Nowadays, employees have become accountable for the functioning of their brain. At least this is the feeling that emerges if we browse the offer of managerial literature devoted to the optimization of the neuron, which has become plethoric. In Supporting change with neuroscience. Two pilots on board a brain (Intereditions, 160 pages, 24 euros), Anne-Laure Nouvion underlines the fact that “Research on the brain has experienced considerable growth over the last ten years (…). Understanding the human brain and its interactions with the surrounding world is an essential key to gaining managerial effectiveness”.
The problem ? The brain is said to be a horrible housewife that limits any cognitive effort as much as possible, slamming the brakes on the idea of changing anything in its routine. According to the expert, softening resistance to change is therefore a major challenge for companies faced with organizational transformation processes. But, for this, we must understand the concrete needs of this complex and soft organ for which any questioning of the acquired stability is accompanied by a risk of losing its bearings.
In the book to be published in May by Éditions Eyrolles Your brain is not wired to be productive, the specialist in neuroscience applied to decision-making processes Jérémy Coron draws essentially the same observation. The brain would be programmed for survival and not for productivity, which would explain behaviors such as procrastination, loss of concentration or demotivation. It would then be appropriate to take the brain out of its comfort zone, or even to “hack” it, in order to take advantage of its unexplored potential. Married Business Owners, Get More! confidence, success and fun for your couple and customers thanks to the brain (independent publication, 2023), ethical persuasion specialist Thomas Trautmann bluntly promises.
“Neural violence”
Against all this cheerful – and sometimes a little ridiculous – literature, The Fatigue Society (reissue, Presses universitaire de France, 80 pages, 11 euros), a clever and iconoclastic essay by Byung-Chul Han, a major figure in international philosophy, offers a completely different decipherment of this craze for the brain. According to the German author of South Korean origin, we have gone from a disciplinary society, manifested through numerous constraints suffered by the individual, to a society of performance, marked by a self-exploitation which seems, well, respect, fully consented − it is therefore all the more effective.
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