The Innovation Show

The first in a new project on The Innovation Show.

Hire For Neurosignature, Train for Skill: The Brain is Like a Waterbed "Autists are not just square pegs in the round hole of society. The real problem isn't the challenge of fitting them in, it's that in trying to do so we risk destroying their unique shape." — Paul Collins

The parents of an autistic young man approached a local convenience store, hoping to secure a job for their son. The retail chain manager, hesitant due to his team's lack of experience with special needs, said he would give the kid a chance. On his inaugural day, the manager tasked the young man with organizing food items by their expiration dates on a single shelf. He figured it would take him at least the whole day. To the manager's astonishment, the young man had meticulously arranged every shelf in the store in just three hours. This young man, perceived as disabled, viewed sorting produce by date as a delightful puzzle. His neurodiversity brought joy to the task and put him in a flow state. But the story doesn't end there. Harnessing the youngster's unique ability, the retailer employed him to travel between stores, solving his 'puzzles' and sorting food items. This valuable skill saved the retailer a significant amount of wastage and helped them to achieve their sustainability goals. Today, this young man earns so much that his father left his previous job to chauffeur his son (who cannot drive) around the country, solving puzzles for the retail chain.

"We all have a calling. Each one of us has a role to play on this planet. When we play the instrument that is meant for us in the orchestra of life, we will be in a constant state of bliss" - Joe Vitale

The moral of the story? Everyone has a unique place if the world gives them a chance.

Unfortunately, a story like this is scarce. The unfortunate reality was recognised best by one of the great geniuses of our times, Albert Einstein, who said, "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by Its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid". Because the work system is set up for efficiency, it caters for the majority. It is a drain on resources to cater to everyone. It is even more challenging to interview "everyone", so we hire for homogeneity. And somewhat understandably, as human resources, people officers and hiring executives are already stretched to the maximum. Companies are dealing with a tumultuous business environment. They are preoccupied with quenching multiple fires: AI, digitalisation, remote work, supply chain volatility, business model shifts, data, GDPR, inflation, housing crises, pandemics and even wars. The modern workplace is structured like a fine-cut diamond—rigid, linear, and sparkling with hierarchy. This construct, drawn from centuries of church and military organisation, may bring a semblance of order, but it simultaneously smothers the potential of those who don't fit the mould. Neurodiverse individuals can struggle in these traditional environments. Executives often overlook them (or ignore them outright) due to their distinctive ways of processing information, unique patterns of thought and behaviour, and distinctive communication styles. To ensure that these square pegs aren't shoehorned into round holes, we need to rethink the design of our workplaces. We must build environments that foster neurodiversity rather than suppress it.

The modern workplace is more like a network of networks, teams of teams, nuanced and complex. The brain works similarly; the brain is more about connection than calculation. Understanding this can help executives update the workplace. Imagine a world where everyone got to use their talents and didn't have to shore up their weaknesses and, in many cases, disguise those weaknesses. That is the focus of this week's Thursday Thought.

The Brain is like a Waterbed 

Imagine the brain as a waterbed. When one area is pushed down, or in the case of the brain, damaged, underdeveloped or overdeveloped, the other regions fill the void. This phenomenon mirrors what is known as the 'waterbed effect'. Just as the water in a waterbed redistributes when pressure is applied, the brain can restructure and adapt when certain abilities are not utilised. This isn't necessarily a sign of deficiency. On the contrary, it indicates the brain's wonderful compensatory capacities. When we neglect or underutilise some capacities, the brain develops and restructures in ways that enable us to get even greater capacity out of other aspects. Neurodiversity speaks to different types of intelligence, learning styles, communication styles, appetite for risk, openness to change and much more. When someone has a different "setting", they are not disabled. They are, as singer Danny Deardorff put it, we are all "differently abled." The people who succeed in the workplace (and education system) do so mainly because their intelligence matches the dominant paradigm or they have found ways to adapt to the mainstream (and perhaps mask their true selves).

Neurosignature: The Neurochemical Graphic Equaliser 

As a kid, I loved our family's hi-fi system. It had a record deck, cassette decks, an amplifier, a subwoofer and a graphic equaliser. They are so out of date tod that I found it difficult to find an image to illustrate what I mean, but the image above does a good job. Just as the graphic equaliser displays the signature of an audio output, I visualise the brain doing the same with the signature of our neurochemicals composition. 

"Setting up a brain-friendly workplace that is naturally attractive to all neurosignatures has wide-ranging benefits. It's far easier to reform the workplace than it is to change people. Let people play to their strengths instead of wasting energy trying to change their personalities. - Friederike Fabritius, Episode 418

One person's treasure is another's junk; what one person finds interesting is drip torture to another. What if our workplaces were crafted to harmonize everyone's unique brain patterns, or what our recent guest on the Innovation Show, Friederike Fabritius, refers to as their 'neurosignature'? Our brain structures are as unique as our fingerprints. Friederike tells us four powerful elements shape our personalities: dopamine and serotonin neurotransmitters and estrogen and testosterone hormones. These neurotransmitters are the brain's messengers between nerve cells or neurons. Like different songs on a graphic equaliser, we each display a distinct neurosignature.

High-dopamine individuals love to explore and try new things. They thrive in ambiguity and crave change. They bring humour and fun to the workplace and can be very charismatic and inspiring. They're often innovators, changemakers, inventors and entrepreneurs. They get bored easily and are always looking for the next thrilling project. These individuals are vibrant, imaginative, and spontaneous. They are also typically optimistic and generous. However, they can be reckless, susceptible to addictions and lack attention to detail. Organisations should provide them with creative freedom and autonomy to keep them engaged. They love fresh projects, regular promotions, and job mobility. Avoid stifling them with excessive routine, or they may lose their spark. High-dopamine individuals can sometimes overwhelm others with their energy, love for change, and occasional impatience.

Serotonin People high in serotonin are reliable, detail-oriented, cautious, and loyal. They thrive on routine and structure and enjoy consistency and stability.

Testosterone People high in testosterone are tough-minded, direct, and enjoy wielding power. They tend to be analytical and use systems thinking, which involves moving logically from one step to the next to solve a problem based on a system's "rules." They enjoy tinkering with "systems" such as car engines or computers.

Estrogen People high in estrogen are empathetic and good at building personal connections and community. Estrogen increases the secretion of oxytocin, which enhances feelings of bonding and trust. This neurosignature excels at nonlinear "lateral thinking," which involves examining a problem from multiple angles until insights emerge. Lateral thinkers are also good at envisioning the long-term implications of a decision.

Imagine how demoralizing and exhausting it must be for an autist to conform or someone with ADHD to engage in mundane work. Someone with a distinct neurosignature fighting their true identity all day can leave you deflated and depressed. Friederike shares some fascinating research from NeuroColor, that shows how roughly 28% of men in the general population and around 72% of women exhibit traits associated with the high-estrogen brain. The data reinforces that gender should never be used to stereotype anyone's personality or thinking style. Your gender affects your neurosignature, but it does not determine your neurosignature.

In a recent episode of the Innovation Show, our guest Charles Conn lauded the value of what he calls a "Dragonfly Eye Mindset", seeing the world through different lenses. He shares how Lawrence Fung of Stanford's Neurodiversity Project observed that successful problem solvers in Silicon Valley often show signs of being on the neurodiverse spectrum. Such individuals "have a unique ability to connect the dots, which allows them to reach conclusions quickly. Neurodiverse individuals have cognitive tendencies to look at the details first before the bigger picture, contrary to how most people dissect an issue, essentially broaching an issue from a very different lens or level."

A Final Thought "A lot of different flowers make a bouquet." -Islamic proverb The world has changed immeasurably, and societies face increasing levels of VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity). If times have changed, then the composition of the teams to master those times must change. Homogeneous teams operated well in relative stability; These groups excel at incremental change, process improvements and exploitation of an existing competitive advantage. Diverse teams, on the other hand, summon a larger set of skills and perspectives. Neurodiversity is ideal for creative innovation challenges when the future is ambiguous, and the path is non-linear. In a changing workplace, rather than hiring solely based on skill, we might consider a candidate's neurosignature. Each neurosignature brings unique strengths to the table. Hiring for neurosignature and training for skill might lead to higher workplace happiness, higher revenue and lower employee turnover.

Our guest on the Innovation Show a couple of weeks ago was Helen Edwards. Helen observes, "The more people differ in their ethnicity, gender, background, age and sexuality, the greater the likelihood that they will have encountered different marginal behaviours and life choices. Combine that with a declared celebration of diversity of thought. You will get people speaking up for those marginal behaviours in corporate decisions: innovation programmes, new product development, new market categories, new routes to growth. This enhanced diversity on the inside is one of the reasons we will see more ways to satisfy the extraordinary behavioural diversity that exists – hitherto often unrecognized – in contemporary society."

With a deliberate aim, I've sprinkled this week's Thursday Thought with quotes from a kaleidoscope of neurosignatures and sources. Yet, there's one sentiment that truly encapsulates the essence of the theme. It's from the luminous Maya Angelou, who beautifully pronounced, "In diversity, there is beauty, and there is strength."

In The Hidden Spring, our guest Mark Solms does not dive too deeply into Karl Friston's mathematics. As you will discover, he summarises its implications, describing Friston's free energy as a quantifiable measure of how a system models the world and how it behaves. This notion leads to a very different idea of consciousness from Descartes's reason-centric version that set up the puzzling dualism of "mind" and "matter", a la Damasio's Descartes Error. Mark explores the "cortical fallacy," which refers to his view that neuroscientists who have argued that the "seat of consciousness" is in the cortex are wrong. Recent neuroscience has shed light on where this is.

As Mark points out, damage to just two cubic millimetres of the upper brainstem will "obliterate all consciousness."

So where does it "Spring" from?

00:00:00 Intro

00:00:12 Teeing Up "The Cortical Fallacy" with hydranencephaly, a rare condition in which the brain's cerebral hemispheres are absent and replaced by sacs filled with cerebrospinal fluid.

00:02:37 "The Cortical Fallacy"

00:18:14 The Report-ability Problem of Consciousness

00:31:00 Chemical and Pharmacological Probes

00:37:00 1949 discovery of the Reticular Activating System

00:55:25 The Reticular Activating System: Salience, Filtering, Gratitude, Law of Attraction

00:58:00 The Mr. W joke and The Global Workspace Theory

Why does it feel like something to be alive? For one of the boldest thinkers in neuroscience, solving this puzzle has been a lifetime's quest. Now, at last, Mark Solms, who discovered the brain mechanism for dreaming, has arrived at his answer. More than just a philosophical argument, the Free Energy theory will profoundly change how you understand your existence. The very idea that a breakthrough is possible may seem outrageous. Isn't consciousness intangible, beyond the reach of empirical methods? Yet Solms shows in forensic detail how misguided assumptions have concealed its nature. Only by sticking closely to the medical facts does a way past our obstacles appear. Join him on an extraordinary voyage into the strange realms beyond and learn what we are.

In this episode, we cover this and more:

00:00:00 Intro

00:00:58 Consciousness research was frowned upon in Neuroscience

00:01:17 Mark's Sleep-Wake Cycle Research, REM Sleep

00:19:11 Oliver Sachs' Patients and Dopamine Treatments

00:30:31 The Challenge of Dopamine Medication and Loss of Motivation, ADHD, Parkinson's and More.

00:44:11 Neuro-Psychoanalysis and the case of Mr S and Confabulatory Amnesia

00:54:49 Fredu's Wishful System

01:01:12 Common Language and the Baggage of Language

01:07:19 Conclusion

The open access article authored by Mark Solms and Karl Friston: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02714/full

Part 1 of a 9-part series with the brilliant Mark Solms.

Why does it feel like something to be alive? For one of the boldest thinkers in neuroscience, solving this puzzle has been a lifetime's quest. Now, at last, Mark Solms, who discovered the brain mechanism for dreaming, has arrived at his answer. More than just a philosophical argument, the Free Energy theory will profoundly change how you understand your existence.

The very idea that a breakthrough is possible may seem outrageous. Isn't consciousness intangible, beyond the reach of empirical methods? Yet Solms shows in forensic detail how misguided assumptions have concealed its nature. Only by sticking closely to the medical facts does a way past our obstacles appear. Join him on an extraordinary voyage into the strange realms beyond and learn what we are.

If you could make a change—any change you wanted—what would it be? Would it be something in your organization or your industry? Maybe something it's in your community or throughout society as a whole? Creating true change is never easy. Most startups don't survive. Most community groups never get beyond small local actions. Even when a spark catches fire and protesters swarm the streets, it often seems to fizzle out almost as fast as it started. The status quo is, almost by definition, well entrenched and never gives up without a fight. I was MC at the fifteen seconds festival in Graz, Austria and I was joined on stage by my friend and bestselling Author, Keynote Speaker and Innovation Advisor Greg Satell. Greg suggested the topic: How to Save the World From AI. This is that conversation. After the panel, Phaedra asked about using humour to lower resistance to change. Greg suggested laughtivism.

Here is a video about laughtivism with Srdja Popovic: https://youtu.be/dAiDviKqWZI

More about

Greg Satell here: https://gregsatell.com/books/

I was MC for the tech stage at the Fifteen Seconds Festival in Graz, Austria. I had the pleasure of meeting the brilliant Phaedra Boinodiris. A fellow with the London-based Royal Society of Arts, Phaedra has focused on inclusion in technology since 1999. She is the business transformation leader for IBM's Responsible AI consulting group and serves on the leadership team of IBM's Academy of Technology. She is the author of the book "AI for the Rest of Us", and is a co-founder of the Future World Alliance, a non-profit dedicated to curating K-12 education in AI ethics. She is pursuing her PhD in AI and Ethics at University College Dublin's Smart Lab. In 2019, she won the United Nations Woman of Influence in STEM and Inclusivity Award. Women in Games International recognised her as one of the Top 100 Women in the Games Industry as she began one of the first scholarship programs in the United States for women to pursue degrees in game design and development.

Find Phaedra here: https://phaedra.ai

Helen Edwards joins us for part 2 of a 2-part episode on her book, "From Marginal to Mainstream Why Tomorrow's brand growth will come from the Fringes – and How to get there first." Her book shows why businesses, marketers and entrepreneurs need to break free from their 'mainstream inhibition' and turn their attention to the margins - to confront, evaluate and embrace the 'strangeness' of behaviours, ideas and ways of life at the fringes. Using original research and analysis of the brands that have successfully backed marginal behaviours, Helen provides a framework for understanding and evaluating this non-obvious, untapped potential. Marginal behaviours may be unpromising, untested, weird, even sometimes repulsive - yet they can point the way to the future. T

oday's margins are tomorrow's pot of gold - if you know where and how to look.

Helen Edwards joins us for part 1 of a 2-part episode on her book, "From Marginal to Mainstream Why Tomorrow's brand growth will come from the Fringes – and How to get there first." Her book shows why businesses, marketers and entrepreneurs need to break free from their 'mainstream inhibition' and turn their attention to the margins - to confront, evaluate and embrace the 'strangeness' of behaviours, ideas and ways of life at the fringes.

Using original research and analysis of the brands that have successfully backed marginal behaviours, Helen provides a framework for understanding and evaluating this non-obvious, untapped potential. Marginal behaviours may be unpromising, untested, weird, even sometimes repulsive - yet they can point the way to the future. Today's margins are tomorrow's pot of gold - if you know where and how to look.

Our guest is the author of 15 books, over 160 practitioner articles, and over 60 Darden cases, etc. dealing with innovation and learning. Every time I catch up, he goes and writes another book. He has become a dear friend, thought partner and mentor. He honoured me by asking me to pre-read the manuscript and offer an endorsement, and this is what I wrote: "A life-changing book written by an old soul. Old souls are wise beyond their years, humble, and curious. They see the big picture, feel connected to everything, and recognize their fellow old souls. I feel like an old soul when I read Ed's books. I invite you to enjoy this book and gain wisdom beyond your years."

It is a sincere pleasure to welcome the author of "Own Your Work Journey!: The Path to Meaningful Work and Happiness in the Age of Smart Technology and Radical Change." Edward D. Hess.

Find Ed here: https://www.ownyourworkjourney.com

And here: https://www.edhess.org

Metaphors show people how to look beyond the surface levels of life, to an enlightened truth. This book attempts to point to something deep, spiritual, and powerful. Metaphors, stories, and musings speak to the heart, not to the brain. Listen with your heart; that is where we all find inner truth. It is a great pleasure to welcome the author of "Life is a Metaphor: Metaphors, Stories and Musings for the Heart", George Pransky, joined by his wife and long-time business partner Linda Pransky, guys, you are very welcome.

Find George and Linda here: https://www.pranskyandassociates.com