Measuring What Matters

In business, and in life, we do what we measure. And we’re better at measuring some things than others. How well do we measure the emotions of our team members? How good are we at even understanding our own emotions?

I've been listening and talking about these questions over the last ten days with a range of innovators, scientists, and creative practitioners. This is part of our project building a new foundation for public engagement around climate change, grounded in a deep understanding of emotions. Here's an earlier post with links to the Multi-Sensory Climate Center.

In this wave of discussions, my first stop was Seattle. During the on-stage brain dissection at an Evening with Neuroscience at the University of Washington, neuroscientists explained in very unemotional terms how emotions are “layered into” the developing brain. And my daughter, Isabel Halperin, led the student group this year that organized the campus-wide event, attended by more than 400 people.

I learned a lot about emotions and also had a strong emotional response. How do we, as parents, measure pride in a child’s success?

Next, I had a fascinating afternoon with Mor Keshet from Tevel, a social scientist, therapist, and innovator in studying human behavior and emotions. She is doing deeply insightful work, calling attention to the power of nature to improve mental health. As she observes, biomimicry need not be limited to the physical. It can be much more than extraordinarily careful research on how birds actually fly, leading to the redesign of airplane wings. How much can we also learn from nature about how to redesign aspects of our mental well-being?

Think for a moment about some of the words we typically apply to human activities: community, connection, diversity, balance, and so forth. They might also be applied to the natural world around us. But when was the last time you heard about a community of trees? If we are attentive, it's likely there are profound learnings to be found in nature.

Revealing connections that we can’t see links back to UW, where The Golden Lab is gaining a deeper understanding of how social analgesics can reduce pain -- and how that may vary across the sexes. How do we measure the value of social analgesics as compared to using pharmaceuticals for pain reduction?

Looking not through microscopes at brain tissue but toward the future with telescopes, I also learned a lot from Cat Tully, founder of the School of International Futures (SOIF) in London. In a lovely inversion of what one might expect, the school helps “transform the present using structured thinking about the future.”

Seeing beyond the obvious and taking people to places they have not been (either physically or emotionally) is also the focus of the remarkable photography of J Henry Fair. I had planned to join Henry in Davos at the World Biodiversity Forum next month for a panel on “Art Explaining Science.” But it conflicts with my daughter’s graduation in Seattle.

And my visit with Paulette Cole at True North in the Hudson River Valley was also rich with the experience of how our external, built environment can open windows into our own feelings and emotions. We all know from personal experience that the built environment has a major impact on our mood and mindset. Are the connections between our internal and external worlds so vast that perhaps the two worlds are one and the same?

Finally, and not far from Hudson, NY, Charles Potter, Kate Leavitt, and the team at the Seacoast Science Center in NH are also creating opportunities for people to better understand how we are connected -- in this case to oceans and what we can learn from them. We are in the early stages of discussing how the Center’s plans might align with the Multi-Sensory Climate Center, going beyond mental understanding to reveal underlying emotional drivers.

At the core of this project is our active collaboration with Orfield Laboratories, Inc., Emma Orfield Johnston, Steven J. Orfield. We are building the foundation for an entirely new narrative around avoiding catastrophic climate change. Which I prefer to reference as the opportunity to maintain climate stability. For 50+ years, Orfield Labs has been developing, refining, and applying a unique methodology for surfacing emotions that we often don’t know are driving our behavior.

Is your organization measuring its real priorities, using measurement as a guide to the future rather than as a record of the past? Are you, your teams, and stakeholders emotionally engaged or overwhelmed and checked out? If you want to better understand how underlying emotions influence the behavior of colleagues, clients, customers, funders, and other people you care about, let's talk.