It has become a bit of an urban myth that Roger Bannister’s 1954 sub-four-minute mile was a “miracle”. The reality is that the record was only a few seconds above the ‘four-minute barrier’ and when he did break it that historic day, he was followed across the finishing line by Australian John Landy just 0.8 seconds behind him – still under the ‘miracle’ threshold.

Be that as it may, the race has become engrained in legend as proof that you can overcome limiting beliefs. The story has been used by Simon Clarkson to show how this has an impact on others.

“Bannister was better able – at both a conscious and subconscious level – to question the limiting beliefs that were flying about on this mythical barrier. Once he had run the first sub-four minute mile, it was almost like opening the floodgates. And you see this with a variety of human achievements. “Once we have seen it, we believe we can also do it. If we have a limiting belief about a particular challenge we face, it is going to stifle the ability we have to overcome that problem,” he stressed.

Mr Clarkson is an economics graduate and worked in investment banking before delving into the science of “thinking” to see how it could be applied to companies.

He shudders at being labelled a ‘motivational speaker’ as he prefers to think that he offers substance and not just style, using his sessions to give his audience ‘tools’ which can help them change the way they think.

Neuroscience and its impact on organisational thinking is being used by various companies, one of the reasons that Mr Clarkson was chosen by Nathan Farrugia’s Up Academy for Executive Performance as its first speaker for a series of planned events.

Mr Clarkson’s approach is clearly explained in his You Tube videos. One of the most striking shows him getting two audience members to throw a ball to each other. He explains that, when we are children, catching a ball is quite an achievement but as we become more proficient, the various movements and coordination become embedded, forming an ever “wider” thought pathway that eventually become an automatic reflex.

To prove his point, he pretends to throw the ball – prompting the catching reflex in the other person. But by actively thinking about the reflex, the person on the receiving end can stifle the reflex to catch the ball until it is actually in the air.

What has this got to do with organisations and innovation?

The more we use certain thought pathways and build on them, the more engrained a certain behaviour becomes

Quite a lot, he explains: “The more we use certain thought pathways and build on them, the more engrained a certain behaviour becomes, forming a learned behaviour, a habit. The same applies in a positive way when we build up a skill or an ability. Therefore, in order to be able to change that, the same process works in reverse. If we start to think in a different way, we start to build a different pathway and the more we engrave that new pathway, the more we start to drive a different behaviour,” he stressed.

“What drives performance in any organisation is people’s behaviour. The more you understand the origins of that behaviour, the more we can understand how to overcome it. It gives us a great degree of control to be able to drive performance at an organisational level as well.”

One context where this benefits an organisation is when it comes to innovation as the default reaction tends to be for a new idea to be shot down.

“First of all, we should demystify ‘innovation’. Many people think that it is about inventing a product. But you can innovate in your day-to-day behaviour, doing something in a different way, perhaps something that will save you time, for example. That is a form of innovative thinking.

“Very quickly in a room, a team starts to think alike – executive teams that work together for any extended period of time fall into the habit of thinking alike and seeing daily issues from the same angle.

“An idea will be put out and will almost certainly be undermined by people saying why it will not work: it did not work before, we don’t have the resources to do it, etc. And these may be good reasons.

“But that immediately kills any oxygen that could have sustained that idea which might have worked – maybe not as first proposed but perhaps its second or third iteration.

“Too many organisations set out to innovate but kill it dead because rational thinking comes into the equation too soon.

“The key to innovation is allowing the brain to break its normal patterns, assumptions, predispositions and perceptions.

“So driving a culture of innovation is all about welcoming people to share an idea even if it is not fully formed.”