Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

Improve strategy, influence, and decision-making by understanding your brain | Evan LaPointe (founder of CORE Sciences)

August 11, 2024

AI Summary

5 min read

Evan LaPointe, founder of CORE Sciences, explains how understanding brain systems, personality differences, and team environments can improve decision-making, influence, product work, and relationships. Drawing from neuroscience simplified into memorable models, he shares practical ways to activate better thinking and collaboration without relying on default habits.

Brain Departments and Core Systems

The brain operates like a college campus with departments: a low-energy history department for recalling known facts (overused by most), a science department for open experimentation, and an art department for creative ideas. Activating these yields better product and strategy answers than rote recall. Three main systems drive responses—safety (triggered by fear, anger, or uncertainty, shifting focus to escape risk), reward (transactional pursuit of gains, leading to "not my job" responses), and purpose (understanding impact on specific people, scalable from emails to big goals). Focus levels range from open-minded to deep, while ability grows with context, imagination, and logic. Check which system dominates a situation to steer intentionally.

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What you'll learn

1 *(00:02:53) **Brain as College Campus: Departments and Systems***
2 *(00:11:03) **Personality Differences and Self-Awareness***
3 *(00:17:28) **Team Habitat: Environment for High Performance***
4 *(00:23:32) **Running Better Meetings***
5 *(00:29:50) **Strategy/Vision: Overcoming Believed-to-Unbelievable Gap***
6 *(01:06:36) **Influence: Choose Character, Speed, and Mode***
7 *(01:24:14) **Building Relationships: Ability + Trust + Appeal***

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

Evan LaPointe is the founder of CORE Sciences, which teaches companies and individuals how our brains work and how that translates to improved collaboration, better products, faster decision-making, and more growth. Previously, Evan was the co-founder of Satellite, the fourth-largest analytics product on the internet today (it mostly runs behind the scenes, and pretty much everyone listening will have used it today without knowing it), which was acquired by Adobe, where he later ran product strategy, innovation, and long-range thinking for Adobe’s digital experiences business. In our conversation, we discuss:

• The three different systems of the brain

• How knowing this can help you become more influential

• How understanding different brain states will help you increase productivity and creativity

• How to improve your vision and strategy skills

• How to design a work environment that fosters innovation

• How to build better relationships at work

• Much more

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Use discount code “LENNY” for $5 off the CORE Sciences personality profile: https://www.core-sciences.com/new-core-identity

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