New brain for the new year

Renewing ourselves, seeking new resources and inventing a new harmony for human nature. To acquire this new agility, the assets and limitations of the brain require hard work. To imagine a different future by confronting ourselves with the retrospective powers of memory. Open our perceptions to discover new resources. Learn to value them by calming our emotions and limiting beliefs. Shift our attention to new criteria and, above all, acquire new tools to help our brain in this task. Giving oneself the authorization to be an actor in the invention of a different future also means taking the decision to move away from the injunction of good practices towards cognitive agility and situational intelligence. Here are a few key points to facilitate this path to get out of the injunction of good practices and taste the pleasure of cognitive agility.

Working on the memory of the future

Ahe memory of the future projects us into the future. This prospective memory has the particularity of needing information acquired in the past or the present - which amounts to the same thing - so that we can imagine hypotheses about probable futures. For many years, however, the future has been content with incremental progress. Today, there are ruptures everywhere, economic, technological, cultural ruptures... A new vigilance is required if we do not want our acquired knowledge and beliefs to block the horizon. To "re-actualize" one's representations and "reprogram" one's vision is more complicated than it seems to the simplex and routine brain. Knowledge about our routines and the fiction that settles in the heart of our brain helps us to understand the stakes of break-up situations.

Breaking the Illusion of Cognitive Mastery

Cognitive science shows us how we delude ourselves about the power of our brain. But it is not enough to give it an order - to tell it how to do it - for it to obey. Daniel KAHNEMAN, shows how the brain "takes initiative". SIMONS and CHABRIS, drive the point home by showing that our attention is selective. Other works come to reinforce them by analyzing the psychological conditions of decision making and their consequences, such as "Les décisions absurdes" by Christian MOREL. Taking stock of this knowledge - by identifying new principles of analysis and strategy - allows us to re-evaluate some of our practices. This challenge, for human brains, is a new stage of learning/unlearning. It begins with an awareness of the limits and assets of our brain mechanisms.

Learn to open up your perceptions more widely

Access to new information is the gateway to the process of inhibiting cognitive routines. Our brain is under influence. Context, interactions with others, our past perceptions, create obstacles to the integration of new knowledge. Information, to become knowledge, needs to be made aware and linked to the subject's experience. The study of the brain work modalities of creative geniuses inspires the work of openness. Explicitly considering the impact and opportunities offered by different scientific discoveries requires a particular kind of cerebral gymnastics. This new knowledge then enriches the reference systems and offers the imagination new territories to explore. To accept this work, human beings need security and freedom.

Becoming aware of the power of emotions

What psychology has long told us, neuroscience shows, is that emotions are produced in us that we do not know the effects of. Sometimes we are afraid without even realizing it. We can be angry without wanting to accept it. Sadness with laughter. When making decisions, our emotions can blind us and prevent us from making any changes. Within a group, power relationships with unexpressed emotions produce an explosive cocktail. The evolution of modes of collaboration, less hierarchy, more partnership, more parity, should not make us naïve. These changes are experienced by the body, which feels the excitement of enthusiasm, or the stress of renunciation... This emotional experience influences all registers of cognition. Leaving certain postures requires support in order to learn how to inhibit these phenomena while remaining "self-confident".

Experimenting with disruptive agility

Making a synthesis of the advantages and disadvantages of the main functional principles of our brains thanks to the notion of simplexity (Alain BERTHOZ) allows us to enhance our performance and to consolidate the awareness of the room for manoeuvre to be found. Shifting attention in new directions, exploring unknown areas. Giving oneself the means to serendipity, when the chance of discovery never comes completely by chance. Getting out of the prison of repetition of known, rehashed practices from a bygone era. Designing "round" methods and tools where the analysis of multidimensional interactions is privileged over simplistic cause-and-effect relationships. We need new methods and tools. Introducing new agile and disruptive processes, in a spirit of discovery, risk-taking and authentic interactions - with actors who are better informed about their cognitive and emotional functioning - opens up new perspectives.

Solving the issues of our time requires a better understanding of the constraints and assets of human intelligence, not injunctions to turn actors into sheep. Good practices" are, by definition, antinomic to disruption. Decision-making agility requires a space for openness and risk-taking in the development of autonomy. These are essential conditions for creativity and innovation. I wish you a year 2017 in which this new paradigm will be developed for the good of all.