Brainpower

We are entering the 4th industrial revolution. This is not the age of steam, coal or manufacturing, but the information revolution, where value is created primarily through the intelligent combination of knowledge and wisdom.

How shall we cope in a world where it has variously been predicted that up to 50% of our jobs will disappear in the next few decades?  What does that mean for education, where the half life of knowledge is in freefall? What will become of money in such a world?

These and other topics are the subject of a new book I’ve just released with Gower / Routledge entitled “Brain Based Enterprises“.

Click to view on Amazon

Brain Based Enterprises offers a unique synthesis of cutting edge academic research and pragmatic insights into business practices in the art and discipline of leading and managing enterprises where ideas, intelligence and insight are the currencies of sustainable collaborative and competitive advantage (SCCA). From the first signs of intelligence through making axes and fire, we now have access to unprecedented powers of creation through the convergence of humanity and technology. Rapid and dramatic advances in our understanding of genomics, biotechnology, computing and robotics make it possible for us to create a better world or destroy what we have created. Brain Based Enterprises explores both sides of the equation so that you can choose wisely.

Four scenarios for our union between man, woman and machine

Brain Based Enterprises draws upon leading edge research but expressed clearly and concisely for the busy person seeking to inform and illuminate themselves with a rich mixture of pragmatism and wisdom. Featuring numerous case examples from companies ranging from biotechnology to banking and bots, Brain Based Enterprises grounds the ideas and relates to busy people seeking practical inspiration.

Brain Based Enterprises addresses questions such as:

1. How shall we function in a world where man and machine will have interchangeable and complementary functions?
2. How will we re-organise organisations to make best use of collective cybernetic and human intelligence?
3. What will intelligence actually mean in a world where we are drowning in data? Instead how shall we swim with information?
4. How may we become more intelligent, individually and collectively?
5. What can and should Governments do to encourage intelligent societies?
6. How will education need to change in order to continue to be relevant and effective?
7. What role can leaders and Human Relations specialists play in stimulating an enterprise’s collective synapses? How can they engender climates and cultures where ideas, intelligence and insight are the norm?

The book and our other offerings lend themselves to keynotes and longer masterclasses via our websites Human Dynamics and The Academy of Rock.

Rather than drowning in data we must learn to swim with knowledge and wisdom in the machine age

The Sting

I was quite unprepared to see Sting in concert last night and overwhelmed by his superb musicianship, performance and width of his musical canon. I confess I had quite forgotten Gordon Sumner’s songwriting skills.  At the age of 66 his voice, playing and projection were in top form, giving all of us hope that age is no barrier to peak performance.

Perhaps the most poignant thing that connects me to Sting and his music is his solid values of human rights, environmental consciousness and sustainability. I was reminded of this through his lyrics and reconnected to my work for Amnesty International which started in the early 1980’s and which he epitomised through his song “They Dance Alone”. Sadly, Sting’s words remain relevant in these troubled times and I hope that our world leaders listen to him and others at such moments:

Convince an enemy, convince him that he’s wrong
Is to win a bloodless battle where victory is long
A simple act of faith
In reason over might
To blow up his children will only prove him right
History will teach us nothing

Hey Mr. Pinochet
You’ve sown a bitter crop
It’s foreign money that supports you
One day the money’s going to stop
No wages for your torturers
No budget for your guns
Can you think of your own mother
Dancin’ with her invisible son

We share the same biology
Regardless of ideology
What might save us, me, and you
Is if the Russians love their children too

And especially his song for the Mothers of the Disappeared (Desaparecidos). This was Sting’s symbolic gesture of protest against the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, whose regime killed thousands of people between 1973 and 1990 … on first hearing this song many years ago, I wept uncontrollably about the unimaginable grief and strength of these mothers. There are no words that adequately convey the meaning of his song so I will let the song do the work itself:

We live once more in troubled times and it seems that our human race is about to forget its humanity. Our ability to learn from history seems limited. Watch the video, conduct your own research into what lies behind the concert that Sting gave and take action for a more humane society …

To finish, here are a few excerpts from Sting’s recent tour including tributes to David Bowie from his son and Prince – I was privileged to attend this. Big thanks to Debbie Poli, MD of Lapel Pin Badges for this opportunity. Debbie makes all the badges that I wear, including orders for the last David Bowie album, Virgin, Star Wars and my very special Prince love symbol badge.

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Peter Cook leads The Academy of Rock and Human Dynamics, offering outstanding keynotes, masterclasses and longer term Business / OD, Coaching and Mentoring. He is author of 7 and a half books on business leadership. Check them out at Amazon.

Brain Drain ?? Call for case studies for a new book

I am looking for companies that wish to be featured in my eighth book for Routledge, which deals with the issue of what I call the “Brain Based Economy”, where ideas, intelligence and insight are the currencies of sustainable advantage. You and your company will find this of use if you:

• Lead an enterprise that trades in the fields of knowledge sharing, creativity, intelligent design etc.
• Are interested in finding better ways for “humanity” to interact with “machinery” i.e. computers, robotics, machines
• Are interested in disruptive business strategy and change management

Your company gains from the publicity involved with being associated with the book and it’s global reach and also from the process of data collection itself.  We are already talking with global consultancy Arthur D. Little, Q-Bot – an innovative robotics company in London, Fujitsu and The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development about the consequences for humanity in a world where man, woman and machine have converged.

The book can perhaps be summarised by a paragraph from the beginning which describes the “Brain Based Enterprise” concept. I was recently asked what was the most significant innovation in the last twenty years in an interview. Apart from the fact that the question is almost impossible to answer I was drawn to mention The Human Genome project and Wikipedia. What characterises both of these innovations is that neither are physical products such as the steam engine. Instead they are based on information in an economy where intelligence, ideas and innovation are the currencies of progress in what I call The Brain Based Economy. We have always used our brains to solve problems but we have also thoughtlessly plundered the world’s natural resources in doing so. We’ll have to think much more cleverly and systemically to address some of the problems we have created as a result of this.

Please get in touch if you are interested to find out more.

Brains – the currency of sustainable advantage

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Peter Cook leads Human Dynamics and The Academy of Rock. Author of 7 1/2 books on Leadership, Innovation and Creativity. Find his current books on Amazon.

 

Beauty and the Bass

Ida Nielsen spent 5 years as the bass anchor for Prince. She is now stepping out in her own right as a singer – songwriter, following Prince’s tragic and premature death. In our exclusive interview and subsequent private conversations with Ida I discussed a number of topics with parallel lessons for anyone seeking to make their mark with their personal passion. Film production by Rory Gill roryjrgill@hotmail.co.uk:

Balancing discipline and freedom

Ida is a perfect example of a professional musician who combines discipline with freedom in her musical life. She took up music at the age of 16, having learned to play piano and bass mostly by ear. She then attended the Royal Danish Academy of Music to hone her natural born musical skills. When amateur musicians tell me that improvisation is all about creativity and freedom and nothing to do with discipline, I believe they have missed the point about the importance of structure / discipline / order. I’ve observed on many occasions musicians who have oodles of disciplined musical training, but who are unable to improvise and sometimes vice versa. Ida is a living example of someone who combines both sets of skills. Prince puts it simply:

“Too much freedom can lead to the soul’s decay”

In the business world this is what Tom Peters refers to as “simultaneous tight and loose properties”. I’ve just been discussing direct parallels from music for people interested in bringing more creativity and innovation to their enterprise at Innovation Mauritius. 

Beauty and the Bass – Interviewing Ida Nielsen in Camden, London

Deliberate practice

Ida is also testimony to the concept of “deliberate practice” proposed by K. Anders Ericsson. This requires the systematic desire to extend one’s repertoire beyond one’s comfort zone. In my experience, some musicians reach a plateau of competence, due to rerehearsing that which they already know. To master an instrument requires practice outside of the known regions of your competence. I know from my own experience that I had to switch from playing rock music to gypsy jazz in order to move my playing skill up a level through seeing and hearing things anew. This concept applies in many fields of human endeavour. Ida has respected great innovators in her field and built upon their innovations, for example Larry Graham, who is credited with the invention of “slap bass playing”, in his case due to not having a drummer in his band so he had to develop a more rhythmic way of playing the instrument. 

Here’s a section of Mr Graham with Sly and The Family Stone and a bass solo from my good friend Mr Paul Moss at a corporate aftershow event we did at Henley Business School from 2 minutes 08 onwards:

Get into the Groove – Working with Flow 

Mastery, unconscious competence, effortless genius, being “in your element” …  These are all ways to describe what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called the state of ‘flow’.  Prince’s sax player Marcus Anderson offers some practical insights into the state of flow:

“Although I can read music and therefore understand the “mathematics” of jazz, the real skill of improvisation comes from using your ear / intuition, paying attention to the other band members, feeding off them and finding a flow that moves the group performance up to the max.”

Marcus Anderson, interview taken from “Leading Innovation, Creativity and Enterprise“, Bloomsbury

Ida is clearly in the state of effortless mastery or flow with this performance, recorded at Pizza Express Jazz Club in Soho, London at an aftershow at 3 am in the morning:

We spoke outside of the main interview about Ida’s 5 years spent working with Prince and she had these things to say about what she gained from working alongside a master of innovation in music:

Serendipity :

Ida explained how she got to play bass with Prince: 

“I simply got a call on my cell phone. The person said they were Prince’s manager and they wanted me to go to Minneapolis and jam with Prince and the band. They said they would call me back – they did not and I began to think it was a hoax, but eventually they called back and I went to Paisley Park to play with them for three days”. 

I completely got the mixed emotions of Ida’s story, having once had an e-mail from Sir Richard Branson telling me I had won a prize, then nothing for two weeks – a social media “expert” mailed me to say it was bound to be a hoax, completely bursting my bubble!  It turned out it was not a hoax mail and I ended up writing and delivering events for the Virgin group.

Mastery : When performing with Prince, Ida had to learn more than 300 songs in order to have the flexibility to vary a given performance, sometimes on the fly. This is quite different than performing with most professional musicians, who prefer to hone a set and perform this as a set piece on all dates of a tour. This level of agility gave Prince and 3rd Eye Girl the ability to personalise their music to a given audience. To do this requires mastery at the individual and team level, with everyone paying close attention to each other’s performances.

“Doing a residency in any particular city requires a large repertoire to ensure repeat business”.

Prince

Teaching as the best way to learn : Ida mused that she had been lucky to have the greatest guitar teacher on the planet in Prince. Moreover, rather than the usual situation in terms of paying your teacher for lessons, Prince had actually paid her !! The greatest gift of innovation is to transfer your skills to others to improve your game.

Check out Ida Nielsen’s music at her website for more insights into the skills of a master craftswoman.

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Peter Cook leads The Academy of Rock and Human Dynamics. Check book “The Music of Business” out, which has a chapter on Prince and 3rd Eye Girl.

UK Tour : A Motley Crew

Here are the dates of our tour of UK Virgin Money Lounges with Vicky Hamilton, former manager of Guns N’ Roses, Poison and management consultant to Motley Crue. Vicky worked directly for the inflammatory character that was David Geffen, CEO of Geffen Records and Capitol Records during her career and learned at the School of Hard Rocks rather than Harvard Business School. The combination of Vicky’s hard bitten experience and my own distillation of MBA’s makes for a powerful combination. All dates are entirely FREE and run from 3.00 – 4.30 pm.

On each tour date we are also booking business masterminding session where you will gain insights into management of some of the most incendiary people on the planet with transferable value to your own enterprise.

Click to book your place at the relevant Virgin Lounge:

Glasgow – Tuesday September 13 Click to book your place or call 0141 221 1952

 

Manchester – Wednesday September 14 – Click to book your place or call 0161 832 8259

 

Sheffield – Thursday September 15 – Click to book your place or call 0114 276 8262

 

London Eagle Place – Friday September 16 – Click to book your place or call 0207 439 8802

We’ll have copies of Vicky’s book available after lounge events alongside my books “Sex Leadership and Rock’n’Roll” and the latest one for Bloomsbury “Leading Innovation, Creativity and Enterprise“.

Leadership Lessons from The Academy of Rock – Where MBA = Much Bigger Amps !!

Come lounge and learn from someone who has managed the tantrums, bizarre expectations, dysfunctional behaviours, creativity and hair of these people. I sense she managed this by being something of an equivalent diva herself. Expect fireworks!!

Attitude for dysfunction

 

These Foolish Things

We’re throwing a party on April Fools’ Day to formally mark the release of my 7th book for Bloomsbury Publishing plc, at Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Money Lounge in London. I’d like to invite you all to attend.  It’s FREE but booking is essential via 0207 439 8802.

I will be joined by Professor Adrian Furnham from University College London. Adrian is author of 90 books, an eminent psychologist and writer for the Sunday Times on everything from dating to the dark side of climbing the corporate ladder. He will be interviewing me around “Leading Innovation, Creativity and Enterprise”.

May the Creative Force be with you …

Since it’s April Fool’s Day, Adrian and myself will be discussing aspects of creativity, playfulness and tomfoolery, served up in a heady cocktail with some music to lighten the afternoon. Sir Richard Branson knows that a happy workplace is one where people have fun whilst getting the job done and this session will tickle your funny bones as well as carrying some serious messages about leadership, innovation and creativity at work.

Professor Adrian Furnham – he’s no fool

Booking is essential – Give the team a call on 0207 439 8802.

 

You are cordially invited …

… to my online launch party TODAY Thursday February 25th to mark the release of my 7th book “Leading Innovation, Creativity and Enterprise” with Bloomsbury.  You will receive 30% discount on the book if you order using the code INNOVATION via BLOOMSBURY.

Join the virtual party at Facebook anytime TODAY.  We are having an official launch party at Virgin on April Fool’s day and Bloomsbury later on. OR you may want to host a book launch event in your company. Contact us for details via peter@humdyn.co.uk

I’d be made up if you can share the book details or this post widely on social media. Here’s some tweets that people have already created about Sir Richard Branson:

Got LICE? Bring on the Branson. A perfect accompaniment for when your business thinking is in a pickle

Virgin King of the introverts, piercer of corporate bubbles, reinventor and restlessly inventive. Just hope NHS is safe in his private hands!

Jake Dollery found that the book could help him deal with the dark side of organisational life and kindly made this image:

Some details of the book are available below, which has been fermenting for some 20 years ….

The death of the 3 minute pop song?

I am very lucky to have contributed a song to this unique album of 100 songs which are just 30 seconds long. The album 100×30 is the brainchild of Marc Christopher Lee and was featured in The Independent just recently:

Click on the logo to read the article

Marc was interviewed on ITV News in London on Friday 11 December with the story. The concept reminded me of the work of Bill Nelson who produced several albums of simple musical illustrations, each one unfinished and recorded pretty much as is, without further refinement and so on, to preserve the musical ideas as they were conceived of at birth.

Will it be a Christmas Number One?  Buy a copy to help

Here’s some of the tracks from 100×30 – you have got time to play them all as they are 30 seconds each!! No wasted space 🙂

I interviewed Marc Christopher Lee at The Virgin Lounge last week on the ideas behind the album. I’ve discussed the importance of the theory of constraints for creativity and it is clear that the constraint of less time can produce creativity in music as much as the opposite. Find out more and download the album at 100×30, which features Mungo Jerry and Owen Paul amongst many others. Has the 3 minute pop song just died? Did brevity kill the prog rock star? Perhaps not, as David Bowie contemplates a 10 minute song for his new album, but the 30 second song is ripe for an age when only 50% of people can get all the way to the end of a song on their smart phone.

 

Click the picture to download the album at http://www.100×30.com

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About the Writer:  Peter Cook leads The Academy of Rock – Keynote events with a difference and Human Dynamics – Business and organisation development, training and coaching.  Contact via peter@humdyn.co.uk or +44 (0) 7725 927585. Check our new book out for Bloomsbury “Leading Innovation, Creativity and Enterprise“.

Do It Yourself – Disrupting the Music Industry

Come join us at The Virgin Lounge in Eagle Place, London on Friday December 04 at 3 pm where I will be talking with Mark Christopher Lee, leader of cult indie band “the pocket gods”. Mark was discovered by the late John Peel who liked his song written about his local curry house – “Ballad Of The Peshwari Naan” and was called a “wilful maverick” by Tom Robinson. Mark has just released an album called 100 x 30. Mark explains the concept:

“I wanted to do something to help musicians gain fairer royalties from the music industry/streaming giants with an album of 100 songs all 30 seconds long – For example Spotfiy pays out a tiny royalty of 0.007p per track over 30 seconds. This gave me the idea of recording an album of 100 songs that were 30 seconds long each. Why write songs that are any longer? All the songs were recorded on laptops in garages from just a few takes in a lo-fi style – the album is all about ideas and creativity as opposed to perfectionism and over production – technology allows people to record great quality music at low cost at home which is very punk and empowering”.

In my business life, I’ve written about the theory of constraints on a number of occasions and this project is a classic exercise in using constraints as a spur to creativity. See Constraints and Creativity for more information.

100 x 30 – Click to view the website

Mark has written and recorded 72 albums since 1998. As well as an indie legend, having previously played bass in Jesus and The Mary Chain, he also runs his own indie label which is now home to 20 or so aspiring new artists, many of whom are favourites on BBC 6 music as well as home to more established acts such as the legendary songwriter Larry Weiss, who wrote million sellers Rhinestone Cowboy, Bend Me Shape Me and Hi Ho Silver Lining. 

100 x 30 features Mungo Jerry, Owen Paul (My favourite waste of time), Tom Greene of The Orb et moi – I contributed a 1984 inspired track under the name “The Pigs of Freedom” called “Anaesthesia Politica”, which sports 3 verses, 3 chords, a 3 second guitar solo and comes in at 33 seconds long – just 3 seconds over Spotify’s budget to qualify as a song 🙂 I am looking forward to my 0.007 pence royalties from them!!

City AM picked up the story recently, comparing us with Taylor Swift – I’m not sure the comparisons are valid, but take a look for yourself:

The first time we have been linked to Taylor Swift – Click to access City AM article

Please contact the London Eagle Place Lounge on 0207 439 8802 to register your place. It’s absolutely FREE!!  All event details here.

Here’s “Anaesthesia Politica” – I described it as a 1984 inspired Psychedelic Political Punk Poem!  An entirely new genre of music I think 🙂

and the slightly longer “Pestonomics“, released last week in support of Cancer Research UK:

Click to buy the track for Cancer Research UK

… and two  of the album tracks:

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About the Writer:  Peter Cook leads The Academy of Rock – Keynote events with a difference and Human Dynamics – Business and organisation development, training and coaching.  Contact via peter@humdyn.co.uk or +44 (0) 7725 927585

Agilty and Perception

In our occasional series of posts on the practical aspects of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), here’s a short post on one of NLP’s values, summed up by the phrase:

The meaning of communication is the response you get

This simple phrase is one of the hardest but most useful principles to get on board. Instead of thinking it’s someone else’s fault if they don’t ‘get you’, this NLP principle places the onus on you to vary your communication style to be more influential. the buck rests with you, and if at first you don’t succeed, try something different. Many times we misunderstand each other, as if we are speaking foreign languages:

I say Tomato, you say Tom Ate O, let’s call the whole thing off

In practice, you can use this idea in the following ways:

Try explaining yourself from the other person’s point of view

Explain yourself in the language they would prefer rather than your own preferences. Live inside their world, not yours

Ask them to explain what they don’t understand or accept, then move on from there

We live inside our own skins for much of thIn some cases, no matter hard we try, some people are “on the Central Line” and others “on the Circle” metaphorically speaking … of course there are points at which these tube lines meet … 🙂 Check the 1948 tube map out to think about how you can meet people in a conversation where they are rather than where you are:

Skilled negotiators and influencers understand and use these skills naturally but they can also be learned and refined. Check out our offerings in this area at Human Dynamics or give us a call to set up some NLP master coaching.

Of course some people are just really “hard to read” as illustrated by this cat cartoon from my friend’s cousin, the great Steve Bell – such people make great poker players amongst other life and business skills. More on this in another article to demystify and cut the crap (but not the cats) out of NLP.

We finish with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers on the vexed question of communication excellence:

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Human Dynamics offers better business and organisation development, training and coaching. Our sister company The Academy of Rock specialises in cross-disciplinary learning on business and music, delivered through conference keynotes and longer masterclasses.

Do order your copy of the NEW edition of “The Music of Business” – Parallel lessons on Business and Music. Acclaimed by Professor Adrian Furnham and Harvey Goldsmith CBE.