The Inside Scoop – Our Brains on Change

I WAS recently approached by an organization who wanted my thoughts on their planned ‘culture change’ initiative. They were taking all the important steps, but when we talked about timeframe they were seriously underestimating the time it would take for the ‘culture change’ to actually take root. When I talked honestly about my assessment of how long it would take for the ‘culture change’ to be complete, they balked. And I don’t blame them. Five years is a long time. And often too long for an organization to wait for the necessary changes to take hold. It doesn’t mean there won’t be any change along the way, but to get to the end often takes an extended period of time.

You can ask yourself why? I know that company did. And the answer is simple but very complex – because of our brains and our ability to change them.

Neuroplasticity

There has been a lot written in the past, maybe even lately, about the brain’s capacity to change – neuroplasticity. Science and research shows us that our brains continue to change until the day we die. The term neuroplasticity basically explains the brain’s ability to form new neural connections. It is through those neural connections that our brain changes and allows us to learn or do new things. It is what allows someone who has suffered a stroke to speak again or relearn to walk. Neuroplasticity allows us to change habits, to learn new languages and to learn new information. Neuroplasticity allows us to change our minds, and specific to my example, how we act within a culture.

Culture as a Verb

Just a word about culture and the way I think about it in my culture change work. In my doctoral dissertation I used culture as a verb, not a noun, because we ‘culture’ every day – that is we act certain ways that perpetuate a culture or change it.   Every day we walk in the door of our workplaces we culture – through every action we take and every decision we make. Most of that ‘culturing’ is automatic. We don’t think about it, we just do it. And that is what makes a ‘culture change’ so difficult to attain and often to sustain.

Neural Pathways

But let’s get back to the brain and how it changes. Our brains are made up of many things, and one of them is a series of neural pathways. Neural pathways are created through the actions we take. For example, we always stop at a stop sign or a red light. As a new driver you consciously had to do that, but as you got more experience it becomes an automatic response. Neural pathways are channels in our brain, like rivers. They are created and sustained through our experiences. They can be wide or narrow. Wide if it is a pathway that is used often, narrow if not so much, like a new stream and the Grand Canyon.

A new neural pathway that is narrow signifies the beginning of a new experience; a wider channel used more often signifies something more mature – something that is a habit, or a way we consider information time and time again. Neural pathways are self-reinforcing. And that is the good and bad news. Good if we want to continue using that neural pathway, bad if we want to change in some way.

Negative Neural Pathways

Some of our neural pathways are negative – like if we are constantly criticizing or finding fault, or if we act in ways that belittle others. They may be strong neural pathways but still negative. A positive Neural pathway or channel is where positive habits – looking on the bright side, finding the benefit of situations or making positive choices comes into play. They can also be strong. If we are a “fault finder” and want to become a “benefit finder” we need to find a way to shrink the “fault finder” neural pathway and expand the “benefit finder” neural pathway – to dry up the negative channel and build up the positive one. And just as it isn’t easy to get a deep-channeled river to just dry up, or get a small stream to become bigger – so is the challenge of forming and “de-forming” neural pathways.

In the case I mentioned at the beginning of this article, there were many negative neural pathways at work. There was perceived discrimination, perceived belittling of certain groups of employees and a general lack of understanding about why the actions people were taking were, in fact, bad and in many cases, illegal. Many of the employees were stuck in their way of acting and did it automatically without even realizing they were doing it. This can also be referred to as brain lock.

Brain Lock

Brain lock is signified as a deep-rooted neural pathway or channel. As individuals often OCD is associated with the concept of brain lock. As organizations it is often what makes us unable to change a process or a way of doing business.

All organizations have neural pathways. They are called processes. They are called culture – the way we do things around here. As with neural pathways in our brains they are self-reinforcing. That may be because they are official and written down or because they are part of the unwritten culture, but still are self-reinforcing. And as with all neural pathways, they become stronger and that strength leads to more strength. That is good news, but also can be bad news when we want to change something that is so embedded in our organizations. That is why a true culture change takes so long. An organization must change each and every neural pathway of each and every employee in order to realize change.

In order to do that we must know which pathway we want to change and what we want to change it to. Whether it is a Positive, negative or brain locked channel – all can be changed, it is just a matter of persistence and time.