Improve strategy, influence, and decision-making by understanding your brain | Evan LaPointe (founder of CORE Sciences)
Today's guest, Evan Lapointe, founder of Core Sciences, explains how our brains work using a college campus metaphor with different departments (history, science, art). He shares a framework (safety, reward, purpose systems) to improve vision, influence, meetings, focus, and team relationships.
Deep Dive Analysis
13 Topic Outline
Understanding the Brain's Core Systems
Applying Brain Science to Team Dynamics
The Role of Personality in Team Performance
Designing Effective Work Environments and Habitats
Improving Meetings and Decision-Making Processes
Enhancing Strategy and Vision through Brain Science
Overcoming Low Openness for Strategic Thinking
Building Influence and Strong Relationships
The Three Pillars of Relationships: Ability, Trust, Appeal
Cultivating a Deductive Organizational Culture
The Importance of 'Why' in Team Motivation
Optimizing Focus with Brain Wave States (Alpha, Beta, Gamma)
Creating Space for Deep Work and Innovative Thinking
9 Key Concepts
Brain Systems (Safety, Reward, Purpose)
The brain operates with three primary systems: the safety system activates when feeling scared or uncertain, aiming to restore security; the reward system drives pursuit and desire for gain; and the purpose system engages when one understands and cares about the impact of their actions on others, fostering deeper engagement.
Brain Pathways
These are preferred routes for thought in the brain, influenced by personality and energy conservation. Intentional self-awareness allows individuals to steer thoughts down more productive pathways, activating beneficial brain regions.
Personality (Big Five)
A model describing individual differences across five broad traits: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Need for Stability. Understanding one's position on these spectrums helps in self-awareness and working with diverse teams.
Organizational Habitat
The overall environment or culture of a company or team, which predisposes individuals to certain types of thinking and interaction. A well-designed habitat fosters high-functioning thought and productive collaboration, while a poor one can lead to dysfunction.
Priming (in Meetings)
The initial phase of a meeting dedicated to aligning participants on the purpose, context, and guiding principles before diving into decision-making. Skipping or reversing this step often leads to misalignment, conflict, and inefficient outcomes.
Cognitive Dissonance (Fast Influence)
A method of rapid influence that involves directly challenging someone's beliefs by asking 'Why do you believe that?' to expose logical disconnects. This approach, when supported by trust and a habitat that permits such discussions, can quickly shift perspectives.
Relationship Pillars (Ability, Trust, Appeal)
Relationships are built on three core components: Ability (a person's skills and utility), Trust (the assessment of risk associated with a person, from negative to high), and Appeal (the subjective experience of being around someone and looking forward to interacting with them). Appeal often plays the most significant biological role.
Deductive Culture
An approach to building organizational culture based on logical deduction rather than inspiration. It starts by defining the company's 'role' (who is glad it exists and why) and then deduces values, standards, and behaviors from that fundamental truth.
Brain Waves (Alpha, Beta, Gamma)
Different states of brain activity corresponding to varying levels of focus. Alpha is a quiet, daydreaming state for subconscious insights; Beta is the active, productive 'get shit done' mode; and Gamma is an intense, deep focus state for grappling with complex problems and generating new frameworks.
8 Questions Answered
The brain has different 'departments' like science (open-minded experimentation), art (creative thinking), and history (recalling known information). Sending thoughts to the right department yields dramatically different and often better responses than over-relying on the history department.
People behave differently due to their unique personality traits and brain pathways. Understanding these differences through tools like the Big Five personality model and practicing self-awareness helps individuals recognize their own preferences and adapt to others' diverse ways of thinking.
Teams can improve meetings by consistently incorporating a 'priming' step before decision-making, which involves clarifying the meeting's purpose, context, and applicable principles. This prevents misalignment and unproductive debates rooted in differing mentalities.
Individuals should understand their personality traits, particularly 'openness' (tolerance for abstract ideas) and 'conscientiousness' (desire for efficiency). Being vulnerable about one's natural inclinations and practicing 'reverse engineering' (deconstructing desired outcomes or understanding situational awareness) can help bridge the gap between abstract vision and concrete understanding.
Strong professional relationships are built on three pillars: Ability (a person's skills and utility), Trust (the assessment of risk associated with them), and Appeal (the subjective experience of being around them). While ability and trust are important, appeal often plays the most significant biological role in how people engage with a relationship.
Leaders should move away from performative mission/vision/values statements and adopt a 'deductive' approach. This involves clearly defining the company's 'role' (why the world is glad it exists) and logically deducing values, standards, and a 'bias to impact' from that fundamental truth.
By understanding different brain wave states—Alpha (daydreaming for insights), Beta (active productivity), and Gamma (intense deep thinking)—individuals and teams can intentionally allocate time for each. Creating a 'habitat' that permits and encourages Alpha and Gamma time, such as dedicated quarterly or weekly blocks, is crucial for fostering innovation and tackling complex problems.
The 'conscientiousness crisis' refers to the tendency for highly conscientious individuals and teams to over-prioritize Beta (productivity) mode, constantly 'getting stuff done.' This can lead to a lack of innovation, insensitivity to market changes, and an inability to rethink existing frameworks, as it prevents engagement in Alpha and Gamma thinking.
24 Actionable Insights
1. Prioritize Positive Experience
Focus on what kind of experience you are for others when they work with you, as this is biologically paramount for effective collaboration. If you are a miserable experience, address this first, as it undermines your ability and trustworthiness.
2. Build Relationships: Ability, Trust, Appeal
Strengthen professional relationships by developing your ability (knowledge, skills), building trustworthiness (reducing perceived risk), and cultivating appeal (being a positive and enjoyable experience for others). All three are crucial for strong connections.
3. Prime Meetings for Success
Before decision-making, dedicate time to “priming” everyone by clearly stating the meeting’s purpose, type of conversation, and underlying principles. This ensures alignment and a shared understanding of objectives.
4. Create High-Functioning Habitat
Actively design your team or company’s “habitat” or culture to predispose people to high-functioning thinking and interaction. This involves setting an environment that fosters productive collaboration rather than working against it.
5. Culture: Logical Deduction, Not Inspiration
Build company culture on logical deduction by defining your “role” in the world (who is glad you exist and why) rather than relying on performative, inspirational mission/vision statements. This factual grounding provides a stronger basis for shared beliefs and permissions.
6. Answer “Why” with Purpose
Consistently provide a clear, purposeful “why” for tasks and projects, emphasizing the impact on others and the world. Move beyond negligence or purely safety/reward-based motivations to activate the brain’s purpose system for deeper engagement.
7. Shift to Bias for Impact
Shift your team’s mindset from a “bias to action” (just doing things) to a “bias to impact” (creating valuable effects). This ensures efforts are directed towards producing tangible value aligned with your company’s role.
8. Cultivate Alpha & Gamma States
Intentionally allocate time for “alpha” (daydreaming, subconscious processing) and “gamma” (intense, deep focus) brain states, aiming for roughly 25% of your work year. These states are crucial for breakthroughs, innovation, and deeper problem-solving.
9. Schedule Deep Focus Time
Integrate dedicated alpha and gamma time into your schedule, ideally on a quarterly cadence for strategic deep dives and weekly for a few hours of intense focus. Use these blocks to address complex problems, innovate, and re-evaluate.
10. Utilize 3x3 Focus Grid
Use a 3x3 grid (Safety/Reward/Purpose systems x Alpha/Beta/Gamma focus states) to understand and intentionally activate different thinking channels. Avoid over-reliance on “safety beta” and “reward beta” to unlock more diverse and impactful thinking.
11. Bridge Science-Business Gap
Identify areas where your business practices diverge from what science knows about human behavior and brain function. Actively work to reduce this “dysfunction gap” by adopting scientifically-backed approaches to improve performance.
12. Understand Personality Differences
Develop the capacity to work effectively with people who think and react very differently from you. Recognize that individual experiences and personalities significantly shift how ideas are received and processed.
13. Vulnerability in Sharing Traits
Practice vulnerability by openly sharing your personality traits (e.g., low openness, high conscientiousness) and how they influence your reception of ideas. This honesty fosters trust and helps the team understand your perspective, leading to more efficient collaboration.
14. Leverage Strengths, Patch Weaknesses
While leveraging your strengths, be aware of your weaknesses and identify team members whose strengths can “patch” your deficiencies. This awareness improves team fluidity and prevents operational slowness.
15. Adopt Growth Mentality
When assessing your personality traits, adopt a growth mentality rather than a justification mentality. Instead of defending natural tendencies, consider how altering behavior could better achieve desired outcomes.
16. Cultivate Personal Self-Awareness
Cultivate self-awareness by understanding your natural brain preferences (e.g., anxiety, creativity) and intentionally steer your thoughts towards activating optimal brain regions for a given situation. This prevents default preferences from dictating your response.
17. Understand Brain Systems
Recognize which of the three brain systems (safety, reward, purpose) is active in yourself and others. Understand that a safety-activated brain prioritizes self-preservation, while a purpose-activated brain seeks broader impact.
18. Shift Brain Departments
Shift thinking from relying on past knowledge (history department) to experimental, open-minded (science department) or creative, boundless (art department) thinking for better solutions. This is crucial for innovation in product and service development.
19. Understand Idea Reception
Recognize that people categorize ideas differently (believed, believable, conceivable, inconceivable) based on their experience and personality. What is “unbelievable” to one person might be “believed” by another, impacting how strategy and vision are received.
20. Reverse Engineer Outcomes
To cultivate openness, especially if you’re conscientious, become obsessed with reverse engineering desired outcomes. Deconstruct the inputs that generate success and understand underlying conditions to predispose your mind to generate better ideas and decisions.
21. Increase Situational Awareness
Actively increase your situational awareness by immersing yourself in the realities of your work, such as talking to customers. This ensures your daily decisions consider the broader impact on people and the market, preventing disconnection from reality.
22. Choose Influence Character
Be intentional about your influence style by choosing a “character” or mode that aligns with your personality and the situation (e.g., compassionate caregiver, logical challenger, enthusiastic leader). This provides consistency and helps others understand your approach.
23. Select Influence Speed
Choose an appropriate speed for influence: slow (letting failure teach), moderate (teaching new perspectives), or fast (using cognitive dissonance to challenge beliefs directly). The choice depends on relationships and habitat.
24. Avoid Backwards Meeting Flow
Structure meetings with an initial expansionary (priming) thought process before moving to convergence and decision-making. Avoid starting with convergence, which often leads to misaligned debates and last-minute priming.
11 Key Quotes
The brain is more complex than any known structure in the universe.
Evan LaPointe
Most people rely on their history department way too much.
Evan LaPointe
We're more similar than we are different... is one of the worst pieces of propaganda that people walk around with in their minds.
Evan LaPointe
What science knows minus what your business does equals dysfunction.
Evan LaPointe
Imagination is a hypothesis generation engine.
Evan LaPointe
Asking for accountability is the best way to not get it.
Evan LaPointe
The team that spends less time translating satisfactory language before they move... has a huge disadvantage in the market.
Evan LaPointe
Your brain essentially has abstract, creative, intellectual, complex thinking wired to the pain systems of the brain.
Evan LaPointe
The biggest bug in our programming as we transfer this to the business context is what makes the most sense in business is the most, you know, if it's a meritocracy, the best people with the best knowledge that we can trust should be in the room, and we will fight it with every fiber of our being if they are a terrible experience.
Evan LaPointe
If you have been negligent in answering to all these minds that work with you, why we're even doing this, that's the starting point.
Evan LaPointe
You will never get a gamma idea from a beta mind.
Evan LaPointe
4 Protocols
Effective Meeting Protocol
Evan LaPointe- Begin with a 'Priming Phase' by clarifying the meeting's purpose, the category of conversation (e.g., option generation, creative problem-solving, efficiency seeking), and the basic principles that should apply (e.g., are we honoring or challenging sacred cows?). This can be done in the invite or in the first few minutes.
- Move to the 'Decision-Making Phase' after priming, focusing on convergence and decision-making. Avoid starting with convergence and then reverting to priming when disagreements arise.
Influencing Others (Moderate Speed)
Evan LaPointe- Teach Something New: Identify information or a perspective that the other person doesn't know but would find valuable.
- Let Them Live With It: Share the new knowledge without forcing immediate acceptance. Allow them time (days, weeks, or months) to observe how this new information applies to their reality.
- Follow Up: Revisit the conversation after they've had time to process and see the world through the new lens, leading to a softer and more receptive discussion.
Building a Deductive Organizational Culture
Evan LaPointe- Define Your Role: Clearly articulate 'who is glad you exist and why.' This is a factual statement about the company's place in the world, not an inspiring mission.
- Understand Value Creation: From your defined role, deduce the specific value your company produces (e.g., time savings, cost savings, market opening).
- Establish Bias to Impact: Shift from a 'bias to action' to a 'bias to impact,' ensuring that all efforts are aimed at creating tangible value.
- Set Quality Standards: Imbue quality standards into all work, ensuring that outputs meet the expectations implied by the value you promise.
- Clarify Decision-Making Intelligence: Establish shared beliefs about how decisions should be made (e.g., balancing speed and accuracy).
- Define Teaming Dynamics: Establish clear expectations for acceptable treatment of other human beings, fostering a productive and respectful environment.
Creating Space for Alpha and Gamma Focus
Evan LaPointe- Audit Current Focus Allocation: Assess how much time is currently spent in Beta (busy work) versus Alpha (daydreaming/subconscious insights) and Gamma (intense deep thinking).
- Set Quarterly Cadence: Schedule dedicated blocks of Alpha and Gamma time on a quarterly basis (e.g., a half-day or full day per quarter for the team). This creates a 'black hole effect' for distractions, as non-urgent items can wait for these dedicated sessions.
- Schedule Weekly Gamma Time: Personally, aim for a couple of hours of Gamma (deep work) time once a week to tackle complex problems and engage in challenging thought.