The basal ganglia, habits and the organizational survival
Our brain and its types of learning
First of all, we need to contextualize the main kinds of learning and the parts of our brain related to each one of them:
- Unsupervised learning: It is an automatic learning method in which a model is adjusted to observations. It differs from supervised learning by the fact there is not a priori knowledge. This learning usually handles inputs objects like a set of random variables, building a density model with a set of data. The prime involved area of our brain is the cerebral cortex.
- Reinforcement learning: Is an area of learning inspired by behaviorist psychology, concerned with how agents ought to take actions in an environment so as to maximize some notion of cumulative reward. The problem, due to its generality, is studied in many other disciplines, such as game theory, control theory, operations research, information theory, simulation-based optimization, multi-agent systems, swarm intelligence, statistics, and genetic algorithms. The involved part of our brain is the basal ganglia.
- Supervised learning: It is the machine learning task of inferring a function from labeled training data. The training data consist of a set of training examples. In supervised learning, each example is a pair consisting of an input object and the desired output value. A supervised learning algorithm analyzes the training data and produces an inferred function, which can be used for mapping new examples. An optimal scenario will allow for the algorithm to correctly determine the class labels for unseen instances. This requires the learning algorithm to generalize from the training data to unseen situations in a “reasonable” way. The part of our brain involved is the cerebellum.
What are the basal ganglia and what does it have to do with habits?
The basal ganglia are a group of subcortical nuclei, of varied origin, in the brains of vertebrates including humans, which are situated at the base of the forebrain. Basal ganglia are strongly interconnected with the cerebral cortex, thalamus, and brainstem, as well as several other brain areas. The basal ganglia are associated with a variety of functions including control of voluntary motor movements, procedural learning, routine behaviors or “habits” between others.
Without going into the technical details, numerous studies have linked the acquisition of automatic activity (habits) with the basal ganglia (reinforcement learning). One of the more well-known documented cases regarding this connection is Eugene case. Eugene Pauly suffered a viral encephalitis which destroyed his hippocampus with a dramatic outcome for his long-term memory. Physicians started following his case and soon realized there was something strange: he didn’t remember anything, but he was able to go for a walk alone and find its way back home, and therefore he was able to create new routines. The brain part in charge was the basal ganglia, the viral process did not impact on it, and it allowed him to maintain his capacity to create habits.
How do habits work?
Habits are born from the repetition of a serial of actions whose output is a reward. Whenever the loop cue-routine-reward is repeated we will become more trapped and will turn out more easy to do. In addition, this automatic learning process implies a progressive improvement in precision and efficiency (time and brain energy used).
At first sight, it might seem this type of reinforcement learning assimilated thanks to the basal ganglia only give us pros, but let us think about addictions to realize the cons of the issue.
Why do we talk about organizational survival?
If we compare an organization with an organism, the main priority of both would be the same, survival. Once this priority is under control organisms try to satisfy other priorities as reproduction. Likewise, if we return to the organizational field, to think in organizational success maximizing 5 years EBITDA for instance, has no sense if this short-term priority difficult the long-term priority.
Most organizations are “located” in an ecosystem with a high uncertainty. This uncertainty must compel firstly to give priority to survival strategies, and later to other more ambitious strategies of growth. Still on the analogy of natural ecosystem and organisms, one of the best survival strategies is evolution. In the wild world, organisms evolve generation after generation, due to the Darwinian dynamic that allows the fittest to survive and reproduce. In organizations also operate similar schemes, although “Lamarckian” ones, these mechanisms allow selecting, among other things, more productive routines and habits of an ecosystem in order to maximize organizational survival.
Organization routines should always be oriented to the adaptation to our ecosystem, and of course to its rate of change. This implies that flexible and mutable solutions must be created as our environment changes.
What does the survival of an organization have to do with the basal ganglia?
Organizational activity can be split into exploration activities (innovation) and exploitation ones (optimization). The latest is fundamental in organizations if you want to increase efficiency, cost reduction and therefore to be more competitive. A lot of routines and procedures form part of exploitation activities. It seems plausible that some of these procedures had become habits, and those habits usually imply people and, of course, their basal ganglia.
The problem of having a great number of automated procedures anchored to the basal ganglia is that reduces the awareness of the own procedures, besides generating a kind of addiction. If the organization is not aware of this situation, any kind of unpredictable variability in the ecosystem not reflected in routines could decrease the chance of survival. If we would want to make an organizational change to fix it, this change would trigger reactance between organizational crew, due to the existence of a previous habit and the necessary effort to integrate a new one.
It seems that certain unproductive or harmful habits could be called organizational addiction, and these, like any other addiction, can affect to organizational survival rate.
How to modify organizational addictions?
In essence, organizational procedure modifications could be framed into organizational change theories. There are different engines which describe the change, the main ones are the evolutionary engine, the dialectical engine, the life cycle engine, and the teleological engine. The field we are interested in dealing with in this article is the teleological one, in which an organization has clear objectives (organizational survival) and sometimes, it must make intentional changes with the aim of recovering lost direction.
In order to change a habit, there are many methodologies, in our case we are going to extrapolate the techniques used in alcohol addiction treatment. First of all let take a look at the scheme which describes AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) methodology.
Alcoholism issue is rooted in the loop: anxiety, drink routine and the reward of relief. This cycle is very complicated to break, so the most appropriate strategy is the adaptation, so we must to modify the routine and don’t touch cue and reward. Precisely is what AA meetings get, since working as a substitute for alcohol with no side effects.
But even this strategy has constraints, since, after the time, many of the people are not able to maintain the meetings routine, being repetition an essential factor for it to work. In this cases, the God factor is the solution. Believing in something superior in an unsound way has been shown very effective in the field of therapeutic adherence to these methods. Of course, we are not talking about introducing the God factor into the day to day organization is the solution, but strengthening the organizational culture with true leadership (heroes), myths and stories that allow organizational members to believe that the changes are going to be successful.
Some thoughts and conclusions
Our habits or more or less automated actions are present in day to day life, and consequently in our day to day organizations life. It is an evolutionary tool that, through the basal ganglia, make us a more efficient. Nevertheless, sometimes make us more susceptible to changes around us. Thus, it is essential a ecosystem surveillance and a steady reframing of organizational habits. When one of these habits becomes unproductive, we should call it an addiction, and like all addictions, it is very difficult to eradicate.
The word eradication could be a trap because often the proper strategy is a routine modification and not eradication. During the process of change, our willpower supplies are usually low, therefore is mandatory to manage them with some tools, as it happens with spirituality in AA meetings.
Although the article only deals with reinforcement learning and organizational change, within an organization takes place other kinds of learning as supervised and unsupervised one. Hence, before to apply any of these methodologies, a self-assessment stage is required.
References
- Henry H. Yin, Barbara J. Knowlton. The role of the basal ganglia in habit formation. Nature Reviews Neuroscience (2006).
- F. Gregory Ashby, Benjamin O. Turner, Jon C. Horvitz. Cortical and basal ganglia contributions to habit learning and automaticity (2010).
- Kenji Doya. Complementary roles of basal ganglia and cerebellum in learning and motor control. Current Opinión in Neurobiology (2000)
- Wikipedia link: Basal Ganglia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basal_ganglia
- Wikipedia link: Reinforcement learning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement_learning
- Wikipedia link: Unsupervised learning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsupervised_learning
- Wikipedia link: Supervised learning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervised_learning
- Charles Duhigg. The power of habit (2012).
- Kelly McGonigal. The willpower instinct (2011).
