Culture and Neuroplasticity
Can we change our organizational cultures like we can change our brain chemistry?
The last few months have been a lesson for me in how the energy and spirit we, as humans, bring to our work gets transmitted onto the things we make, the programs we run, the culture we build. If I bring a spirit of fast-paced anxiety (which I sometimes do), that anxiety gets transmitted and imprinted. If I bring a spirit of poetry and creativity, that creativity also is transmitted.
Our executive team grew from two to three people last year, and we’re spending more time consciously exploring the energy and spirit we bring to our daily work and our team. In the same way that a brain’s neuroplasticity enables it to be transformed, we’re curious about the neuroplasticity of our team.
Can we change the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and about the state of the business such that we imprint creativity and possibility into our work? One of the ways we’re hoping our collective neuroplasticity will change is through how we pace the organization. We’re examining how Uncharted’s pace leads to a narrative of unnecessary, manufactured urgency and scarcity, and how urgency and scarcity then get imprinted on our work and culture. What might we build if we brought greater spaciousness to our work in 2020?