Benefiting at work from Brain Based Insights

It surprises me that I am writing about  lessons from a Verizon cell phone when I was the one who bought a PalmPilot, and then left it in a box until it grew too old to help me. My amazing new discovery  this week, though, started with a unique service experience over at Verizon, and ended with a cell phone that can do more magic than Houdini himself. How so?

My new V Cast LG VX8300 can transport a person from hopelessly lost into an enjoyable journey to Mars and back. Ok, not quite. Nevertheless I'm impressed ... with what - here at the MITA Brain Based Center - we call ... outsourcing your memory ... through smart skills… And it’s more. How?

With a few taps on its keys, this phone knows where you’re headed at every juncture of your trip. There’s more going on than outsourcing for facts and answers, though. The VZ Navigator functions add new brain cells for any trip.

Yesterday I headed up to Syracuse, New York for instance, to check out the Turning Stone Golf Course ... and my Verizon Wireless Navigator  pointed me in the right direction, even after several wrong turns. Did I just say this little Verizon phone was smarter than me?

Maybe that’s up for grabs a bit longer, but as the thing talked me into my destination with amazing ease, I saw a vivid metaphor for rejuvenated learning in that little phone!

1. It met me where I stood and did not expect me to be somewhere else so that it could move an entire group along at the same time and in the same way. The brain is moved forward faster when we start where a person stopped learning, and simply guide that person to the next juncture. It’s the opposite of a learner’s yes but… excuse – and more flexible than a mentor’s monologue, because it simply begins wherever a person is at the moment and expects to advance successfully from that place.

2. It anticipates mistakes and uses its capability to factor these in with ease along the way. If you miss any target spoken from the VZ Navigator device, or even if you stubbornly plough on in the wrong direction, the cell phone redirects your route. In other words, you simply move forward again, without the cortisol that tends to flood your brain after mistakes, that land you criticism or sarcasm.

3. It took about 90 minutes to drive from Rochester to Syracuse, and yet this little wireless devise provided accurate time estimates, at each turn by turn direction, in clear helpful tone.  It takes time to learn new parts of any journey, but we are motivated when we can see the estimated time of arrival, when we enjoy the serotonin that comes from starting wherever we stand at the moment, and when we are rerouted with rejuvenated insights toward the target, each time we happen to veer off track.

It’s not perfect, and the screen is a bit hard to see in the car,  but hey…. Only a Hebbian Hobo waits for the perfect and I’m looking for the best out there to move us from where we stand to a better destination at work.  

Sound like a renewal model – with faster access for accurate directions, and more promise of successful arrivals where you work?