In order for a business to excel operationally, it must excel biologically. In plain English, a business that gets human beings into their best state is a much, much better business. These businesses don’t only perform better; they are places humans naturally want to be… attracting, activating, and retaining talent in ways that elude most companies.
The human brain, in its optimal state is…
The human brain is a complex object, for sure. But there are some very simple truths about how brains work. For example, the human brain is always in one of three states: threat-avoiding, reward-seeking, or purpose-fulfilling.
These states aren’t just ideas or thoughts in the brain. They are entirely different “modes,” releasing chemicals like cortisol, adrenaline, dopamine, and serotonin into the body. These chemicals substantially change the way we feel, think, and act.
The optimal mindset and behaviors bulleted above only come from one state of the brain: what we call the purposeful state. In fact, it is almost physically impossible for these behaviors to come from a brain in the threatened or reward-seeking states. In those states, the regions of the brain that produce intelligent, creative, cooperative, resilient, and purposeful work are almost entirely turned off.
Many prevailing statistics in business point to a difficult but important fact: most businesses are simply bad at biology**.