Posts under ‘MITA approaches’

Did Tiger Woods refuse questions yesterday for the same reason others run from poisonous darts? Fact is, questions alter brainpower up or down.
Ask one question, and stir brain chemicals for innovation. Ask another and  short-circuit electrical wiring for mental blackouts. We rewire our collective brainpower through questions that stir curiosity or stomp out intelligence and [...]

The human brain comes with unique equipment to build and sustain innovative cultures, where design leads to profitability. How so?
1.  Kindle and design an idea. Just as the iPod started with an innovative  idea,  Steve Jobs and others continue to design Apple products that revolutionize communication. Fast Company celebrated the last decade’s 14 biggest such [...]

It’s Christmas — a time for giving! It’s also recession – a time for surviving!
Few would deny that when people give freely from the heart, everybody wins. And yet the very thought of Christmas  this year touches people’s hearts in a new way.  Because of lost jobs or growing  debts, even the most generous givers [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Bill Conaty raises the level of HR at Radio City Hall today, and convinces other top leaders here to do the same. Is raising credibility of HR really the answer to unleashing human capital?
What’s your take?
I’d like to propose that human capital is more dependent on identifying, developing and supporting human brainpower than on raising [...]

Consumer confidence is at an all time low. Few disagree, that the way we do money separates community and caring from real riches of mindfulness together.  It doesn’t have to be that way. Do you agree? 
The globe cries out for financial opportunities from people who engage multiple intelligences and value creative passion across differences.
It [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Few disagree on an urgent need to increase America’s science and math proficiency in order to compete in our fast paced world. But less art?
Sadly, the arts become an easy target when budgets get slashed. Yet both multi-dimensional advances of art along with empirical rigor of science both challenge and transform high performing minds. Like [...]

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 [...]

Programming can become boring and routine for some, and so effective programmers look for ways to override their brain’s default for ruts. How so?
In MITA Brain Based approaches — a novice programmer would:
1). Question with two feet to stir curiosity and add fun. Ask questions that hook to real life problems and develop new [...]

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 [...]

It’s said that many people want change yet far fewer risk changing what they do.
That incongruity makes sense if you think about how it seems easier to change somebody else, than to face the fear or discomfort that holds you back from attempting new approaches.
Unfortunately, even personal reflections can act against adjusting for a finer [...]

On each new day your brain offers equipment to lose or win. The choice is yours, and brain activity can now be observed to show how winning or losing selections work, in spite of external conditions.
So why do some people pick winning equipment while others settle for the loser’s pick where the chips go down?
Here [...]

To renew with the brain in mind is to approach teens and teaching with new vision, diverse tools, and higher expectations for all:

Teens bring unique knowledge to technology and renewal both recognizes and uses their technical skills. (Braden Husdal in Teaching starts from Brain Down)
Repetition is less effective for teens than teaching math [...]

I. QUESTION new opportunities and you’ll engage curiosity as fuel for change.
It’s only through understanding your brain that you can increase brainpower for more successful outcomes:
Manifesto 1

Replace fears, fueled by dangerous cortisol, with confidence that comes through serotonin.

Manifesto 2

While brains default back to ruts, human minds also hold equipment for rejuvenation.

Manifesto 3

Mind-bending revelations [...]