a single ion
wide. This means that the brain is a quantum environment, and is therefore subject to all the
surprising laws of quantum mechanics. One of these laws is the Quantum Zeno Effect (QZE).
The QZE was described in 1977 by the physicist George Sudarshan at the University of Texas at
Austin, and has been experimentally verified many times since.

The QZE is related to the established observer effect of quantum physics: The behavior and
position of any atom-sized entity, such as an atom, an electron, or an ion, appears to change
when that entity is observed. This in turn is linked to the probabilistic nature of such entities. The
quantum laws that govern the observed behaviors of subatomic particles, and also the observed
behaviors of all larger systems built out of them, are expressed in terms of probability waves,
which are affected in specific ways by observations made upon the system. In the Quantum Zeno
Effect, when any system is observed in a sufficiently rapid, repetitive fashion, the rate at which
that system changes is reduced. One classic experiment involved observing beryllium atoms that
could decay from a high-energy to a low-energy state. As the number of measurements per unit
time increased, the probability of the energy transition fell off: The beryllium atom stayed longer in
its excited state, because the scientists, in effect, repeatedly asked, “Have you decayed yet?” In
quantum physics, as in the rest of life, a watched pot never boils.

In a 2005 paper published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (U.K.), physicist
Henry Stapp and one of the authors of this article, Jeffrey Schwartz, linked the QZE with what
happens when close attention is paid to a mental experience. Applied to neuroscience, the QZE
states that the mental act of focusing attention stabilizes the associated brain circuits.
Concentrating attention on your mental experience, whether a thought, an insight, a picture in
your mind’s eye, or a fear, maintains the brain state arising in association with that experience.
Over time, paying enough attention to any specific brain connection keeps the relevant circuitry
open and dynamically alive. These circuits can then eventually become not just chemical links but
stable, physical changes in the brain’s structure.

Cognitive scientists have known for 20 years that the brain is capable of significant internal
change in response to environmental changes, a dramatic finding when it was first made. We
now also know that the brain changes as a function of where an individual puts his or her
attention. The power is in the focus.

Attention continually reshapes the patterns of the brain. Among the implications: People who
practice a specialty every day literally think differently, through different sets of connections, than
do people who don’t practice the specialty. In business, professionals in different functions —
finance, operations, legal, research and development, marketing, design, and human resources
— have physiological differences that prevent them from seeing the world the same way.

Expectation Shapes Reality

Cognitive scientists are finding that people’s mental maps, their theories, expectations, and
attitudes, play a more central role in human perception than was previously understood. This can
be well demonstrated by the placebo effect. Tell people they have been administered a pain-
reducing agent and they experience a marked and systematic reduction in pain, despite the fact
that they have received a completely inert substance, a sugar pill. One study in 2005 by Robert
C. Coghill and others found that “expectations for decreased pain produce a reduction in
perceived pain (28.4%) that rivals the effects of a clearly analgesic dose of morphine.” Donald
Price of the University of Florida has shown that the mental expectation of pain relief accounts for
the change in pain perception. The brain’s deepest pain centers show systematic changes
consistent with changes in experienced pain.

Dr. Price and Dr. Schwartz are currently working to demonstrate that the Quantum Zeno Effect
explains these findings. The mental expectation of pain relief causes the person to repeatedly
focus his or her attention on the experience of pain relief, so that the brain’s pain-relief circuits are
activated, causing a decrease in the sensation of pain. People experience what they expect to
experience.

The fact that our expectations, whether conscious or buried in our deeper brain centers, can play
such a large role in perception has significant implications. Two individuals working on the same
customer service telephone line could hold different mental maps of the same customers. The
first, seeing customers only as troubled children, would hear only complaints that needed to be
allayed; the second, seeing them as busy but intelligent professionals, would hear valuable
suggestions for improving a product or service.

How, then, would you go about facilitating change? The impact of mental maps suggests that one
way to start is by cultivating moments of insight. Large-scale behavior change requires a large-
scale change in mental maps. This in turn requires some kind of event or experience that allows
people to provoke themselves, in effect, to change their attitudes and expectations more quickly
and dramatically than they normally would.

Mark Jung-Beeman of Northwestern University’s Institute for Neuroscience and others have
recently used fMRI and EEG technologies to study moments of insight. One study found sudden
bursts of high-frequency 40 Hz oscillations (gamma waves) in the brain appearing just prior to
moments of insight. This oscillation is conducive to creating links across many parts of the brain.
The same study found the right anterior superior temporal gyrus being activated. This part of the
brain is involved in perceiving and processing music, spatial and structural relations (such as
those in a building or painting), and other complex aspects of the environment. The findings
suggest that at a moment of insight, a complex set of new connections is being created. These
connections have the potential to enhance our mental resources and overcome the brain’s
resistance to change. But to achieve this result, given the brain’s limited working memory, we
need to make a deliberate effort to hardwire an insight by paying it repeated attention.
That is why employees need to “own” any kind of change initiative for it to be successful. The
help-desk clerk who sees customers as children won’t change the way he or she listens without a
moment of insight in which his or her mental maps shift to seeing customers as experts. Leaders
wanting to change the way people think or behave should learn to recognize, encourage, and
deepen their team’s insights.

Attention Density Shapes Identity

For insights to be useful, they need to be generated from within, not given to individuals as
conclusions. This is true for several reasons. First, people will experience the adrenaline-like rush
of insight only if they go through the process of making connections themselves. The moment of
insight is well known to be a positive and energizing experience. This rush of energy may be
central to facilitating change: It helps fight against the internal (and external) forces trying to keep
change from occurring, including the fear response of the amygdala.

Second, neural networks are influenced moment to moment by genes, experiences, and varying
patterns of attention. Although all people have some broad functions in common, in truth
everyone has a unique brain architecture. Human brains are so complex and individual that there
is little point in trying to work out how another person ought to reorganize his or her thinking. It is
far more effective and efficient to help others come to their own insights. Accomplishing this feat
requires self-observation. Adam Smith, in his 1759 masterpiece The Theory of Moral Sentiments,
referred to this as being “the spectators of our own behaviour.”

The term attention density is increasingly used to define the amount of attention paid to a
particular mental experience over a specific time. The greater the concentration on a specific idea
or mental experience, the higher the attention density. In quantum physics terms, attention
density brings the QZE into play and causes new brain circuitry to be stabilized and thus
developed. With enough attention density, individual thoughts and acts of the mind can become
an intrinsic part of an individual’s identity: who one is, how one perceives the world, and how
one’s brain works. The neuroscientist’s term for this is self-directed neuroplasticity.

You’ve probably had the experience of going to a training program and getting excited about new
ways of thinking, only to realize later that you can’t remember what the new ways of thinking
were. Were the ideas no good in the first place? Or did you just not pay enough attention? A 1997
study of 31 public-sector managers by Baruch College researchers Gerald Olivero, K. Denise
Bane, and Richard E. Kopelman found that a training program alone increased productivity 28
percent, but the addition of follow-up coaching to the training increased productivity 88 percent.

Further research is needed to help us better understand how much attention is required to
facilitate long-term change and in what kind of format the requisite training can be delivered to
foster better performance. For chronically late people, habits like carrying two timepieces — one
fast and the other accurate — or routinely trying to arrive 20 minutes early to meetings may be
effective precisely because they focus conscious attention on the improved result. With an
attention model, learning becomes possible through many media, not just in a classroom. Also,
given the small capacity of working memory, many small bites of learning, digested over time,
may be more efficient than large blocks of time spent in workshops. The key is getting people to
pay sufficient attention to new ideas, something the “e-learning” industry has struggled with.
Martin Seligman, founder of the positive psychology movement and former president of the
American Psychological Association, recently studied 47 severely depressed individuals. The
study involved two unusual components. First, participants focused their attention on things that
were proven to increase happiness — specifically, an exercise called the three blessings, in
which people wrote down three things that had gone well that day — instead of on the source or
nature of their unhappiness, which is where many mental health interventions focus. Second,
communities were allowed to form, which encouraged people to pay attention to the happiness-
inducing exercises. Depression in 94 percent of the participants dropped significantly, from
clinically severe to clinically mild-to-moderate symptoms. The impact was similar to the effects of
medication and cognitive therapy combined. Perhaps any behavior change brought about by
leaders, managers, therapists, trainers, or coaches is primarily a function of their ability to induce
others to focus their attention on specific ideas, closely enough, often enough, and for a long
enough time.

Mindful Change in Practice

How, then, can leaders effectively change their own or other people’s behavior?
Start by leaving problem behaviors in the past; focus on identifying and creating new behaviors.
Over time, these may shape the dominant pathways in the brain. This is achieved through a
solution-focused questioning approach that facilitates self-insight, rather than through advice-
giving.

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.

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.
In a world with so many distractions, and with new mental maps potentially being created every
second in the brain, one of the biggest challenges is being able to focus enough attention on any
one idea. Leaders can make a big difference by gently reminding others about their useful
insights, and thus eliciting attention that otherwise would not be paid. Behaviorists may recognize
this type of reminder as “positive feedback,” or a deliberate effort to reinforce behavior that
already works, which, when conducted skillfully, is one aspect of behaviorism that has beneficial
cognitive effect. In a brain that is also constantly pruning connections while making new ones,
positive feedback may play a key functional role as “a signal to do more of something.” As
neuroscientist Dr. Thomas B. Czerner notes, “The encouraging sounds of ‘yes, good, that’s it’
help to mark a synapse for preservation rather than pruning.”

At the organizational level, Mike wants to change the way thousands of people think. A common
approach would be to identify the current attitudes across the group through some sort of cultural
survey. The hope would be that identifying the source of the problem would help solve it. Based
on what we now know about the brain, a better alternative would be for Mike to paint a broad
picture of being more entrepreneurial, without specifically identifying the changes that individuals
will need to make. Mike’s goal should be for his people to picture the new behaviors in their own
minds, and in the process develop energizing new mental maps that have the potential to
become hardwired circuitry. Mike would then get his team to focus their attention on their own
insights, by facilitating discussions and activities that involve being entrepreneurial. After that,
Mike’s job would be to regularly provide “gentle reminders” so that the entrepreneurial maps
become the dominant pathways along which information, ideas, and energy flow. He also needs
to catch the team when they get sidetracked and gently bring them back. The power truly is in the
focus, and in the attention that is paid.

Perhaps you are thinking, “This all sounds too easy. Is the answer to all the challenges of change
just to focus people on solutions instead of problems, let them come to their own answers, and
keep them focused on their insights?” Apparently, that’s what the brain wants. And some of the
most successful management change practices have this type of principle ingrained in them.
“Open-book management,” for example, has been credited with remarkable gains at companies
like Springfield Remanufacturing, because it repeatedly focuses employees’ attention on the
company’s financial data. Toyota’s production system, similarly, involves people at every level of
the company in developing a fine-grained awareness of their processes and how to improve
them. In both of these approaches, in workplace sessions that occur weekly or even daily, people
systematically talk about the means for making things better, training their brains to make new
connections. If you took an fMRI scan of a Springfield or Toyota employee when that person
joined the company and again after 10 years on the job, the two scans might reveal very different
patterns.

Few managers are comfortable putting these principles into practice, however. Our management
models are based on the premise that knowledge is power. This “transmission” approach to
exchanging information (exemplified by lectures and textbooks, where knowledge is “transmitted”
to a passive receiver) has always been the prevailing teaching method in academia, including the
business schools that many managers attend. Since many executives assume that the teaching
methods they endured are the only teaching methods that work, it’s no small matter to consider
trying a different approach in our workplaces.

For many executives, leading others in such a new way may be a bigger change, and therefore challenge, than driving on the other side of the road.

As Peter F. Drucker said, “We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping
abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.” In the knowledge
economy, where people are being paid to think, and with constant change, there is more pressure
than ever to improve how we learn. Perhaps these findings about the brain can start to pull back
the curtain on a new world of productivity improvement: in our ability to bring about positive,
lasting change in ourselves, in our families, in our workplaces, and in society itself.

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