2007 Summit Debrief

The Setting

Picture an ancient town atop a small mountain at the foothills of the Dolomite Mountains in Northern Italy, in the midst of a warm spring. At the top of the hill is a 500 year old church and monastery, now coverted into an international graduate school of business. Now imagine 55 open-minded, high-powered thinkers from many corners of the globe, coming together to build a better science for leadership by integrating relevant neuroscientific research.

Day One
The Summit began with Arie De Geus, author of the Living Company. Arie explored how people think about the future, focusing on the role of language in giving us the ability to make decisions. While a senior executive at Royal Dutch Shell, Arie had built one of the first widescale scenario planning processes which became sought after by government and big business the world over.

Despite big investments in process and technology, decisions about the future seemed to be made simply through people talking to each other. This raised an important thread that ran throughout the Summit, of how conversation, or in neuroscience terms, focusing attention, creates real physical change.

Next was one of the world’s leading Quantum Physicists, Dr Henry Stapp, who studied under both Werner Heisenberg and Wolfgang Pauli. Henry has been working with Dr Jeffrey Schwartz for nearly ten years to explain the impact of attention on the brain. (That's Henry with an 'uncertain hand' on the right.) In 2005, Henry and Jeff published one of the first scientific papers to explain the physical impact of attention on the brain

Dr Stapp explained how Newtonian Mechanics was the science of objects, whereas Quantum Mechanics is the 'science of ideas'. As the science of ideas, Quantum Mechanics is ideal for understanding how ideas interact, in the physical world. Henry laid the foundation for one of the central session of the Summit, on how attention changes the brain.

After lunch in the warm sun in the courtyard of CIMBA, the sponsoring university, we heard from Jeffrey Schwartz M.D. Jeff spoke about how attention changes the brain, through the act of the ‘impartial spectator’, a term first coined by Adam Smith. Jeff introduced an important formula for change in the brain, which operates at an individual through to system level. This formula came out of years of discussion with Henry Stapp and more recently through discussions with leadership consultant David Rock. This new formula for change is based on the interaction between attention density, expectations and our ability to ‘veto’ specific mental processes.

Finally on day one we heard from Dr Robert 'this wont hurt a bit' Coghill, a world expert on pain research. Dr Coghill showed us how pain is an excellent model for exploring differences in experience, the so called ‘Qualia’ problem. Coghill illustrated experiments where the same pain stimuli were rated at between 1.8 to 8.9 on a scale of 1-10, showing how individual even the simplest experiences can be. He illustrated conclusively through a series of experiments how a ‘dose’ of expectations can literally have the same impact on pain as a common dosage of morphine. He explored how we might set expectations more effectively based on his findings. This is an important area for further study.

Day Two
Day two began with a session by Dr Yiyuan Tang, one of the most respected scientists in China, and the government representative on the human brain project. Dr Tang presented neuroscientific research showing how Eastern and Western brains process even the simplest events differently: Eastern brains focusing more on context and Western on detail. He illustrated several other important findings, finishing with a piece on how our cognitive functions decrease when we experience emotional stress.

Next we heard from Dr Mark Jung-Beeman, a world expert in the study of insight. Mark explained the specific brain anatomy and processes involved in the insight experience. He illustrated how we need significant cognitive control to have insight, especially to help suppress accidental connections that might be inhibiting new solutions.

Mark explained how the quiet brain is more likely to have insight, and how people who were happier were having significantly more insights. He said he could tell even before a person began an exercise whether they were likely to have an insight or not, based on their brain patterns.

Another feature of the Summit in the afternoon of day two was the session on the 'social brain’ presented jointly by David Rock (left) and Jeffrey Schwartz, with interviews recorded for the event with two of the most eminent social neuroscientists Dr Matt Lieberman (UCLA) and Dr Kevin Ochsner (Columbia). David and Jeff showed how the brain is a 'social animal', and how many of our responses to the world are driven by social factors. They explored the way our cognitive capacities decrease during amygdala over-arousal, and how social pain was activating similar brain areas as physical pain.

The final session on day two was David Rock's interactive session on the 'neuroscience of influence'. David began to weave the insights of the first two days into a more cohesive whole. He explained that having a physical theory to explain intuitive approaches to leadership was not a small matter, but a major leap in our ability to improve leadership.

David said that using a neuroscience theory base for leadership programs was contributing significantly to getting organizational leaders to focus their attention on human issues, and opening up new ways of thinking about driving change and learning. David then used the neuroscience presented to explain why our capacity to influence others is so low and how we can increase it significantly by better understanding the brain.

Day Three
Day three began with an open session in the courtyard, with the group being warmed by the morning sun rising from behind the mountain. Everyone got to share what they were experiencing and their thoughts about the ideas being presented.

The focus of day three was 'application', starting with young people, moving to university education and then to leadership in organizations.

We first heard from Jaimie Cloud, an expert in K-12 education. Jaimie is teaching kids in hundreds of schools across the globe to think in new ways, to think about complete systems and sustainability, and is working in partnership with Peter Senge. Jaimie presented a provocative session about the need to give children new mental models for understanding the world.

Next Al Ringleb, the director of CIMBA the sponsoring university, along with several key CIMBA faculty, presented their approach to using neuroscience across their year-long MBA and undergraduate programs. CIMBA is the first university in the world to use neuroscience to develop future leaders.

Over lunch, Nicolas Gorjestani from the World Bank shared some inspiring stories of change within the bank, and Siobhan McHale shared the ANZ Bank's journey to transform culture across thousands of employees in their 'Breakout' program.

Next we heard from Cheryl Doggett, the director of learning and development at EDS, a Fortune 100 technology firm. EDS has been training thousands of leaders in coaching skills in the last few years, using a coaching model that is directly based on an understanding of the brain.

The final session of day three was by John Case, the CEO of Electrolux Home Products, North America. John introduced his approach to leadership, showing how an understanding of the brain explains the success of his 'Focus, Accountability, Teamwork' model.

We finished day three by exploring the future of these ideas, how we will set up an institute and journal, and discussing next year’s event, which will be around the same time early May, again in Asolo, (by a significant majority vote!)


Acknowledgments
Big thanks go to:
• The CIMBA team for a fabulous three days of entertainment.
• Art Kleiner, editor of strategy+business magazine (right) for his masterful facilitation and weaving together of the ideas.
• Summit sponsors CIMBA, strategy+business magazine, Results Coaching Systems, Thinking Dimensions and Rapport Leadership.

A final acknowledgment goes to all the Summit participants (left), whose passion and intellect made the event an amazing journey for everyone involved. (Rumor has it that exactly 40% of Summit participants were still together at 2am on the last night of the event.)

Doing further study
There is a new audio summary of the event as a podcast which may be of interest. Then there are many resources listed within this website, including suggested books, articles, and scientific papers. A set of DVD's will be available later in the year of the key sessions from the event, email info@neuroleadership,org to be notified of when these are available. A Journal is being planned for release at the 2008 Summit.

If you would like to be on a general mailing list about news and events relating to this field, email info@neuroleadership.org with the subject line as 'mailing list'.

NeuroLeadership Summit 2008
If you'd like to feel as deeply satisfied as the people in the picture on the right relaxing on the day after the Summit, then email info@neuroleadership.org with the subject line as '2008 Summit' to get an early notice about registration for the next Summit. Places will be limited to 50 participants in 2008, and the dates will be roughly the same time, early to mid May.