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The current work environment is not a happy place in the main. Increasing levels of stress and anxiety, perceptions of time poverty and change fatigue, the effects of chronic medical conditions and depression on workflow – business is not booming. In Future Brain we examine these very big areas of concern and discuss how strategies based on neuroscientific research can be used to reduce their impact by offering practical solutions for individuals and organisations.

Back to the future brain

Our brain has received a bad rap for far too long. If you think of it in social media terms, our brain is a community page with about 300 likes. Why? Largely because, until fairly recently, we have been remarkably ignorant of the workings of our own minds.

Now, however, we have access to brilliant studies from neurologists, neuroscientists, psychiatrists and other researchers who are delving into why our brain works the way it does, and why we need to keep it as fit as we possibly can.

It is this research that has led to the development of the 12 Keys of Future Brain, which break down the academispeak to provide understandable, easy-to-implement ways for all of us to become better thinkers.

Working nine to five. And six to twelve. And …

The standard working week is now almost as extinct as the dinosaurs. The distinction between work and home time is becoming ever more blurred. Perceptions of how we do our work, where we do it and even why we do it are shifting.

Flexibility of work hours may mean our working in several jobs or a change in the location of where we are expected to or allowed to do our work. Increasing globalisation means we are constantly interacting with overseas marketplaces, which has led to the concept of being ‘open all hours’. Our brains are, as a result, exhausted.

With greater technological capabilities than ever before, and with medical research at its peak, will we find a magic pill or potion to enable us to develop brain superpowers? Will there be a cerebral update chip that our health/brain practitioner can install when we attend our regular brain check-ups?

Or is there another solution, such as choosing to manage and use our brain better? Could it really be as simple as that?

If we dismiss the basics, we miss the point.

When I worked in general practice, my clients came to see me because they were sick. After all, that was my job: to make a diagnosis and provide a treatment to allow the patient to recover. But much of the time their sickness was a consequence of poor health and lifestyle choices. Not from ignorance, but just from trying to keep up with everything in their daily lives.

I also noticed that one environment that contributes heavily to the burden of disease, injury and mental distress is the one we call work. The modern workplace is very often a source of visible and non-visible harm, a toxic and unwieldy monster. The challenge before us is to address the stark reality that this is not only doing us physical harm but is costing us dearly in many aspects of our lives.

Depression is now the second leading cause of workplace disability globally. Type 2 diabetes is the fastest growing chronic condition in Australia. According to Sick at Work, a research paper published by Medibank in 2011, the total cost of presenteeism was reported as $34.1 billion for 2009–10, equivalent to a loss of 2.7 per cent of GDP. Presenteeism is the loss of productivity that occurs when an employee turns up for work but works at a lower capacity than normal because of illness, stress or other distractions. Presenteeism costs the Australian economy more than absenteeism, which itself currently runs at around $24 billion, with a direct cost of $536 per employee per day.

While the research clearly indicates the problem is huge, the implication is also that this problem is not going to go away any time soon, and indeed is likely to increase.

It is also possible that these figures underestimate the reality. Every one of us is impacted by different life events, concerns and worries at any given time. We might be super-productive, highly organised and excellent at our job, but we all have those times when we will be ‘off’ due to minor health ailments, family worries or extra-stressful circumstances at work.

Absenteeism is fairly easily defined in terms of specific time off for reasons of ill-health or injury. Presenteeism, though, is a far harder animal to corral.

It's time for greater organisational health

From an individual perspective, when we speak of keeping fit and healthy, we are really talking about taking care of our minds and bodies so we can do what we want, when we want and as we want. The relatively recent concept of brain health signifies far more than simply a new term for mental health and wellbeing.

Brain health is about creating a fit and healthy brain that is then optimised to operate at its best, and a big part of that happens in our work life.

In the workplace, organisational health is about ensuring the complete health, safety and wellbeing of all who work there. The focus of OHS has traditionally been on preventing physical injury; what is needed now is the integration of brain and mind health into this model.

Bill Withers, founder of acQuire Technology Solutions, speaking at a conference I attended a couple of years ago, gave a nice analogy on the need to view a business (of any size) as a living organism. Just as a human being comprises trillions of living cells, a business is also the sum of its parts. Every staff member has a specific role to play. Each person contributes to the function and integrity of their workplace. Like a cancer or infection, malfunction in any part of the business, down to the level of the individual, can contribute to the demise or extinction of the business.

An extreme example of an organisation brought down by an individual is Barings Bank, which until it closed its doors had been the oldest investment bank in Britain, having operated for over 200 years. The activities of a single employee, a senior derivatives trader named Nick Leeson, led to the bank's collapse in 1995 with a loss of $1.4 billion. Leeson had been seen as the golden child, brilliant at creating money for the bank, which turned a blind eye to his super-speculative and unauthorised dealings.

Building organisational health need not be hard. It requires putting in place the checks and boundaries, ensuring everyone shares the same set of values, beliefs and purpose in support of creating a successful business. It implies having regular organisational health check-ups as a normal part of maintaining good workplace health. It's about nurturing the minds of every individual so they feel valued, respected and motivated, which is what drives engagement.

It also means a change in what a business chooses to invest in when looking to create continuing and successful change for the future.

Investing in mental capital

Traditionally companies have typically invested a great deal in buying the latest technology to stay up to date and competitive. Similarly, it has been expected that the management of staff expertise would include investment in further training and hiring of new staff with particular skills.

This is of course a huge cost to business, but one seen as essential. What has previously been overlooked has been any consideration of how to better manage the staff's existing mental capital. If your company has a number of talented individuals, hired for their particular expertise, who are not working to their capacity, this is a huge waste of human talent and a missed opportunity to accelerate their potential – and therefore the growth of the company.

The view has been that the soft stuff – how people are managed within the workplace – was somehow less relevant or important to the business than the technical knowledge. This view might have been applicable in the industrial era, but it has no place in the modern workplace.

The human species has been so remarkably successful because of both our ability to adapt to change in our environment and our ability to connect with each other. We are social beings, hardwired to flourish through working and living with others. It is our relationships that matter above everything else – the relationships we have with our family and friends, our acquaintances and work colleagues.

In business, relationships with customers are only one facet of the social web of connection we enjoy. Our future success and happiness as individuals and organisations depends on our ability to form, nurture and maintain our relationships.

The companies that understand the importance of this will be the ones that will grow through the development of a culture that is brain friendly, a culture that values and respects all brains at work.

Today the pace of change and the introduction of new ideas and technology is so fast it can be difficult to find the time to absorb and assimilate what could be most useful to us before the next round of advances and upgrades arrive on our doorstep. Which is why it can sometimes be tempting to keep the door closed, bunker down and hope everyone will leave you alone until you are ready to come up and draw breath.

Choosing to invest in the mental capital and wellbeing of every staff member is the obvious path to responsible organisational health. The Foresight Mental Capital and Wellbeing Project produced by the Government Office for Science in London concludes:

If we are to prosper and thrive in our changing society and in an increasingly interconnected and competitive world, both our mental and material resources will be vital. Encouraging and enabling everyone to realise their potential throughout their lives will be crucial for our future prosperity and wellbeing …

An individual's mental capital and mental wellbeing crucially affect their path through life. Moreover, they are vitally important for the healthy functioning of families, communities and society. Together, they fundamentally affect behaviour, social cohesion, social inclusion, and our prosperity.

What is implied is that as individuals we can expect to take greater responsibility for our own health and wellbeing, as well as ensuring that our needs and agendas are being appropriately taken care of in our lives and at work. From an organisation's viewpoint this is about developing greater inclusivity, responsiveness and openness to conversations around performance and development.

So what is mental capital?

The Foresight group defines it as the combination of cognitive ability (mental flexibility and efficiency) and emotional intelligence (dealing effectively with stress, resilience and social skills). They define mental wellbeing as a dynamic state in which an individual can develop their potential, build strong and positive relationships, and contribute to the community.

Mental capital implies a value base, which ties in nicely with the idea that brains matter and that growing brains to work at their best makes perfect economic sense.

Growing healthy workplaces leads to high performance.

‘Organisational health,’ writes Patrick Lencioni in his book The Advantage, ‘will one day surpass all other disciplines in business as the greatest opportunity for improvement and competitive advantage.’ He defines organisational health as the integration of management, operations, strategy and culture. Sure, business needs strategy, marketing, finance and technology, but it also needs to deal with those people issues poisoning so many workplaces:

▪ bullying

▪ micromanagement

▪ poor communication or, worse still, lack of communication

▪ confusion around expectation

▪ silo mentality

▪ change resistance

▪ lack of trust

▪ lack of relatedness

▪ lack of collaboration

▪ lack of innovation

▪ lack of effective leadership.

I could go on, but I think you get the drift. There is a lot of ‘sickness’ in many of today's workplaces, which ultimately leads to a loss of integrity and organisational health.

Lencioni is right. Restoring organisational health has to start with going back to the basics of creating a healthy brain capable of consistently thinking well, with less effort, even when under pressure. People today live and work under an incredible amount of pressure. Having to juggle multiple, often complex tasks with the perception of time poverty stresses us out. This in turn can compromise mental performance.

Organisational health is about making sure that:

▪ you feel you have the capability to do your work and do it well

▪ you can enjoy what you spend so much of your time doing

▪ you feel you have enough time and energy at the end of the day to devote to those things that give you pleasure and mean most to you.

Media business commentators such as Alan Kohler in Australia love to discuss the reasons why various businesses are or are not performing well. A commentator will note the links between profit margins, profit forecasts and ASX performance, but until fairly recently there has been little research into which specific elements of human behaviour contribute to high performance.

A study published by the Society for Knowledge Economics in 2011 revealed some fascinating insights into what makes the biggest difference to how well a business performs. Cutting through all the business-speak, Steven Vamos, President of the Society for Knowledge Economics, summarised their findings nicely:

The study shows that leaders in higher performing organisations prioritise people management as a key priority, involve their people in decision making processes; are more responsive to customer and stakeholder needs; encourage a high degree of responsiveness to change and learning orientation, and enable their staff to fully use their skills and abilities at work.

High performing organisations are not just much more profitable and productive, they also perform better in many important “intangible attributes”, such as encouraging innovation, leadership of their people, and creating a fair workplace environment.

From the survey of 5601 employees from 78 Australian organisations who participated in this study, it was revealed that the highest performing workplaces enjoyed a 12 per cent higher level of productivity, which translated into a profit margin roughly three times higher than found in low-performing workplaces.

The key differences were all derived from human interaction and behaviour.

How we think and how we work as a consequence are hugely influenced by our mood, health and interactions with others.

IT'S TRUE. WE ARE HUMANS WHO THINK

AND FEEL. IT'S TIME TO PUT THE HUMANITY

BACK INTO HOW WE CHOOSE TO LIVE OUR

LIVES AND DO OUR WORK

The 12 keys to developing a high-performance brain

The currency of the digi-age is our mental capital and wellbeing. We have lived through a number of different eras: the agricultural age, the industrial age, the technological age – and now we sit squarely in the Age of Appquarius. It's also the age of the brain and thinking, when the human brain will differentiate itself through imagination, innovation and creativity.

Today it's important to ask what changes you wish to see, and how you can achieve them in the context of understanding that:

▪ change is hard and the brain resists it

▪ effective change in a global economy requires all of our social, emotional and cultural intelligences to work collaboratively

▪ changing how we relate to and communicate with others at an interpersonal level is required to boost collaboration.

This is why organisational health and intelligence must be managed now for organisational survival. Economic conditions are tight, the marketplace is noisy with increasing global competition, and confidence remains low. We can't imagine the speed at which our future brain will operate, or the speed of future change. But the pace of change will continue to challenge us, so we will have to adapt fast, and in the right way to keep up.

What we do know about change is this:

▪ It's happening all around us. It is normal, expected and often desired.

▪ It's neverending. Change invariably leads to further change.

▪ It's tiring. Too often, change strategy takes a lot of effort and distracts from other important work on hand, which can lead to change fatigue.

▪ It isn't always for the good. Knowing how to differentiate the good from the bad or the ugly is sometimes hard, and it can often not be determined until tested. There will always be an element of risk involved.

▪ It can be hard work.

However, change is essential as an adaptive process that leads to growth and opportunity. People sometimes talk about change management, but change isn't ‘managed’ at all. It is chaotic and ever evolving. Instead of managing it we need to lead it – and to lead it courageously.

While change has always been with us, its trajectory and pace have reached levels never previously experienced. That's not to say we can't keep up, but we do face a big challenge. Every generation reflects fondly on ‘the good old days’, when the world was simpler and moved at a slower pace. The reality is that people in the good old days would have felt the pressures of change too.

Just how much the pace of change has accelerated is reflected in the fact that the average person has more information at their fingertips today than the president of the United States had 20 years ago. The Ten Pound Poms took six weeks to reach Australia by boat. Today the flight between London and Perth takes around 19 hours. First-class post was deemed worth the extra cost of getting your letter to its destination a day or so sooner. Today we exchange information and news in a matter of seconds with just a few keystrokes.

That's why going back to the basics of understanding how to create a fit and healthy brain has to be the starting point of any new development. Getting the foundations right first (see figure A) means it's then far easier to evolve towards operational excellence.

Figure A : the three parts of a high-performance brain

Part I of Future Brain (the first four chapters) is devoted to creating a high-performance brain based on the key lifestyle choices of nutrition, exercise, sleep and flexing our mental muscle.

Part II examines how to operate a high-performance brain by addressing how we focus, how we can actively choose our mindset, how to stress ‘right’ and how to notice more.

In part III we look at how our relationships integrate our understanding of how to be more changeable, innovative, collaborative and effective in leading others and ourselves.

The benefits of creating our own high-performance brain include regaining a sense of control, better managing our time, and gaining a greater sense of achievement and overall happiness. Being simply happy – not deliriously ecstatic, but rather experiencing a quiet contentment connecting us to a deeper sense of purpose and meaning (see figure B) – is no longer such a common experience.

Figure B : getting to a high-performance brain

If you are aware that you are not performing at your best, or you want to increase your brain's ability to engage and innovate, this book is designed to assist you in your strategic thinking. You have been smart enough to come this far, so you are already on the right path to high-performance thinking!

My hope is that this book will open your eyes to the wonder and magic of your own brain (see figure C). While the 12 keys will be explored separately, each adds synergistically to the others. Not every key will be of equal relevance to you. Once you have established the foundations of a brain-healthy lifestyle, I suggest you focus on those elements you believe will most help you to create, operate and enjoy the benefits of a high-performance brain. It is your choice. Yours.

Remember, like any form of evolution, your high-performance brain education should never stop. Like the age we live in, it is a constant process of innovation and discovery.

Welcome to your Future Brain.

Figure C : the human brain