My name is Suzanne. I'm a cultural thinker. And I’ve given my talk today a little bit of a heading. It’s called Neurology of Power Dynamics through the Lens of a Dyslexic Black Menopausal Woman. And I'll tell you why I've called it that in a minute. 

There’s some context actually. I'm speaking from my research, neurology of power, which considers where power resides in the brain, and, more recently, I've had to think, in the body. And it really underpins my contribution today. But I'm also speaking to my organisation's mantra, which is that culture and strategy equals sustainable brilliance. It's kind of a living version of Peter Drucker's famous quote, ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast’. And really, we say that because we say, if the culture of your organization is out of whack with power dynamics, then culture will eat strategy for breakfast, which means your strategy won't work. But our belief is that actually, if you can address the issues of power within your organization, then you'll be able to match your culture, the people, the organization, with your strategy, and then you'll get brilliance.

The other topic that I'm going to relate that to is another belief of ours, which is that innovation and inclusion are twins. And that that in itself will bring you equitability. 

And the fourth thing that I really want to talk about is the fact that absolutely everything is interconnected. And so this idea that you can do one thing, but not another simply doesn't work. The way that you'd behave at home the way that you behave at work, we can see this, that society is very interconnected.  

So what am I going to talk about? I'm going to start with this topic of neurology of power, which is so close to my heart, and my professional existence. When I was talking to Caroline about the possibility of the conference, I banged on endlessly about the role of power in organizations and society, for us as individuals, and also us during this pandemic. And so it is an utter joy to be here today, and hearing everyone else talking. 

For me power is one of life's big themes. I'm honestly really surprised that this notion of power does not feature more in business conversations. And that's how I started my research. As Libby said, I'm a cultural thinker. It covers my areas of expertise. And I often start my conversations with quite personal information – for some oversharing, but there is a context. 

I'm a Black woman, as you may see, but you may not know that I have multiple mental health diagnoses, from PTSD to dissociative disorder and dyslexia. And to add to that little bundle, at 55, I'm somewhere in the middle of the menopause. Now, why do I say all that, because actually, I think that's what makes me good, and sometimes even brilliant at what I do. PTSD has helped me to empathize, it's helped me to stand in other people's shoes. The dyslexia makes me see solutions far before others, kind of in a 5D jigsaw puzzle, which of course, I then have to unpick, which can be difficult. But the key to all this is that I bring my skills to structures really differently. And in the art world, I found that really, really challenging. And it is interesting to note that that wasn't the case in the commercial sector. 

So amongst being the Achates brand Ambassador, which for me is full of joy. I'm also a King's College Research Associate and a Churchill Fellow, and I'm leading on external strategy for the fabulous Brixton House. Why do I say all of that? I'm not saying it to show off, I'm saying it to demonstrate that you can have difference and be brilliant, right? 

And how does that link into power? Well, I'm going to start off by saying this, you shouldn't have to be bold or mouthy to find your way through in the publicly funded architecture in the way that I have. It's been really difficult. 

So why am I interested in power? Well, I've only got five minutes left, so I want to get to it. I woke up in the middle of the night with an epiphany. And I realized as someone who felt marginalized, the thing we don't talk about is power. I did some research, and it showed that there were no Black women in the magic three of AD, ED, or CEO, three years ago, when I did my research, in the top 15 funded NPOs, which for me, was fairly shocking. It also showed that not surprisingly, that those roles are dominated mostly by white men, with some white women. And then I read a piece that power damages the brain, which being an academic, I knew needed a bit more investigation. So in short the reason I did an OP on the neurologogy of power, is because I want to the root cause of why we don't have a more inclusive cultural sector, and more widely a more inclusive society. 

So what can I share with you now the project has been living for three years. Here's some insights. And I guess my logic is that, you know, I've been around the works for some 40 years, you know, I've been in this game for a long time. And we haven't seen enough change. And I think that's come back to bite us right now. Right? I think if we have more inclusive leadership in the cultural sector, we would be more equipped to deal with a pandemic. So there's my first provocation, right? So it seems to me like power is the root cause, certainly one of the big root causes, and I'm talking about senior, senior level. 

So here's some facts for you that I've started discovering in my research. Empathy, and power are linked. So it turns out that measuring empathy is a good way of looking at power. And what a neuroscientist, the leading neuroscientist in the world, has found out is that – not always, so I have to say that again, not always, but often – the more power that you get in life, the less empathy you get. 

So I want you to just take a second and let that sink in, right? 

I also want to talk to you about neuroplasticity, and the brain of confirmation bias. Now, I guarantee the minute you start to think about confirmation bias, what happens is all these barriers start to come up in your amygdala right in your brain. And what happens is the hippocampus is kind of bringing back everything you've seen before, and it brings you to a point of fear. So what am I Important foreword is this is not an excuse for your behavior. But some of this, I think, is simply how we are. That's not the same as unconscious bias, because this is very conscious. But it happens so quickly. 

I also want to talk about this idea of neuroplasticity. Right now, ages ago, we thought that our brain, once we got to adulthood, we thought that was it, that that our brain was set that kind of old, you can't teach an old dog tricks, new tricks, but that's absolutely not true. And so if you're watching, and if you can, I want you to very quickly clench your hands. 

And that feels quite easy right? Now I want you to unclench your hands. And I want you to put the other thumb on top. Right? Yes, you see that look on your face, I saw it. That look, “I can't quite do this”. That's neuroplasticity. That's your brain trying to learn to do something new. Think how difficult that was just for that. And now I want you to try and think about how hard it will have been to try and think about doing things differently in this moment. So clearly, in this moment of as a pandemic, as cultural leaders, what you are going to do is you are going to do all the things in the same way as you've done it before, despite our protestations that we want to reimagine the world, what we really want to do is rebuild to look like us in the way that it did before. 

So in my last minute, I want to give you some hope, kindness and a provocation. So the hope is that I've been working with a functional neurologist, and what a functioning neurologist does is, they help us to work best with our brain without medication or surgical intervention. So worry ye not, I'm not asking you to do a frontal lobotomy. 

What he explained is that when you are in a moment of fear, right, and fear can be anything from being challenged in this moment, to trying to adopt more inclusive practice, your brain goes into a panic. And what it does is it thinks a bear is eating it, which I know will bring a smile to some of my panelists face. But in actual fact, it’s not. And his biggest, his biggest advice for that is to stop and breathe. Because scientifically, what it does is it tells your body, hold on a minute, if you've got time to breathe, then you're fine. So it's really about catching yourself. 

And finally, I want to wrap up with two ideas. I'm really into the idea of collective power. And that's the idea of communities who work differently around power, they're brought up in a different space. So that is, and I've discovered that with the Yoruba, and Ubuntu nations, they are brought up differently. And therefore they share what is my definition of power, which is that if you give away the power that you have - it doubles. Rather than a more broadly, western view, which is that in order to maintain power, you have to do that at the expense of others. 

So I will leave you with this. We are all interconnected. inclusivity and innovation are twins, not enemies. And finally, apart from breathing, we are all joined at the ankle. The pandemic has shown that it is time that we think about power differently. Thank you.