Posts under ‘change’

For years I sought pathways past gate-keepers in order to introduce and develop shared innovations.
Brain based renewal innovations for leaders and learners rarely make it through routine portals. Been there?
To prance past wardens of yesteryear, takes teaming up with intelligent innovators of tomorrow. It also takes not settling into the kind of peace and harmony [...]

Over 30 years  in brain based renewal,  showed me several reasons why renewal cannot win in certain workplace conditions. I’ll admit that naivety in  younger years, prompted me to believe deteriorated settings could turn around in spite of barriers. Over time though, I observed some settings that simply cannot perk up  because organizational toxins contaminate [...]

If you’ve seen on this TED video how education had clobbered creativity – you’ll likely be ready to rewire for another go at innovation.
25 words to reboot  brainpower and zap your 2010 with innovative facts from brain sciences: 

1. Invent and share a refreshing solution to a stubborn work problem – solve a  difficulty that [...]

Canadian Alanna Mitchell, this year’s winner of the Atkinson Fellowship in public policy named brains as the secret to better schools. Not all agree.
Mitchell recalled a Minister of Education who asked a neuroscientist: “The brain? What does the brain have to do with education?” In my renewal work across many countries I heard similar [...]

Government Funds Promote Failing Secondary Schools
People say stimulus money simply creates new layers of bureaucracy that prolong broken secondary school programs. My question is: How will the White House Campaign to Promote Science and Math Education support teens to climb new mental  peaks?  Will successful schools proliferate through fast growing charters?
President [...]

Ever notice how Thanksgiving and Christmas tend to bring out blues in some and blessings in others? Or how lonely people see vast spaces between themselves and others – even at festive  holiday tables?
First glances  show people blessed with close family and  friends feel blessed over holidays while those alone feel abandoned. Not so. Loneliness [...]

Peter Block creates a brilliant case for brain-based-community-building through conversations that transform.
Conversations that create community transformation  for Block, include invitation, possibility, ownership, dissent, commitment and gifts. Do you agree?
Interestingly, each of Block’s  entry points to transformation, also offer  segues into brain based communication.
Invitational conversation welcomes diversity with an emphasis on leaving no brain behind.
Possibility – [...]

Great news from GE leaders today,  according to WSJ’s Paul Glader.  Any organization willing to change and grow, after a fall,  also holds potential to create a prototype for global change and growth.  Both qualities urgently needed in the broader business community. Bravo!
Let’s get behind GE’s  initiative and begin to move in new directions as [...]

Written By Ellen Weber, PhD and Robyn McMaster, PhD
Higher Education and Brain Based Benefits

Challenges of Change
Renewal is to the university community today what Renaissance was to the Middle Ages. Both encompass a resurgence of learning. Both tap into more potential from the human brain. To reconfigure university teaching for a rebirth [...]

Wall Street claims that without big bonuses they’ll not attract big talents, or generate big profits. Do you agree?
Wall Street broke banks by trading innovation for greed. The result? Wall Street leaders now fear loss of future talent with lower salaries, while gifted leaders optimize talent to open new revenue streams.
Talent for financial growth [...]

Two days ago, while in Jamaica to speak about MITA brain based renewal, I spotted revival alive and well from a car radio. In a vehicle that transported Dr. Robyn McMaster and I to the University of West Indies, radio guests discussed broken systems in general, and Jamaican policies that got  implemented without discussion [...]

Consider current higher education communities in crisis, where one dean said, We pretend to teach them, they pretend to learn. Have you seen the disconnect between learning and leading change for the 21st Century?
Yet normal brain activity is now observable to show how humans acquire and use knowledge. How will neuro discoveries impact higher [...]

Whenever I teach Executive MBA Leadership or Organizational Management courses, the brightest students ask why so few leaders facilitate innovation for a new era. Failure to inspire innovative minds, or clinging to leadership ruts that sunk our yesteryears can only keep universities in crisis, and do little to boost business. It doesn’t have to [...]

Facilitators with brains in mind, blast open 10 entry points that inspire innovation:

At meetings – facilitators add zip to roundtables because people speak and feel heard.
Across professions – facilitators inspire shared language that leaves behind jargon to favor communication.
In learning circles facilitators draw on multiple literacies to engage voices on the other side and [...]

Have you every thought of practicing to be a genius at anything? Several gurus in intelligence, claim that endurance and hard work get higher grades than raw intelligence scores from IQ tests. Do you agree?  Einstein claimed he was no more intelligent than others – but he stayed with problems longer. You?
Ericsson calls this the [...]

What makes MITA renewal so different from other top leadership and learning improvement models?

Thanks to Dr. Robyn McMaster’s masterful handiwork with cameras and talented online solutions, we’re able to carry on the MITA renewal conversation I’d been looking forward to for some time. Hope you’ll jump in to share your renewal stories, so we can [...]

While some HR staff complain of too little respect at work, HR veteran, Bill Conaty  won the 2004 HR Executive of the Year for risks he took to promote talent and raise HR status at GM.  He reversed downturns into bubbles, more because of his vision for renewal possibilities, than any call for respect.
In fact [...]

What would it take to renew university learning and draw more brainpower from learners and leaders? We know adult intelligence improves – from MDs such as Dan Siegel, Director of  Mindsight Inst at UCLA School of Medicine, who draws on recent science to harness the brain’s circuitry. The results?
Research offers increased brainpower opportunities that [...]

When government tosses out money as renewal incentives, in hope that dollars buy benefits, bureaucracies respond with inferiority.  Rewards and pay-for-performance practices work against renewal, according to Alfie Kohn who draws from hundreds of studies. Do you agree?
Have leaders of educational institutes removed themselves from the heart of problems ordinary people face? Sadly,  many leaders [...]

When you rev up mental equipment daily to either sink or swim, you discover how creativity and curiosity will trump criticism and intimidation. How then can you experience mental power in settings where no brain is left behind?
One friend and fellow leader Dave Caiazza, put it this way:

Work against the dangerous twins of jealousy and [...]