Do not read this article - danger of sustainable change!

Sensory experience of the world imprints a wiring and firing pattern in human brains, loosely referred to as 'belief'. This wiring and firing pattern is what we describe with the words 'think', 'feel' and 'act' = BTFA.

We all repeat the BTFA cycle on a regular basis, examples are;

• brushing your teeth, talking
• smoking, drinking alcohol, eating food we know to be good or bad for our long term health
• performing a business process efficiently or inefficiently, effectively or ineffectively
• arguing with your partner, justifying your own actions, making yourself right as a defence mechanism
• judging other drivers when they have done only what you've done a 100 times yourself
• demonising your boss, parents, business partner, colleague or investors without their skill set and with no experience of their role or responsibilities... etc.

Change to any such actions / reactions (i.e. habituated behaviours, thinking patterns and language) necessarily has to be a change to brain wiring and firing patterns. They are one and the same thing, separated only by the ambiguities of language.

Change to neural wiring is how a brain adapts on a constant basis. It's called 'Neurogenesis'. It's how mammalian vertebrates learn / adapt and survive in a changing environment.

For humans, that's a VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) socio-technical environment.

The rate of change a human brain is able to make, is proven to be reduced by fear based reactions to external stimulus and brain chemicals associated to stress. Cortisol depletes BDNF - which is a chemical that acts like fertiliser for the neurogenesis process.

More stress from fear = reduced ability to adapt / slower rate of change to brains / actions (and thus extended time-lines and costs to process and performance improvements).

Fear stimuli can be as mundane as 'people-process-systems' .. including training, consultants and a requirement to adopt a new bit of language.

Take the word 'Neurogenesis' ... if you don't know it and assume others do, fear based responses with roots in social approval and self concept issues from your past can turn your attention (i.e. the glucose energy powering your brain), away from the learning target and toward your defence mechanisms.

Ironically, this re-directed energy can reduce your ability to retain new information (because it powers and reinforces existing circuits in your head rather than building new ones). As a result you fail to adopt the new language (like Lean terms ...Kaizen, Kanban, Muda, TPM, SMED, Chaku Chaku, Heijunka, Jidoka, Gemba etc. etc.) and that can lead to the social disapproval you fear.

Such brain adaption processes are linked to early fear based reactions, imprinted upon the child's mind through words like ""STOP!!!"". Such language is often introduced to the child's brain by primary carers, who are trying to keep the juvenile alive long enough for it's brain to learn not to run out in front of the traffic. But this care and concern can lead to the child feeling 'wrong'.

This can establish a fear of failure that imposed KPI's can provoke, inhibiting performance in deep psychological ways.

Simply understanding such 'cause-effect' linkages between people and performance with the science to back it up is empowering and often transformational. i.e. The knowledge (new wiring pattern, if integrated into the existing wiring pattern and not rejected for complex psychological reasons) necessarily changes language / thinking and thus beliefs / actions.

E.g. Leaders come to 'believe' in inclusion and the psychological benefits of cross-functional teamwork through value streams.

By now, you're probably seeing that the BTFA model runs in all directions. (and for the well read around Lean, it may be apparent that the BTFA model provides the detail Deming sought in his SoPK model within the ToK / Psychology quadrants)

Putting Theory into practice

In multiple loss making / performance improvement situations,

• understanding brain and mind,
• linking that understanding to a psychologically informed definition of 'Culture',
• using that definition to inform an emotionally mature approach to strategy deployment and
• the approach taken toward change management for performance improvement,

has led to sustainable turn-around & continuous improvement (where industry standard approaches have repeatedly failed).

When it comes to brain and mind, we must build knowledge foundations first without triggering a fear response. To do this, and where leaders are sufficiently open to something new, (i.e. their defences don't make something new, wrong), I like to take the following steps when being asked to support organisational change initiatives for bottom line improvement;

1. Brain 2. Mind 3. Culture 4. Change Management 5. Application to business critical initiatives.

This is of course 'backwards' compared to popular approach's in the market, where 'Quick wins' and bottom line benefit (to justify the consulting fee's) demand an immediate solution to business critical issues, through the application of tools and techniques...

Such 'Critical issues' have often evolved over time, as a result of leadership beliefs and behaviours, that the application of tools on the shop-floor fail to address.

In summary, A short term fix is good for a short term problem, but when your problems are long term, you need a long term solution ... and that takes a little more thought, effort, a different language, (uncommon to the current toolbox) and some personal reflection.

If this makes sense and you'd like more information about a deeper approach to sustainable organisational performance improvement, feel free to get in touch.