Brain Compatible™

BRAIN COMPATIBLE™ LEADERSHIP

LAO TZU VERSUS NAPOLEON

Introduction

This book is the foundation of lectures given to more than one hundred professional audiences across Canada called Designing a Brain CompatibleTM Organization – subtitled Lao Tzu versus Napoleon.

None of the examples in this book pertain to a single company or person. This writing comes from a multitude of troubling work experiences enhanced by many pieces of literature and reference material to explain and promote the value of designing brain compatible organizations and communities.

After 26 years of Human Resources Management working under the supervision of approximately 25 different bosses (a few good ones, many bad ones) in several organizations, the brain compatible message became the centerpiece of concern. The focus and examples in this book are the reptilian brain, explained and demonstrated in every day events at work. It is the oldest part of our brain and is exceptional at survival impulses when we feel danger. Unfortunately, the reptilian brain is too often called into action in the workplace triggering a multitude of explainable but disastrous behaviours, sometimes with tragic outcomes.

The analogies Napoleon and Lao Tzu are used throughout this book to illustrate what is brain compatible and what is not brain compatible. Napoleon will engage your reptilian brain if you let him take you to Russia; Lao Tzu will not, no matter where he takes you.

Napoleon

After a coup in 1799, Napoleon became defacto leader of France making himself “consul for life”. In 1804, Napoleon declared himself emperor. Napoleon invaded Russia with an army of 600,000 soldiers in 1812. When Napoleon reached Moscow, he found a burned-out abandoned city in the mist of winter. By the time remnants of Napoleon’s starving, freezing army crossed back into France, no more than 10,000 soldiers returned. Napoleon was described as so driven with unrelenting ambitions as to be deranged by the advancement of his own self; spreading death and destruction on his path to fame, power and glory.

Lao Tzu

An old sage according to legend was keeper of the archives at the imperial court. When he was eighty years old he set out for the border of China, toward what is now Tibet, saddened and disillusioned that man was unwilling to follow the path of natural goodness to achieve tranquility. A guard asked Lao Tzu to record his teachings before he left. He composed in 5,000 characters the Tao Te Ching. (Sixth century B.C.) In Lao Tzu’s view, material things were said to create “unnatural” actions by shaping desires. Accumulation was a deficiency of human society. Lao Tzu believed in non-intervention: “If only kings and lords observed this, then thousands of events would develop NATURALLY.

Throughout the book, the terms Lao Tzu versus Napoleon will be used in many instances in order to describe and address the comparison between the sage and thoughtful leader and the autocratic, power-driven leader.