N is for Neuroscience
Training our executive brain to build an Executive Mindset
OUR NEW BRAINS
Human brains have been evolving for a least a million years. Human brains were originally less a third of the size and much less functional than they are now.
The most recent functionality is called “the executive brain,” and is located high in the front part of the evolved brain. This brain area that involves big-picture mapping, strategic navigation and big-picture planning is crucial for professionals who are committed to incubation of entrepreneurs.
HOW OUR NEW BRAINS FUNCTION
The executive function in the front of the brain (the pre-frontal cortex) is responsible for:
• Seeing the big picture of business opportunities/possibilities
• Creating a new business vision/mission
• Understanding current business models/developing new models
• Establishing strategic plans for an enterprise
• Making large-scale business decisions
NEW BRAIN AS PERSONAL CEO
With the evolution of new capacities in the brain, we each have a personal CEO for our lives as well as for our entrepreneurial enterprises. The personal CEO like the CEO of a corporation maps the big picture, develops navigational strategies, plans systematic actions to achieve goals as well as many other allied functions.
A high-functioning personal CEO can become an effective CEO incubating new entrepreneurial enterprises.
SUPPORT FOR NEW BRAIN CEO
Just as in a large corporation, there is considerable structural support and expertise for the CEO. In the brain, these support functions operate in the cortex.
The supportive structures are able to:
• Make economic analyses based on financial expertise
• Develop business plans with detailed goals and action strategies
• Design production systems and oversee production development
• Promote new ideas, build teams and secure funding
• Market skillfully new products/services
These support structures are sometimes called “scaffolding” and may become quite elaborate for some business enterprises. The scaffolding makes it possible for the CEO to function in the big picture realm successfully.
TRAINING FOR THE NEW BRAIN CEO
Our new brains tend to “prune” information and concepts that are not coherent with the emerging higher functionality. We are challenged to make training meaningful in a coherent, integrated whole.
A new trend in training and development is to be “brain friendly,” to use recent developments in neuroscience and learning research to fully promote the functionality of our new brains, particularly the CEO capability.
Some of the training approaches that will support Executive Functioning are:
Offer big picture overviews and models to help CEO understand the larger context
Build scaffolding of appropriate knowledge, skills and processes that will support executive functioning
Encourage strategic thinking that allows the CEO to successfully navigate a business domain
Develop positive emotionality that will encourage brain focus to move upward to the highly-evolved executive territory and away from the “old brain” fears and negative-bias.
Cooperate with the brain’s capacity for pliability (plasticity) and encourage innovation and re-invention.