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Behaviour Drives Performance. Change Behaviour and Change Performance

Leadership
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"Study the science of art. Study the art of science.
Develop your senses- especially learn how to see.     Realise that everything connects to everything else."
― Leonardo da Vinci

The art and science of changing behaviour 

 Behaviour is art and science combined.  In motion.  Cartesian dualism in 4D.

This makes every living person both an artist and a scientist.  You have no choice. You cannot think, feel or act without using the emotions of the artist and the logic of the scientist.

This short article outlines the practical technique we have customised to change behaviour with thousands of leaders, teams and organisations over several decades with considerable success.

I invite you to test the Energy Fractal Method outlined below.  Don't take my word for it.  The logic is sound.  The method is simple.  You and your colleagues can test for reliability and validity.

BACKGROUND TO THE ENERGY FRACTAL METHOD 

"Bottomless wonders spring from simple rules which are repeated without end."  Benoit Mandelbrot

Changing behaviour successfully and sustainably depends on an understanding of some basic principles.

  1. The power of the universal evolutionary algorithm.  Wherever you get repetition, variation and selection you MUST get evolution.  Never COULD, or MAYBE.  If you understand this you understand the scientific principle that has driven life, the universe and everything for 13,8 billion years.  And this principle really matters.  In your own life it means you are evolving, changing and growing every moment of every day.  Every thought you have, every action you take is effectively, for the first time.  Permanence in everything imagined, is illusory.
  2. Homo Sapiens lives on a battlefield between powerful feelings and powerful logic.  The current fight between the vaxxers and the anti-vaxxers is a prime example.  The worlds of politics and religion are further examples.  Mark Solms in his book The Hidden Spring provides a lucid answer.  He has shown that feelings, generated in our brain stems, drive all of our consciousness.  If you feel, then you are conscious.  If you cannot feel, you are unconscious.  Why does this matter?  Because feelings are beyond our control.  They emerge from our 'hidden spring' of powerful emotions, our wild horses.  We cannot ignore them and simply brush them aside.  They guide how we think and act.  Our feelings provide the foundations for our actions.  If our feelings are different our logic will be different.
  3. Lisa Feldman Barrett in her book Seven and a Half Lessons about the Brain reveals a remarkable finding.  Our brains are predictive and not rational.  One hundred thousand years of evolution has given us a brain whose purpose is to keep us alive.  (Staring at cell phones was never on the agenda.)  And the predictive brain is largely on automatic pilot.  We would have died out years ago if we had used our rational brains to cope with every eventuality on the plains of Africa.  Therefore if you want to change behaviour you have to rewire the predictive brain.  The rational brain is hopeless at this task.  Try using rational logic with an anti-vaxxer, a member of QAnon or a member of a political party.

Now we have the three essential building blocks for designing a method to change behaviour.

We now know that our powerful feelings from our hidden spring of consciousness are responsible for the way we think and act.  And that these feelings and their patterns are built into our predictive brains that determine how we behave, and where our rational brains remain minor players.  

And this model operates within the reality of the evolutionary algorithm, which guides the way we feel and determines our predictive brains.

If all this sounds somewhat deterministic, it is largely true.  However armed with the knowledge above there is a window of free will.  And this lies between the energy fractal and the evolutionary algorithm.


ENTER BENOIT MANDELBROT - THE FATHER OF FRACTAL GEOMETRY 

Benoit Mandelbrot is the father of fractal geometry, which revealed for the first time the real complexity of natural shapes.  He showed that complex shapes such as the fern, clouds or a coastline, are each built on a simple mathematical formula that with repetition produce the beautiful and complex shapes that we observe.

The basic fractal has one unique characteristic.  With sustained iteration it has the remarkable capability to generate high levels of complexity.  This emergent capability links closely to the the evolutionary algorithm described above.

For more detail on this illuminating subject, I would encourage readers to explore further information online.

The Energy Fractal, introduced below, is based precisely on Mandelbrot's fractal principles.

ENTER THE ENERGY FRACTAL - THE EVOLUTIONARY BEHAVIOURAL GENE 

We define the Energy Fractal as a simple new customised action that with disciplined iteration and careful design will automatically generate new levels of complexity.  It acts as a hologram with the future built into the present.  The beauty of the Energy Fractal is that all you have to worry about is the iteration of the simple new action, knowing now that the emergent complexity is nested in the Energy Fractal.  Emergent complexity is guaranteed.

Enough theory.  A further advantage of the Energy Fractal is that its power and beauty is built into its iteration. Nobody needs to understand the background.  Simple repetition is all that is required. Evolutionary complexity will follow just as night follows day.

TIME TO TRY YOUR OWN ENERGY FRACTAL 

 I invite you to experiment by designing your very own Energy Fractal. It will work with anything from strategy and tactics to sales and innovation. With disciplined iteration I can guarantee that you will harness the universal power of evolution. Be patient and watch as behavioural change takes place.

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About the author

John Raddall

John Raddall

 

Comments 3

Guest
Guest - David Hurst (website) on Tuesday, 19 October 2021 12:52

Mary Parker Follett (1868-1933) would agree with you: "The difficulty with all revolutions is this: the leaders think that they can substitute new ideas for old before they have changed the action tendencies, habit systems of people. As this cannot be done, revolution after revolution fails. The first thing that a normal class of revolutionists should be taught is that behaviour must be changed through experience, that it cannot be changed through the impact of ideas."

Mary Parker Follett (Creative Experience, 1924)

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Mary Parker Follett (1868-1933) would agree with you: "The difficulty with all revolutions is this: the leaders think that they can substitute new ideas for old before they have changed the action tendencies, habit systems of people. As this cannot be done, revolution after revolution fails. The first thing that a normal class of revolutionists should be taught is that behaviour must be changed through experience, that it cannot be changed through the impact of ideas." Mary Parker Follett (Creative Experience, 1924)
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John Raddall
John Raddall on Wednesday, 20 October 2021 15:15

Thank you David for introducing the remarkable figure of Mary Parker Follett. I have done some research and she seemed to be way ahead of her time. Her words regarding change are prescient and powerful. That new experiences and not ideas, will change behaviour. This goes a long way to explaining the abject failure of organisational transformations today. I look forward to reading more of her work. It seems a great pity that each generation has to reinvent the wheel!

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Thank you David for introducing the remarkable figure of Mary Parker Follett. I have done some research and she seemed to be way ahead of her time. Her words regarding change are prescient and powerful. That new experiences and not ideas, will change behaviour. This goes a long way to explaining the abject failure of organisational transformations today. I look forward to reading more of her work. It seems a great pity that each generation has to reinvent the wheel!
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David Hurst
David Hurst (website) on Wednesday, 20 October 2021 18:24

Thanks John,
You can read my appreciation of her work here: http://www.davidkhurst.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Thoroughly-Modern-Mary-Parker-Follett-Spring-1992.pdf

Best wishes,

David

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Thanks John, You can read my appreciation of her work here: http://www.davidkhurst.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Thoroughly-Modern-Mary-Parker-Follett-Spring-1992.pdf Best wishes, David
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