The Hindu Business Line : Tice talk

"Change your mind and life changes; the focus of control is inside you and you can make a difference to the way you live and work and develop the potential to make a difference to your business."

LOU TICE, author of the book `Smart Talk' — V. Ganesan

It's late evening at the IIT, Madras, where a motley group of people have gathered at an auditorium to listen to Lou Tice, co-founder and Chairman of The Pacific Institute of the US. The occasion is the release of Tice's book, Smart Talk, by Prof M.S. Ananth, Director, IIT, Madras. But the audience is also there to listen to Tice talk about simple but powerful concepts that have made him an authority in the application of research in the cognitive sciences to the challenges facing organisations today.

Tice starts by showing an audio visual of two groups of people bouncing balls. He asks the audience to count how many times a particular group bounces the balls. After that he asks the audience to give their counts. Figures vary but the audience is stumped when he asks how many people have noticed a person dressed as a gorilla dance through the group and bouncing balls. None have but see it when he shows the video clip again. Tice uses the example to illustrate scotoma, a Greek word for a blind spot. "Most people don't realise that senses deceive them."

He says that it is a simple but effective way to illustrate how even in business decisions one's mind blocks out all information that is not important. "It's not the decibel level of information but the value; only information that is significant gets through," Tice emphasises. The problem with scotoma he says is you are always thinking that you are seeing the truth. Taking it to a larger plane, Tice's talk centres around the fact that it is all a mind game. "Change your mind and life changes; the focus of control is inside you and you can make a difference to the way you live and work and develop the potential to make a difference to your business," Tice says.

Seventy-one-year old Tice has been at it for over 35 years with The Pacific Institute where his teaching takes the complex concepts from the fields of cognitive psychology and social learning theory and makes it easier to understand and use. The crux of his message is to focus on people. As the Pacific Institute brochure says: "... over 70 per cent of all change initiatives in corporations do not deliver the required results and the most common cause of failure is an insufficient focus on people." So, Tice says one has to change the way you think and you can change the way you run your life. "It all comes from the inside and works it way outside, you can't impose change from the outside in."

Tice says organisations need to understand the fundamentals of how the mind works, and what's keeping the workforce from realising their potential and once they get the tools to release that potential they gain and achieve like they never have in their life before. "They feel empowered, there's a term called efficacy - your belief in your own abilities to make things happen... ," adds Tice.

Tice was in Chennai recently to kick off the India chapter of The Pacific Institute along with its associate in India, CGN, a business performance consulting firm with a presence in several countries. In India CGN will combine its human capital management consultancy with TPI's self-development programmes in business performance enhancement. In India TPI will be conducting workshops to take its curriculum to organisations around the country.