In this white paper we will discuss neuroscience and neuroplasticity. Our goal is to give the reader a basic understanding of some of the most recent and most exciting developments in neuroscience, particularly as it pertains to personal growth, training, organizational and leadership development.

Neuroplasticity is the brain's ability to re-organize itself, at any age, by forming new neural connections in response to life experiences, injury, or disease.  It was once believed that as we aged, the brain’s networks became fixed. In recent years, however, an enormous amount of research has revealed that the brain never stops changing and adjusting.

For scientists, this is a very exciting development. Essentially, a substantial paradigm shift is now under way. Canadian psychiatrist, researcher and author, Norman Doidge, has stated that he believes that neuroplasticity is one of the most extraordinary discoveries of the twentieth century. It is his conviction (and ours as well), that it represents one of the single most important developments in brain science in hundreds of years.

Much of the research in neuroplasticity has been focused on helping patients with brain injury or disease to recover some measure of functionality by "re-wiring" the synapses and neuropathways. Tremendous gains have been made in this arena.

What most excites us is that these discoveries are also creating a paradigm shift regarding adult learning - specifically, how we can change our long-ingrained habits of mind that have limited our success in the past or no longer serve us in succeeding in the future. In short, the discovery of neuroplasticity fundamentally changes how we think about changing what we think about and how we go about changing it.

Let's explore the implications of neuroplasticity from a very practical perspective. We are PROVIDERS of services that are intended to help people and organizations perform better and achieve greater success in every measure. As such, it is our commitment to be on the leading edge of how to do just that. As a BUYER of such services, it is crucial that YOU spend your money, energy and resources on programs and processes that will deliver the greatest possible return on investment.

Before we get into the research discoveries, we want to make a very clear distinction regarding what we mean by "change." We are NOT talking about the temporary changes that often occur in response to fear, company policy, or phases of depression and elation. We are talking about predicable, measurable, and sustainable changes in how a person thinks, acts, reacts, and performs over the long-term.

Now, in layman's terms, here's is what the research in neuroscience has found.

Use it or lose it.

Value Drives The Process

Very simply, a person (with "normal" brain function) will ALWAYS choose, consciously or habitually, what he/she perceives will produce the greatest value in their world in that moment. There has never been a single conscious choice that you have ever made that was not an attempt to maximize value. Even a person contemplating suicide is making a value choice - "will I be better of dead or alive?" A father, abusing his child believes, in that moment, that their behavior is the "right thing" to do. An employee who steals from his employer is doing so because he thinks it will give him the greatest value - the rewards outweigh the risks. The problem is that our perception of what will add value may be and often is, inaccurate. Why? Because our momentary perception is based upon a plethora of other thoughts, experiences, habits, values, assumptions, bits of knowledge, and sensory inputs.

Even our subconscious, automatic habits of mind, mostly originated from conscious thoughts, decisions, and reactions to sensory stimulation including what other people have told us. "I'm not good enough," or "winning is everything" were learned somewhere along the way and repeated often enough to become a highly energy-efficient mental habit based upon the perception that it will support our success.

How does "I'm not good enough" support our success? It may keep us safe from the emotional pain of failure, by keeping us from trying things. It might give us the payoff of sympathy or a nice excuse to fall back on. It might also galvanize us to take action in an effort to compensate for the limiting belief.

Regardless of the justification, the underlying drive to add value is ever-present. The key to success is being accurate in what actually adds the greatest value. Even then, if the person does not or can not see the value (relative to all other choices), change is unlikely to occur.

From a practical leadership perspective, if you have employees whose behavior or performance you want to improve, you must change their thinking to be in alignment with the "better" performance. If you want to alter their thinking, you must align their perception of value to support the thinking.

Historically, personal development and training programs utterly fail to alter the underlying value structures in a positive and sustainable way. Short-term results may be seen, but unless the underlying motivation shifts, there will be little long-term net gain and worse, short-term unnoticed costs such as resentment, decreased morale, or other negative reactions.

Change Takes Time and Repetition

Imagine a neuropathway as a flow of water. It has a source from which it flows and it always follows the path of least resistance. When the topology changes drastically or other forces are applied to it (i.e. trauma) it's flow can change very suddenly and rapidly. Under normal circumstances, however, it will very gradually cut a path deeper into the landscape. The more water that consistently flows along the path the deeper and stronger it becomes.

When a person does want to make a change in their thinking, it takes time and consistent attention and effort, just like a river carving a canyon into the rock of the earth. This is yet another reason why so many training and development program fail. They simply don't provide enough of what neuroscientists call "attention density" - the frequency that attention is paid to create the desired change. The old adage that “practice makes perfect” turns out to be quite accurate. But, it is also true that practicing the "wrong" thing can lead to "bad habits."

Training and development initiatives rarely allow enough time for the process to work. A weekend retreat, or a couple of training sessions may work for learning a technical skill, but rarely will they transform how someone thinks and what they value. It is estimated that it takes 60-90 days of relatively high attention density for a new neuropathway to be strong enough to be sustained. Some research even suggests that sleep is a very important factor in developing and strengthening new neuropathways. The idea of "sleeping on it" turns out to be an important part of the process.

Don't Force, Reinforce

As touched upon earlier, short-term changes in behavior are not unusual. However, when the underlying motivation is not a true value and is rooted in fear, coercion, or change against one's will, the result will be short-lived or even worse, detrimental in some other fashion. Because it takes time and repetition to create long-lasting change, it is important that there is a structure for reinforcing the underlying value of the change. This keeps the person anchored in the process - in the flow, you might say - so that the neuropathways are naturally influenced and nurtured in the proper fashion to produce the desired result.

So what do we do with all this information? Here are the keys to a successful training or personal development process. If any one of these keys is missing, the program will not be as successful as it could be.

1. The person must recognize the possibility of something of sufficient personal value in undertaking the change. In their world, the value of the change must outweigh the benefits of the status quo.
    
2. In order to avoid inadvertently energizing the undesired neuropathway, the desired neuropathway must be connected to a clear strength. In this case we are defining a strength as a pre-existing support value or thought processes that has a logical connection to the desired behavior independent of any negating thought pattern.
    
3. It must have a structure that supports repetition over time with value reinforcement. When it comes to organizations and teams, it is crucial that all team members are in harmony with what is of value and what is not. Without this common lexicon of value and meaning, the reinforcement element will be likely be lost.
    
4. It must produce real, relevant and recognizable value for the person. If the end result of the change is of lesser value than the original way of thinking and acting, then the risk of recidivism is very high. On the other hand, when the value produced is viewed as having greater value than the "old way," sustainability is significantly increased.
   

This Changes Everything! 

The 6 Advisors process contains all of the above elements PLUS two other elements that are extremely important if overall, real-world performance is to be maximized. These other two elements are related to the science of axiology (value science). We believe that recent discoveries in the field of axiology are the second of the most important discoveries regarding the mind that we've made in hundreds of years. It is the key to why the 6 Advisors process is unparallelled in the field of personal, organizational, and leadership development.

You can read more about axiology here, but what follows is the short version.

Formal Axiology has allowed us to determine the "genome" of universal value. That's is, everything in the universe, tangible and intangible, has a specific objective place along a continuum of value from infinite positive to infinite negative relative to everything else. This "hierarchy of value" is as natural, immutable, and irrefutable as gravity. Only in our minds, is value subjective. When our subjective view of something's relative value is in alignment with the hierarchy of value, we can maximize success. When we are not in harmony with it, we are more likely to fail in our endeavors. It's like gravity; we can either fall victim to it or understanding and then use it to our advantage such as putting a man on the moon (and someday, Mars).

Secondly, through axiology we are able to precisely measure an individual's current personal hierarchy of value and compare it to the natural universal hierarchy of value. Where there is alignment, we have identified the person's greatest strengths (a key to the neuroplasticity). Where they are misaligned, we have found the person's "weaknesses" and we know exactly how they are likely to sabotage their performance (another key to neuroplasticity.

Most importantly, only by knowing exactly where a persons true strengths and weakness are can we engage in the power of neuroplasticity to create real and sustainable of changes in people's thinking so they can maximize their own performance and, thus, the performance of their organizations.

The integrated science of neuro-axiology holds incredible possibilities for unleashing the very best in people and organizations.

All we need is YOU to get it started.