Most business leaders are under enormous pressure and are therefore fully immersed in their industry and rarely have time to reach out beyond it or read books on subjects that are not directly and obviously relevant to their industry or their results. There is however a vast treasure trove of science and research-based knowledge that could radically alter the performance of their organizations, if only it were known and applied. The critical problem is that most of this knowledge is not ‘commercial knowledge’, neatly packaged and applied to organizations via business or leadership books, an MBA course or a management journal. It is knowledge of the human system, biology, brain function, adult development, behaviour or human relationships, and it’s usually delivered in a range of dry, dull academic or scientific papers contained in obscure journals that are almost incomprehensible to anyone who is not also an academic, scientist or medical professional. This book is therefore the presentation of some of the key secrets that can, if properly applied, consistently elevate performance and results, leading to nothing short of a complete transformation of the lives of leaders, their organizations and the wider world. Coherence and Enlightened Leadership is an invitation to re-imagine a new future. A future that is not just measured by materialistic rewards but one that redefines the very purpose of business itself so as to support humankind and human evolution. We need a new way of keeping score in business, a new bottom line that accounts for the return on financial capital and also the return on natural, social and human capital. Only then can we really know the true value of a business.
The reason I know about any of this research is that I originally trained as a medical doctor and before leaving the profession I spent 11 years in many of the front-line medical trenches around the world in hospital-based roles, general practice and ultimately academic medicine. As a medical doctor first and businessman second, I soon realized that I was in the unique position of spanning two very different worlds that rarely meet except through the prescription of blood pressure medication, depression pills or post-operative care following a heart-attack! In Chapters 2, 3 and 4, we explored how one of those worlds – neuroscience – has a profound implication on the other.
One of the reasons I decided to leave medicine was my inability to make a big enough dent in the scale of human suffering I was seeing. For example, the average GP may have 2,000 patients on his list, but 1,800 of those he never sees because they are largely healthy. So he only sees about 200 patients each year and usually it’s the same 200 people! And although I found working as a cardiologist, oncologist or obstetrician was, for me at least, more engaging, I still wasn’t able to reach enough people. I wanted to work with people whose actions affected the lives of thousands if not more. That meant working with big multinational corporations. Some of the big, multinationals employ hundreds of thousands of people, and if we extend their reach to include family, friends and customers then big business has the potential to affect many millions of lives. I don’t say this for reasons of grandeur. I say this from a sincerely held belief that all of our lives could be so much more fulfilling. We could significantly reduce the scale of human suffering if we encouraged people to apply the advances in understanding of the human condition across the globe. I believe, for example, that Coherence and Enlightened Leadership can help us to finally solve many of the so-called ‘wicked problems’ currently facing society (see free bonus chapter at www.coherence-book.com).
I have had the great good fortune to meet and work with some great teachers. In this book I have attempted to share with you some of their key insights. In examining the many, largely agreed upon ‘facts’ from multiple, often obscure fields of science and medicine, as well as the research from business schools and leadership journals, some astonishing conclusions become clear, conclusions that, extraordinary as they may seem, consist of no more than pre-existing knowledge. But when these insights are taken together something remarkable emerges about us that is simply breathtaking. The complexity of the human condition and the potential inherent in that sophistication inspired me from an early age, and I hope that some of what I have shared has inspired you. One or two insights may turn out to be untrue. But I hope that you embrace most of it, find time to practise a few of the skills that resonate most strongly with you, and apply the knowledge in this book to your life for real world benefits. These insights, which I have accumulated over many years of study, have certainly helped me to understand that we are all so much more than we realize or have been led to believe. And they also made me realize that if enough organizations change then it is possible to reduce human suffering on a grand scale, because when applied these insights can transform our experience of ourselves, how we relate to each other and the very nature of the lives we live.