Deep in your brain there is a little nugget of tissue called the amygdala. It’s roughly the shape and size of an almond. It’s the part of the brain that handles identifying things that scare you and things that make you angry. Once this part of your brain has identified something that triggers as a target, it takes a shortcut past the part of your brain responsible for reason and thinking, and jumps right to focusing on the thing that got you frightened or angry. This is the flight-or-fight response. Once your amygdala gets you going, it’s difficult to be logical and reasonable because that primal part of your brain is driving you toward a fight for survival or run for your life.
So let’s say that you work for a Fortune 500 company and head a technology consulting division that’s under consideration for shutdown. While posting consistent growth and profits for over a decade, the company imposes unrealistic growth benchmarks for the New Year. You’re faced with a “meet it” or “beat it” situation. You get a call from a client that wants you to look at a fire in a Data Center… it’s squarely within your wheelhouse and appears to be a massive opportunity for your consulting group. Your client is concerned that the Insurance Company Adjusters won’t understand the importance of up-time within the Data Center and asked that your group help steer the Adjuster towards replacement of the IT Equipment. Given the scope of the potential project you lead the onsite investigation.
After completing your initial inspections, you request that the client assemble all the affected stakeholders for a meeting. At the meeting you present your findings and the entirety of recovery options as you believe exist. Before you can detail your final recommendations, the client interrupts you immediately after you summarize the option of retaining your team – You have the job, no additional information required. You pause for a minute, sit down in your chair, thank the group for the opportunity and then DECLINE the proposed consulting engagement. You resume talking about your findings, but jump to your final analysis and recommendation. You explain that the fire incident produced nominal, if any, residual threat to the Data Center. Detailing each possible threat, you counter with explaining how the recovery efforts/resources already deployed are sufficient to eliminate the threat and related damages. You consult yourself out of a one-in-a-lifetime consulting job.
I witnessed first-hand the meeting described above… I sat across the table from the Consultant. While I agreed with everything that he presented, it still caught me completely off-guard. Like many meetings before, I anticipated the highly choreographed dance of the experts… He would start with the “everything is damaged and nothing can be repaired” high-energy dance and I would slow the mood down and counter with the “Let’s talk about actual versus potential damages” slow tango. I expected the meeting to only be the first of MANY meetings before we would be able to come together and deliver a unified opinion of damages. Instead, the meeting was concluded with definitive resolve and collective focus moving forward.
The next day, I met the Consultant in the hotel lobby as he was about to leave for the airport. I took the opportunity to tell him that he surprised – and impressed – me the previous day and suggested that we connect on LinkedIn (which we do immediately). Several months later I notice on his LinkedIn profile that he’s no longer with the Fortune 500 Company and looking for new opportunities. We reconnect on the same day I receive an assignment that involves a Data Center. I engage him to assist me in assessing damages for the insurance company. After spending a few days with him we started to talk about the meeting where we first met and I learn the back-story behind his decision and its result… he lost his job because of the decision he made at the meeting.
After 30 years he was forced to retire because he chose to do the right thing. The more he explained the situation the more I respected his choice. I learned that he had every reason in the world to take the project… except one, he explained – “it wasn’t the right thing to do”. I learned that, at least for him, the RIGHT thing to do was the ONLY thing to do. For some people, fear apparently has nothing to do with making the right decision. Is it possible that some people have developed better control of their amygdala?