公司失败之谜新解

    显微技术让我们清楚了有关健康的错误观点。望远技术则告诉我们，我们并不是处在宇宙的中心。

    最近，一项名为功能性磁共振成像（fMRI）的技术向我们展示，长期以来关于人类动机的观点或许是错误的。这项技术可以收集活跃大脑消耗氧气的图像。

    社会神经学科的创始人之一马修•利伯曼在他的新书《社交：联系刺激大脑之谜》（Social: Why our brains are wired to connect）中便谈到了上述观点。

    正如利伯曼所解释的那样，长期以来，我们认为人是理性的、逻辑的作用者，受到自身利益、贪婪与欲望的驱动。这种观点有一定的道理，但却并不完全正确。结果证明，另外一个驱动因素至少具有相同的重要性：进行社会交往的驱动力。

    研究显示：参与慈善活动比赢得金钱更能激活大脑的奖励系统。泰诺（Tylenol）等止痛药可以像减轻肉体疼痛一样，减轻大脑的痛疼。社交遭拒会使人的智商得分降低20%，GRE分数几乎会减少一半。经常与一位朋友会面与额外得到100,000美元相比，两者对人幸福感的效果是相同的。经常自愿帮助他人所产生的幸福感与额外获得50,000美元相当。员工遇到他们的工作所造福的对象后，他们的工作效率往往能提高一倍。人们愿意花30,000美元来换取作为更高地位员工的身份认同。最后，社交活跃与戒烟对健康有着同样的好处。

    很明显，社交活动的重要性超出我们的想象。而我们的机构和组织，从政治系统到医院，从学校到公司，却都坚信一系列不同的理念：人们受到金钱的激励，身体健康（而不是社会健康）最重要，而社交需求“可有可无”。

    很久以前，研究人员发现，每当人们努力解决问题的时候，比如做数学题或进行任何分析，包括思考目标的时候，他们会激活大脑前额叶皮层的外侧区。上世纪90年代，研究人员发现，当我们在思考其他人和他们的思想、感觉、希望与恐惧时，会调用大脑中一个截然不同的系统。此时，人们激活的是背内侧前额叶皮层的一个区域网络。

    一个人在团队里能否与其他人配合默契，取决于我们能否理解他人的情绪。相比仅仅关注某个项目的老板，如果你知道员工真正想要的东西，真正关心的事情，你就能够设计出更好的团队环境。

    讽刺的是，人类天生可以在心理上“复位”。每次进入一个新环境的时候，他们都会从社交的角度看待这个世界。但现代人对分析思维的重视高于社交思维，所以我们往往会忽视这些自然行为。

    进行社交思维的系统和思考目标与概念的系统就像是一个神经系统跷跷板。当你调用其中一个区域的时候，便会抑制另外一个区域的活动。

    我们的组织环境中，有各种体制与流程在促使人们进行理性思考，而不是从社交方面进行思考。在职场上，如果一个人漠视社交线索，肯定会错过许多重要的信息，失去创造性解决问题的机会。结果，我们认为许多问题都有解析解法，需要做的只是进行正确的计算。但许多最严峻的商业挑战都需要社交性的解决方案。如何让个人、团队或整个公司感觉良好？感觉良好的员工工作效率往往更高。

    The technology to see very small things up close showed us we had much wrong about health. The technology to see big things far away showed us we are not the center of the universe.

    More recently, a technology called fMRI, that lets us collect images of oxygen use inside an active brain, has shown us that some of our long-held beliefs about human motivation may be wrong.

    Matthew Lieberman, one of the founding fathers of a field called social neuroscience, tells this story in his new book, Social: Why our brains are wired to connect.

    As Lieberman explains, for a long time we believed that people were rational, logical agents, driven by self-interest, greed, and desire. While this is not untrue, it is only half the story. It turns out that people have another driver that is of equal, if not greater, importance: the drive to be social.

    The studies tell the story: Giving to charity activates the brain's reward system more than winning money. Painkillers like Tylenol relieve social pain the same way they relieve physical pain. Being socially rejected can lower your IQ score by 20% and cut your GRE score nearly in half. Seeing a friend regularly has the same effect on our well being as making an extra $100,000. Volunteering to help others regularly produces the same increase in well being as making an extra $50,000. When an employee meets a person who benefits from their work, that employee can double their productivity. People will pay $30,000 to be recognized as a high-status employee. And, finally, being socially connected is literally as good for your health as quitting smoking.

    Clearly, social activity matters more than we have realized. Yet our institutions and organizations, from political systems to hospitals, schools and corporations, have been built based on a different set of beliefs: that people are motivated by money, that physical -- not social -- health is most important, and that social needs are a "nice to have."

    Long ago, researchers discovered that every time people try to solve a problem -- do math or anything analytical in nature, including thinking about goals -- they activate the lateral region of their brain's prefrontal cortex. In the 1990s, it was discovered, much to our surprise, that an entirely different system was engaged when we think about other people and their thoughts, feelings, hopes, and fears. In this case, people activate a network of regions within the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex.

    The ability to work well with other people in a group depends on our ability to appreciate other individuals' emotions. A boss who knows what his staff members really want and care about will be able to design a better team environment than one who is simply focused on the elements of a project.

    The irony is that human beings are built to mentally "reset" and see the world socially anytime they enter a new situation. However, modern humans tend to value analytical over social thinking, and so we tend to override that natural behavior.

    The system for thinking socially and the system for thinking about goals and concepts function like a neural seesaw. When you engage one region, it dampens the activity of the other.

    Our organizational environments have systems and processes that nudge people to think rationally rather than socially. In the workplace, if you are in a mindset that discounts social cues, you are going to miss a lot of important information around you and a lot of opportunities for creative problem solving. We end up thinking that a lot of problems have analytic solutions; you just have to crunch the right numbers. Yet many of the toughest business challenges require social solutions. What does the person, team, or whole organization need to feel good? People who feel good are generally more productive.