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Innovative Potential. Second Factor: Psychological Profile (II)

1. Personality and Reality Translation (II)

1.1. Locus of Control

The term locus (or centre) of control comes from the Latin locus, (plural, loci ) which is translated as the place of control. This concept which represents our perception of the cause-effect relationship between our actions and our environment was developed by Rotter (1966).

The locus of control includes our perception of government and responsibility for the events that surround us. People with an internal locus of control believe that the facts that surround their existence are the result of their own behaviour and actions. On the other hand, those who have an external locus of control believe they are the consequence of chance or others’ actions. These are people who believe that success and failure do not depend on personal attitudes or efforts. As you would imagine, most of us are located at neither of those extremes, but we often tend to drift towards one of them.

When we blame a professional failure on our own strength or actions, we position ourselves under the locus of internal control, while when we blame it on the environment, bad luck or the crisis, we are under the external locus. It is likely that both are partly responsible; but what matters is the perception of the person for the reasons behind the failure and their perception of chance.

People who locate it within themselves face up to threats and battle to achieve their dreams. Those who place it outside themselves often become chronic complainers who feel victimised. They are irritated and angry and live with fear and bitterness while their lives pass them by.

It is very human to lean towards the external locus of control because it provides a focus for blame and frees the subject from responsibility. Indeed, on some occasions adopting this position may be a question of survival. Faced with a tough breakup or an unexpected job loss, “It was all my partner’s fault, she’s a real ****,” or “it was all my boss’s doing, he’s a complete ****,” makes things much easier, but as the days pass, you have to start working on the internal aspects. You have to ask yourself questions like: How responsible am I? What can I do so that this doesn’t happen again? This is the only way to learn from life experiences and develop through them. If you don’t do this, you become another name on the list of victims, harbouring grudges and therefore losing the opportunity to learn.

In the world of work, people with an internal locus of control are usually less isolated, more satisfied with their jobs, more accepting of a change of function and usually experience less stress. These are the people who make greater efforts, set more ambitious goals and usually achieve success. Their profiles have a greater predisposition for leadership and entrepreneurship – highly valued qualities in these times.

By contrast, people with an external locus of control are much less predisposed to expend effort, and instead, reveal lower levels of performance and set much less ambitious goals for themselves. They have a greater predisposition to anxiety, stress and depression. This naturally leads to a lower level of success in their professional careers. They think, “Why should I make the effort? There’s no point.”

A great deal of research has regarded the locus of control as an element having a direct effect on business success. For example, Gilad (1982), showed that the internal locus of control is related to a state of being that is alert and on the watch for fresh opportunities, with a nose for the business world and also for successful performance. In the same vein, entrepreneurs who come out ahead tend to attribute the cause of their success to their actions and their management. For the most part those who fail, don’t.

Viktor Frankl (1946), one of the great defenders of freedom for human beings, clearly indicated its influence in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning. This author, who spent two years at Auschwitz and Dachau concentration camps and who lost his entire family in the Holocaust, said, “they can lock you up in a prison, but nobody can take away your freedom to choose your attitude to the things that are happening to you […]. The prisoner who lost his faith in the future – in his future – was doomed. With his loss of faith in the future he also lost his spiritual support; he let himself go, fell apart and became the subject of physical and spiritual annihilation. As a general rule this soon gave rise to a form of crisis, the symptoms of which were familiar to anyone with experience of the camps.” So these prisoners lost hope and the conviction that it was worth the trouble to keep fighting.

Special attention should be paid to the relevance of this causality relationship on people who have power. We all know the quotation, “Great power brings great responsibilty.” It was the maxim in the last vignette of the first story published about Spiderman. This kind of responsibility falls on the shoulders of all those in power – be it great or small – and each in his or her own position: senior management, certainly, but also leaders of small teams. All must accept responsibility for their actions and, of course, for their failures to act. An external locus of control may be very dangerous in their hands.

Figure 9.1 Responsibility and Locus of Control

How is this related to innovative behaviour? These thoughts emphasise the need for members of an organization to understand the value of their personal creative efforts within new idea-generating machinery. This is the only way they will consciously and unconsciously contribute all of their creativity.

1.2. Orientation to Learning Goals

According to the well-known American psychologist Edwin A. Locke (1968), goals or aims are “that which an individual strives to achieve, it is the objective or the purpose of an action”. In other words, they are a movement engine and a guide for our actions given that they condition what we will and won’t do, as well as the effort we will devote to a task.

Goals are the central pillar of the theory created by Dweck and Reppucci (1973). These two educational psychologists designed their first experimental work by interweaving sessions with an experimenter who provided subjects with easy problems and with those of another collaborator who provided problems that were impossible to solve. Their discovery took place after proving, in the presence of the “failure experimenter”, that some students were unable to solve some very simple problems that they had previously been given by the “success experimenter” and that had already been easily solved. These students had resigned themselves to failure in his presence.

The research showed that the students were divided into two groups. The first group were students who were “execution orientated”, who when faced with difficult tasks, felt anxious and lost interest and confidence in their ability to perform the tasks. This was accompanied by feelings of pessimism and sadness. These students sought to show off their skills in school, and to be rewarded for them. The second group consisted of students who were “learning orientated” – students who used school as an opportunity to learn, increase their own skills and boost their abilities. These students saw the problems as challenges, and for them, internal motivation was the main action engine.

Although this theory emerged as a result of research using schoolchildren as subjects, subsequent research showed that it can be extrapolated and applied in the framework of other disciplines such as social, clinical and health psychology, but also in sport and the work environment (Vandewalle, 2001).

In actual fact, in the business field, “learning orientated” people tend to have a more proactive attitude and better receptivity to constructive criticism from their colleagues. They are the people who generate more information and do more to spread it around (Sinkula et al., 1997). However, in addition to this, “learning orientation” is also found in the field of innovation, where it is seen as an essential factor for ensuring the fluidity of the process (Kast, 1979).

Nevertheless, the benefits go much further than that. Neurons are the basic cells of the brain and they specialize in the reception and transmission of information. Until relatively recently, it was thought that once the brain had formed, its cells could no longer regenerate or reproduce. People thought they were born with a set number of neurons and that with time, little by little, they lost them. In some persons, factors such as drugs or alcohol, accidents or disease accelerates this process of brain death with devastating consequences.

In contrast to this traditional and almost unquestioned attitude, Ramón y Cajal (Nobel Prize for Medicine, 1906) mooted neuronal regeneration almost a century ago. This celebrated doctor published a number of articles supporting the theory summed up in his work, Studies on the degeneration and regeneration of the nervous system. Alas, the fact that he was almost a century ahead of his time meant that his revolutionary view could proceed no further.

However, recent research demonstrates this regeneration, known as neurogenesis. These discoveries have opened a door of hope in the treatment of diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. By way of example, Magavi and his co-workers (2000) demonstrated this process in their experiments with rats. Gould and his team (1999) showed it in adult primates. These are not the only ones, and now hardly anyone dares question these promising theories.

Having come so far, the next question is inevitable: What does all this have to do with innovation? Have we lost the thread of this chapter? No, we certainly have not.

Many people come to work seeking to show that they are excellent workers and can do things well (“execution orientated”). For these people, innovation always represents the risk of failure but it also means that doing the same things as they always did and following the pathway that always worked stands in the way of their desire to shine. Innovation requires an attitude orientated towards learning, one that sees goals as challenges and a source of knowledge and skill development. This implies the need for a change of “mental software” for many, which calls for a significant effort on their part. This leads them to ask themselves, “Why do it? Why make an effort to learn? What does the company have to innovate for?”

If we take a good, hard look at the effect which this learning process will have on each one of us, we see that we are the main beneficiaries of this change of chip. According to recent research, the final stage of the learning process stimulates the process of neurogenesis, that is, neuron regeneration (Döbrössy et al., 2003). Doesn’t that look like a good option? You certainly couldn’t find a cheaper medicine.

Let me conclude this section with a few lines about the central pillar of Socrates’ words, “Know thyself,” the sentence that stood at the gate of the temple of the Oracle of Delphos, sacred site to which the Greeks went to consult the gods.

It is important to learn new things every day: technical know-how, lessons from things that went wrong, how to do things better, etc. But the most effective learning takes place after your “destructure” – the breaking down of old knowledge, patterns, mechanics, etc. – and the subsequent restructure from new perspectives. What are my weaknesses? What are my strengths? Where are my limitations and my automatic mechanisms? What are my false perceptions and what responsibilities have I failed to shoulder? How do I project myself to others? We dare not forget this if we wish to lead in the new era. Innovation, change and transformation have to begin in each one of us.

2. Innova 3DX for the Psychological Profile (II)

Personality traits (optimism, self-esteem, locus of control and orientation towards learning) are very important in the world of innovation, and are alone responsible for some 15 – 20 per cent of a person’s behaviour. Let’s look at the effects of the locus of control and orientation towards learning.

If we don´t feel in charge of our lives and are also unwilling to learn, we’ll block the innovative impulses that reach us. If I believe that the strings that control my life are in the hands of others, if my desire is to remain within my comfort zone, never take a chance, never feel scared, and always do things the way they have always been done, what is going to happen if I sense an innovative impulse? I’ll have to redirect it towards the usual action area, avoid making any effort, and rely on the efficiency of repetition. I may even manage to do things a shade faster, perhaps by streamlining an action, but this is not real innovation.

This means that professionals who aspire to lead in the field of innovation as entrepreneurs, or, indeed, as team leaders, must make sure that they take responsibility for all their actions, and are aware of the importance of learning (and understanding yourself) to give 100 per cent.

Figure 9.2 Locus of Control and Orientation Towards Learning Test

Instructions: score your opinion on each statement from 0 – to 10, with 0 being the lowest score and 10 the highest. You may use decimals if you wish.

Locus of control (questions designed on the basis of the Rotter scale, 1966).
1.	In the long run, success is a question of hard work.	— — , —
2.	The future is not cast in stone.	— — , —
3.	Time is the master and puts us all in our places.	— — , —
4.	I am in control of the course my life will follow.	— — , —
5.	I feel responsible for my actions.	— — , —
Average score		— — , —
Orientation towards learning (questions designed on the basis of the VandeWalle scale, 2001)
1.	I enjoy tasks which involve challenges.	— — , —
2.	I like it when I’m assigned duties that mean I will learn something.	— — , —
3.	I seek activities that give me a chance to learn.	— — , —
4.	In the workplace, I need activities that give me a chance to learn.	— — , —
5.	It’s worth taking a risk to develop my know-how.	— — , —
Average score		— — , —

Result: from 0 – 3.5 (inclusive) very low, from 3.5 – 5 (inclusive) low, from 5 – 6.5 (inclusive) adequate, from 6.5 – 10 (inclusive) very high.

Figure 9.3 Psychological Profile Quadrant (II)

In quadrant no.4 we find those who feel responsible for their lives and want more; they need to learn and experience new things. They are not dominated by their minds; rather, they govern their own thoughts and actions. They are the “life-controllers”.

In the other quadrants we find the “mind-controlled”, those who are dominated by the thought that we are not responsible for our actions and who are therefore defined by other people. They are the ones who always want to do things the same way because it gives them a comfort zone that makes them feel calm.

3. Insight Management, Locus of Control and Orientation Towards Learning

So far we’ve focused on identity, self-esteem and simply being powerful, so the next step is to learn to exercise this power, which means enjoying your capacity for actions that produce and achieve dreams. So far, so good, but what follows, as many will understand, is responsibility for your actions. Taking hold of the tiller of your life will sometimes mean getting lost or making mistakes. Every sailor knows that. If you aren’t prepared to grasp it, then don’t travel, but you have to be aware of the fact that sparing yourself gives rise to the problem, as Benedetti brilliantly puts it, of “remaining motionless, our joy frozen, loving with distaste, our sleep dreamless” (from the poem, “Don’t spare yourself”).

The locus of control implies the sensation of steering your own life, pushing the tiller this way and that, depending on whatever you decide at any given moment. The first thing you have to do is decide that you are aware of the fact that you can choose, because if not, you will pass through life fulfilling other people’s wishes – those of your parents, your partner, your children, your boss, etc. Your own desires may be a long way from theirs, to be a firefighter or a gardener, to dance salsa or learn to cook. You must never let anybody drive you away from what you want to experience. If you do, you’ll turn into a grey person – extinguished, irritable and misunderstood.

While you enjoy the privilege of being alive, you can ask yourself these questions. Am I in charge of my life? Who has power over me? To whom shall I yield my power? Do I live in the present? Do my past successes or my hope for the future guarantee anything?

“If you follow your destiny, you will survive, if you live in the eternal present, you will not die.”

Tao Te Ching

I worked with a manager in Barcelona who made a particular impression on me because he was making €300,000 a year and that had left him in a state of perpetual fear that he might lose his job/salary and find himself in difficulties. There is no shortage of people who would be very pleased to make that sum in 10 years rather than in 1 and would feel no fear if they could just do it once. We observed what was happening and attempted to approach his reality without imposing any pre-judgements. We started by trying to find out if he actually liked his job, and came to the conclusion that it was not so much fear he felt but desire. He found it difficult to bear the situation internally because he didn’t like the job, the environment or the prospects, but he couldn’t let go of it because his fear of unemployment and being in want was so great.

We then worked on what his being let go would actually mean, since the market was actually going nowhere and there were demands on him that were all but impossible to achieve. He felt that to not achieve would mean he’d failed, which would cause a huge blow to his ego and self-image. His self-esteem was already diminishing because he felt worthless, and thought nobody would take him on afterwards. Little by little, we unpicked the Gordian knots that he thought impossible to undo. In the end, he changed jobs because he wanted to; he wasn’t let go. That made him quite happy. He earned less but it didn’t affect his self-esteem. Granting himself permission to be outside of what everyone expected provided him with a vital opportunity that he would have wasted otherwise – while earning a fortune and constantly being in the grip of fear.

Are you afraid of making mistakes? It’s actually inevitable, and it might be interesting to explore it, since there’s no reason to become blocked because of it. A lot is said about how in a crisis you have to embrace change, change management, etc., but when it’s your turn, the initial response is almost always “no”, and the second might be, “well, if I can’t avoid it, let’s analyse how, when and in what direction”. Too often “analysis + analysis = paralysis”.

Not long ago my mother telephoned to say that there was a film on television based on my great-grandmother. Interested, I turned on the television and saw a woman, who, having failed to find her right place in life, decided to take the veil and become a nun. In the process, she discovered her vocation to help others, worked with a doctor, and inspired everybody with her wit and passion. However, her confessor, suspecting something unusual was happening, tried to get her removed from the hospital and away from the doctor before she took her perpetual vows. The effect was instant: doctor and nun were now totally changed. The separation made him very nervous and her very depressed. Thanks to her confessor’s nudging, she decided to give up being a nun. The result was that the doctor lost a collaborating nun and gained a wife and a son – my grandfather.

I’m impressed by the strength and drive of people like her, who don’t have the advantage of 15 years in analysis and don’t need the spur of being let go in order to move, yet they succeed in making the changes their lives require in order to find themselves.

“Invest in losses” is the old Taoist saying, which means selling even when you’re sure to lose in order to carry on with life and the new things it brings.

If someone says, “Hey, here I am! I’m not scared, but I don’t know which way to go!”. Don’t worry, it doesn’t matter, first just get moving and then you can see if you want to change direction. Movement first, awareness second.

Another factor operating here is that when someone does try to act outside of their programming to do something else, they tend to copy others, and that doesn’t do them any good. Where others have triumphed by means of certain manoeuvres, others will experience glorious collapse. Nadal possesses some strokes which, with his makeup, stature, character and determination make him a master, but others should not follow him down this road. Only the movements that emerge from the true inner master are successful. Lessons from other people are useful for learning something about a medium, getting to know the enemy, etc., but can’t guarantee future upcoming battles.

As Claudio Naranjo explains so eruditely and wisely, self-knowledge helps to “remove the veil” as the mystics put it, and leads to a clearer perception of your reality and that of others. This makes the way of relating to it so much more efficient. All learning, particularly self-learning, must be focused not so much on a goal as on a path where experience and knowledge constantly follow each other. If you focus on knowledge as the goal you’ll never achieve it. I have friends who are eternally hooked on a range of unsatisfactory therapies because they set it as a goal and not a journey. This journey is the length of a life. Those who believe that they have reached the end of the road have merely spared themselves and gone to sleep; are no longer looking, no longer learning, no longer living and no longer steering.

Solid self-knowledge gives you the opportunity to choose your own path, the one that keeps you alive and feeling passionate and in control. Don’t be a victim, decide about your own life. Now more than ever there are well-trained and supervised therapists within reach who will help you understand the feelings that Viktor Frankl talked about: being in control, feeling powerful, full and optimistic.

One last question: should you approach life in a spirit of confidence and devotion, or in a spirit that’s distrustful and suspicious? When I was a teenager I came home from school one day, my mother opened the door looking like the perfect loving and nourishing mum, gave me a big smile, and just as I was about to kiss her on the cheek she whipped out a saucepan from behind her back and hit me over the head with it, saying something that I’ll never forget, “Never trust anyone, not even your mother!” and then she burst out laughing, as if she were some illuminated Zen teacher.

This is a “Zen stick” that at the time I didn’t understand. Allow me to explain: however much I try to develop trust in life, I still believe you have to keep your eyes open. In these uncaring times it is particularly important.

A few recent examples of micro to macro will serve: I go to the butcher and ask for four steaks and when I get home I find two are good and two have gone off. My restaurant bill charges for two extra dishes. The shoe-shop owner is selling up to retire and sells me a pair of €6 baby shoes at a sale price of nearly €8! The telephone company and the bank both charge me for services I don’t use and getting the money back costs so much in money and trouble it would just be easier to pay up. I used to have a very high level job at a very well-known company that gave me a huge office but no contract because they didn’t want to pay Social Security. I bought a house with a garage, but when I’d paid they told me I had no access to bring the car in or out over the pavement.

I realise that this is news to no-one and that everybody could add a good few more anecdotes to the list, and indeed, it might do them good. So perhaps we should burn the lengthy list and dance around the flames, in an effort to exorcise the feelings of aggression, deception, anger, disenchantment, sadness, impotence, etc., which is constantly generated in our faces and indeed on all sides. It might be more therapeutic than a game of football, a Champions final, for example, and we could to it much more often.

Why do all these businessmen and businesses take such risks? Is it worth the trouble? What has happened to best practices? Where did ethics and conscience go? What is social responsibility and corporate social responsibility? I’ve stopped wondering what will become of our children – I’m wondering what will become of us.

Krishnamurti said that being well adapted to a sick society meant that you had to be sick, too. Winning like this is like succeeding at being a lunatic among lunatics. Brilliant foolishness. The system that governs today leads you to think that being mad and winning, as I’ve described above, or sucking people and resources dry is the good life, but don’t be deceived. This is bread for today and hunger for tomorrow, leaving great damage along the way. I’m saying this for those who believe in the existence of sin or karma.

Focus on responsibility as your demonstration of control. If you break china, pay for it and carry on in control with a lesson well learnt. The individual is bound to feel indignant, like the Spanish indignados protesting against unemployment, but don’t confuse the two; being indignant has no connection with any particular political party even though many try to profit from this point of view. Being indignant means having had enough, being fed up and loaded with frustration, anger and a pressing need for change. If you’re tired of feeling passively furious, then get up and act indignant.

My recommendation is that as people, businesses and institutions, you invest in quality, honesty and trust – to ensure that people are happy, not stressed out and not always on the run from aggression. If you do this, your customers will stay with you even if you charge them a little more, because they will be calm, certain that they are never going to be clouted on the head with a saucepan. The same goes for your staff: organize things so that they can develop their talent and career with you, because they will then feel at ease in the company being supported by you; they will not look at other companies, nor will they steal your human capital. Try to invest in your customers, too, not just in your marketing; indeed, you should internalise your own image campaigns and turn them into reality. Comply. Generate trust.