Survey Meetings for Brainpower

Are your meetings brain draining, or brain powering?

Respond either yes or no to each survey question and then check scores against brainpowered answers below:

1. Is boredom more a reality at your meeting than passion to engage agenda? Yes ___ No ___

2. Do your sessions inspire staff to transform problems into solutions? Yes ___ No ___

3. Would innovative or novel describe most topics in your meetings? Yes ___ No ___

4. Does anger, fear, or frustration fuel bullying at your meetings? Yes ___ No ___

5. Would venting be heard at your meetings much of the time? Yes ___ No ___

6. Do people try new approaches and learn skills often at your meetings?  Yes ___ No ___

7. Does music lift moods and increase productivity where you meet?  Yes ___ No ___

8. Do your managers and leaders talk more and engage or listen  less?  Yes ___ No ___

9. Does the old guard kill incentives and adhere to tired traditions? Yes ___ No ___

10. Is diversity lingo a poor solution for the lack of acceptance or equity?  Yes ___ No ___

11. Do fellow workers come to meetings eager and ready and pull together? Yes ___ No ___

12. Does professional development increase workplace skills at meetings? Yes ___ No ___

13. Do ruts or routines define most discussions with few chances for change? Yes ___ No ___

14. Are some at meetings celebrated more for their intelligence than others?  Yes ___ No ___

15. Do cynical mindsets block creativity, rob talent, or stomp out innovation? Yes ___ No ___

16. Would focus be a typical characteristic when new challenges arise? Yes ___ No ___

17. Would most consider themselves eager and smarter because of meetings? Yes ___ No ___

18. Does frequent encouragement lead to novel opportunities for growth? Yes ___ No ___

19. Are relationships tense or trust lacking as people don’t say what they mean? Yes ___ No ___

20. Do people integrate hard and soft skills to solve problems when they arise? Yes ___ No ___

21. Does stress appear often or  tone act more as silent killer than caring tool? Yes ___ No ___

22. Do workers often speak others names in thoughtful and generous ways? Yes ___ No ___

23. Do  leaders inspire creativity and invention through meeting interactions? Yes ___ No ___

24. Do most people discuss workplace problems with solutions in mind?  Yes ___ No ___

25. Are women and men’s brains valued intellectually in ways that optimize talents? Yes ___ No

How many of these brain related issues point to an innovative meeting?

Check your score below.

How many items point to toxic sessions where you meet? You may be surprised at the vast pool of brain based strategies that can transform meeting toxins into tonics for innovation in your meetings. Could it happen the next time you meet?

Innovative Meeting Survey Score

Curious about your survey for meeting’s innovation score?  If your meetings scored 20 correct responses it’s exceptionally well where you meet. Congratulations!

If, on the other hand, you scored under 20, why not toss one brain based solution into action monthly until innovative brainpower defines your meeting.

For a perfect innovative meeting score, you’d have answered Yes √ or No √ as follows:

1. Is boredom more a reality at your meeting than passion to engage agenda? No √

2. Do your sessions inspire staff to transform problems into solutions? Yes √

3. Would innovative or novel describe most topics in your meetings? Yes √

4. Does anger, fear, or frustration fuel bullying at your meetings? No √

5. Would venting be heard at your meetings much of the time? No √

6. Do people try new approaches and learn skills often at your meetings?  Yes √

7. Does music lift moods and increase productivity where you meet?  Yes √

8. Do your managers and leaders talk more and engage or listen less?   No √

9. Does the old guard kill incentives  and adhere to tired traditions?  No √

10. Is diversity lingo a poor solution for the lack of acceptance or equity?   No √

11. Do fellow workers come to meetings eager and ready and pull together? Yes √

12. Does professional development increase workplace skills at meetings? Yes √

13. Do ruts or routines define most discussions with few chances for change? No √

14. Are some at meetings celebrated more for their intelligence than others?  No √

15. Do cynical mindsets block creativity, rob talent, or stomp out innovation? No √

16. Would focus be a typical characteristic when new challenges arise? Yes √

17. Would most consider themselves eager and smarter because of meetings? Yes √

18. Does frequent encouragement lead to novel opportunities for growth?  Yes √

19. Are relationships tense or trust lacking as people don’t say what they mean?  No √

20. Do people integrate hard and soft skills to solve problems when they arise? Yes √

21. Does stress appear often or  tone act more as silent killer than caring tool? No √

22. Do workers often speak others name in thoughtful and generous ways? Yes √

23. Do  leaders inspire creativity and invention through meeting interactions? Yes √

24. Do most people discuss workplace problems with solutions in mind?  Yes √

25. Are women and men’s brains valued intellectually in ways that optimize talents? Yes √

Each survey issue impacts whether your meetings are monotonous or momentous. Make meetings into beacons of innovation that advance your organization into a new era for a finer future.

Signs of broken business model

Does innovative brainpower fuel your business model?  Is your organization moving forward with the fast shifting economy of the 21st Century, or is it mired in broken practices?

Check out 25 areas that reinvigorate broken business models, and you’ll also agree that tired systems can be mended to grow mindful again.

1. Workers show disdain or apathy for their work,  and express lack of concern for others’ efforts.   Brain Fact: Boredom is more a habit formed in brains, and shaped by your choices, than a reality.
2. Dark, uncomfortable work areas abound.  Brain Fact: Environment counts, and a healthy setting helps people transform problems into solutions.
3. Communication appears cold, inconsistent and cynical. Brain Fact: Well being comes partially from and is fueled and extended by serotonin chemical hormones.
4. Conflicts predominates over calm. Brain Fact: Anger, fear, and frustration are fueled and extended by cortisol chemical hormones.
5. More  problems than solutions appear evident. Brain Fact: Venting is bad for the brain and creates new neuron pathways to much more of the same.
6. Change is short-lived and unexpected and valued. Brain Fact: Dendrite brain cells use the outside world and take shape, or grow based on what you do.
7. Music selections work against focus and innovation and growth. Brain Fact: Music changes brain wave speeds in ways that impact moods and alter productivity.
8. Knowledge comes with unreasonable demands, and is  delivered. Brain Fact: Lectures and talks work against listeners’ brains and benefit speakers’ intelligence mostly.
9. Tenure is used as an excuse to stop learning and or stomp on growth. Brain Fact: Hebbian workers rewire their brains to kill incentives, limit focus or even shrink their brains.
10. People are excluded because of backgrounds and beliefs at all leadership levels. Brain Fact: Diversity training commonly works mentally against benefits because of its deficit model.
11. Little or no variety exists between exercise and quiet reflection.  Brain Fact: Brain waves can bring either sleep or peak performance, based on how you activate them.
12. Knowledge appears irrelevant to many. Brain Fact: Hook even difficult facts onto one thing a person already knows and learning increases in less time.
13. Ruts appear constant – while  invention appears rarely. Brain Fact: Basal ganglias store facts and create ruts, working memory holds few facts and leads change.
14. Multiple approaches are discouraged while people must reach prescribed standards from one required approach. Brain Fact: Multiple intelligences are common to all, used by few, and can be more developed daily.
15. Peer pressure diminishes creativity,  innovation is limited while cynicism is rampant. Brain Fact: Cynical mindsets literally block creativity, impact talent, and stomp out innovation.
16. Learning approaches are top down and easily dropped or forgotten. Brain Fact: Memory can be outsourced to help people remember, and to free the mind for focus.
17. Senior workers teach all yet rarely learn from others. Brain Fact: Plasticity enables people to rewire the human brain in ways that keep it younger, smarter, and alive through interactive learning.
18. A spirit of discouragement supersedes consensus and team building for profitability.  Brain Fact: Encouragement  changes the chemistry of a brain through raised serotonin, criticism tears down all through spreading cortisol chemicals.
19. Distrust is evident through lack of transparency in communications. Brain Fact: Meta messages destroy relationships through implications different from what is said.
20. Self-serving exchanges build traditional silos and departments refuse to pull together for the greater good. Brain Fact: It often takes an integration of  hard and soft skills to solve problems with the brain in mind.
21. Negative tone predominates so that few people tend to take risks to achieve new heights. Brain Fact: Stress literally shrinks the brain, and tone in communication acts as a silent killer.
22. Leaders know few people by name, or address others by name. Brain Fact: Greet a person through speaking that person’s name, for a spike in personal awareness.
23. Creativity and invention get stomped out rather than shared, through lack of teaching others at the same time people learn. Brain Fact: People retain 90% more through teaching others at the same time they learn a thing. So wisdom and invention spreads and grows in this way.
24. Curiosity is rarely cultivated by the entire workplace community. Brain Fact: Create new neuron pathways each time you add a solution to any problem you encounter. The opposite is also true – as a focus on problems leads to more of the same.
25. Little value appears evident for both women and men at all leadership levels.  Brain Fact: Women’s and men’s brain differ biologically and intellectually in ways that few optimize, but ways that jettison innovations forward.

What brain based strategy would begin to turn your broken organizational model in a new direction to become an innovative learning model as GE and others became. Take a risk to launch that one strategy and your innovation could spark sustainable growth and profitability. What do you think?

People tend to label me self-disciplined because I often work long days. A more accurate description, as I see it though, is that I’m highly motivated. Do people see you as inspired by what you do?

Motivation Fuels Leader Brainpower

What a privilege to work in renewal, with Dr. Robyn McMaster and other top innovative leaders from all over the world. And since the brain based strategies I use daily – are proven to get higher motivation and achievement,  it makes sense that I stay intrinsically motivated to work longer hours. Emphasis on intrinsic which is built-in and runs like ever-ready  batteries. The kind that causes you to whistle while you work.

The surprising fact about extrinsic motivation, Daniel Pink states in his new book, Drive, is that it takes your focus off productivity. Research shows how groups offered money took longer to complete interesting tasks, than those who did the same work for no reward.

For Pink, motivation comes intrinsically. In MITA the same is true – only with a difference.  Brain based approaches to leading are proven to raise motivation.

Motivation at the MITA Brain Center works especially well for a fast changing 21st Century economy – in 3 ways:

1. Your talents transform into workplace tools to take unique approaches to the same peaks that highly successful people reach
2. Innovative strategies design solutions from multiple intelligences developed daily as you work.
3. Projects cultivate ongoing curiosity for growth, through chasing after the question – Where to from here?

These three motivation approaches have opened segues for MITA work recently in Europe, China, Canada, Caribbean, Chile, Canada, Mexico, High Arctic – and here in the US.

Where will motivation take you today?

You likely know that  links between what people crave and what you can offer, requires you to connect the dots between your current position and creative prosperity. But have you ever considered how vital connections also boost innovative brainpower?

5 Vital Connections to Innovative Brainpower

The opposite is also true. Cut out your connections and by default you diminish brainpower to invent.

Rather than pack your brain with links that go nowhere, why not jettison your life and leadership forward with 5 essential connections.

Jumpstart  brainpower found  in highly innovative minds only, when you:

1. Join what you already know to what you wish to know in order to invent something new. Human brains come equipped to latch onto new facts faster if they hook to what you already know and do. How could that open  new opportunities for you to start with your current talents and learn what it takes to fill an innovative  niche you see  – yes, even in an economic downturn.
2. Connect skills you are learning to insights others offer, by linking your facts to their interests. While delivering information works against the human brain, teaching others as we learn ourselves pays back 90% more in retention. Intelligent people also build prosperous alliances in this way.
3. Link solution possibilities to every problem encountered. Einstein constantly cultivated curiosity, for example,  by linking suggested solutions to problems.  While others passed over, complained about, and whined about what could be – he connected himself to the problem of relativity by imagining he rode the curve of the arc. When you look at problems with solutions in mind, the human brain builds neuron pathways to create  answers you seek.
4. Draw together diverse people and welcome opposing views. I’ve learned during a lifetime in renewal work that to connect opposing views is to spot nuances that others miss on both sides of issues. It requires being less opinionated about most everything, and pays wonderful dividends to those who stay open-minded. For instance tradition insists on the separation of hard and soft skills, and then places these in silly hierarchies. Here at MITA we combine the best of both into what we term smart skills with the brain in mind for 21^st Century leadership strategies that work for a new era.
5. Join science to art and use imagination as innovative glue to intergrate. You have two well equipped sides to the human brain, and both play a keen role in highly sustainable innovation. To kindle and design ideas such as these  top creative moments that hit new heights in the last decade, takes connecting  the art and science from your left and right brain.

Pair  these essentials together and you’ll increase neuron connections come with  brainpower for new innovative heights.  Make fewer connections, on the other hand, and you’ll  limit your mental ability to create.  Simply put, your daily connections determine your IQ growth, since increased neural connections equal higher intelligence.

Did you know that babies are born with 20 times more neural connections than adults? Why so? Experiences you have in a day  - either create or diminish neural connections for creativity.  Schools tend to teach by delivery and that kills connections that come from doing as people learn. Luckily it’s not all bad news.

Thanks to plasticity however, the human brain rewires new neural connections daily – based on what you do. Or you can lose connections by ruts, routines, and passivity. Does that challenge you to step outside of comfort zones, connect what has yet to fit together in your world, and spark the innovation ability in your brain and organization?

Following a question can power up your day. How so? To choose a pathway of possibilities through questions – says researcher Ibrahim Senay – is to encounter unexpected benefits. I agree.

Ask questions,  like open-minded people do, and you’ll stir up motivation as well as cultivate curiosity.  The kind of curiosity that spots a rainbow where others see only storms on the horizon.

Question into Right & Left Brainpower

At the MITA International Brain Center, we often start the day with a two-footed question – to unleash both sides of the brain. We then pop the query – Where to from here? at day’s end.

Today I asked: How can a day off prepare me for a high pressured week to come? Because I know the power of two-footed questions – I went after a  response like ducks chase after water.

First, I carried coffee, and the latest copy of Scientific American Mind, outside to the cabana and breathed in warm summer air. Awakening birds told each other about their plans for the day, while my own concerns slipped into their carefree harmonies.

Second, I weeded a flower bed just beyond my patio.  Before I tossed a country garden seed mix into freshly  furrowed soil, I set aside rocks that would prevent their growth.  Then later, I added these shapely stones alongside my creek to curtail crabgrass that demands dominance there.

Third,  I emailed suggestions ahead from my back patio, to several people who would benefit from clarify to simplify the week’s agenda before it starts.

Still outside, I relaxed over  a leisurely lunch, then fed the koy fish where I lingered to watch their playful antics under a fast moving water spray.

In late afternoon, I replaced screens on my cabana so that new touches will further enhance my busy week. Now, after a high pressured day at work,  I can sip a glass of wine or iced tea to relax in my newly renovated garden.

That’s how one straightforward question stirred multiple intelligences for unexpected melodies on my day off.  While I love my  work, it takes a fair-to-middlin‘ brainpower reboot to conquer challenges of a tough week.

What enables you to catch the winds of the upper air – for that pot of gold found only at the peaks?