Benefiting at work from Brain Based Insights

Entrepreneurs often act as lighthouses in workplaces marked by unrelenting consumerism and desperate lives.  But what defines this successful innovator’s brain?

According to one highly successful entrepreneurial CEO... Donna Tortoretti ... it involves working together in mutually beneficial mergers.  Do you agree? Consider what’s going on inside the entrepreneurial brain, and you’ve already begun  to rewire new neuron pathways for adventure into your own brain’s plasticity.

We’ve all seen how an average day at work will find these innovators building a ladder and climbing it toward a new target at the same time. Whether they are tossing the dice with their own money at stake, or laying their good name on potentially unsafe lines for a good idea, struggle often describes the adventure on one side ... in tug of war with adventure, on the other.

It's not so much the field as the frame of mind. Entrepreneurs at the University of Rochester Medical Center , such as Dr. Margaret Kearney, for instance, weave leadership, learning and innovation - into entrepreneurial PhD programs.  In much the way that Einstein played with enterprising new ideas, this School of Nursing, shows distinctives for global leadership through uniquely merged business and learning approaches. Only entrepreneurship at its best could reframe medical intelligence as I saw recently at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

Perhaps that’s because money’s rarely the final goal to most entrepreneurs, or to Deans Patricia Chiverton, Kathy Rideout, Harriet Kitzman, or Renu Singh. This University of Rochester leadership team tend to focus more on engines that drive peak-performances rather than bottom line profits. Increase follows their projects as naturally as waves follow winds.  

Observe entrepreneurs for new approaches, though, and you'll agree they cannot be confined to any of the ways we observe in them. Nor can we cluster them together as if they are all one of a kind. Over years of working with leaders of all fields and researching human brains I developed a skeletal form to gage and empower entrepreneurial brains.

At the MITA Brain Based Center we use 10 criteria to define entrepreneurs who tend to perform well in their fields.

1. Entrepreneurial workers do most things better than typical practices permit
2. They work harder than most -  to improve on limiting systems
3. They look to causes and go after targets rather than dwell on past  mistakes
4. They maximize benefits to workers and firms in ways that take care of both
5. They get more from less in mental resources often hidden or unused at work
6. They see barriers more as bridges to cross than chasms to stop advancement
7. They inspire ordinary people to more successful achievements
8. They transform best practices into sustainable resources for ongoing growth
9. They tend to focus on what drives peak performances, rather than on what kills it
10. They move past people in ruts to signposts that gauge lucrative outcomes

Would others see all or any of these distinctives in you? How does your firm rate out of a perfect score of 10?

Strategies learned from entrepreneurs who score at the top of this list can help people who hope to transform a low performing organization into one characterized by peak-performances and mind-bending growth. That’s because entrepreneurs think success and often empower others by helping them to become more competent – in spite of the limitations that mark most sluggish organizations.

Want to promote entrepreneurship where you work? Check out Ernst & Young – as they are looking for entrepreneurial leaders and visionaries to honor. What do you think?