In almost every corporate environment in which we work, I often see computerised employee card activated coffee percolators and espresso machines on every floor. I’ve often wondered why caffeine is so much part of corporate culture and how people casually adopt the language of café society into everyday conversation. I often hear ‘Let’s meet over a cup of coffee’ – and wonder why people they don’t say ‘tea’ or ’socially acceptable beverage’? Being somewhat of a caffeineista myself, I have learned to cut it out almost completely from my diet and to resist its’ omnipresent allure. And in researching the impact of coffee on the human brain/mind/body system, I have arrived at some understandings about have caffeine can impact the individual’s propensity and relationship to change.
In conflict management work, we often find the protagonists are caffeine consumers. Similarly, people experiencing stress, burnout and fatigue often report ‘not being able to function’ until the first cup in the morning. And while small to moderate amounts of caffeine act as a stimulant, long term use of caffeine will impact a number of other body systems – we each respond to it in a different ways and our response depends upon the amount consumed and our caffeine sensitivity. Long term caffeine abuse problems include physiological and psychological dependency, decrease in calcium absorption, high blood pressure, sleep disorders and even psychosis to name but a few. Additionally adenosine receptors in the brain (which caffeine blocks to stop feelings of tiredness) become more numerous when you consume caffeine regularly requiring bigger doses and more regular coffee sessions to maintain.
Caffeine is classified in Wikipedia as an ergogenic drug (increasing the capacity for mental or physical labour) and also as a psychoactive drug given its’ ability to shape one’s view of reality, albeit it subtle ways. And while some caffeine may be useful if you are engaged in physical labour, it is less useful if you are involved in ‘knowledge work’. Caffeine works by stimulating your adrenal glands to secrete adrenaline. Adrenaline is a neurotransmitter ie. a chemical which relays, amplifies and modulates signals between a neuron and other neurons. The increase of adrenaline in the human body is related to the stimulation of the sympathetic nervous system which is related to the ‘fight or flight’ response; you either fight to the death or flee. Of course neither response is appropriate in corporate culture and so many caffeine users become somehow addicted to a state of continuous arousal which is often translated into paranoid thinking patterns such as ‘they don’t want me here anymore’ and other fear engendering stories. These states are often called ‘Angst’ – the feeling that something unpleasant is about to happen but you don’t know what and you don’t know when.
The sympathetic nervous system is related to analytical, high focus, pressurised, linear form of thinking in contrast to the more relaxed analogical and associative state of the parasympathic nervous system. The parasympathetic nervous is related to its’ own neurotransmitter – AcH or Acetylcholine. The parasympathetic nervous system is related to states of playfulness, being laid back and chilled; a state learning theorists now accept as being more appropriate for learning.
And here is the link between caffeine and change; while the state generated by the adrenaline charged sympathetic nervous system is useful for some tasks where you have to pay attention to following the rules and the paradigm, it is not helpful if you want to create new rules and paradigms – that seems to be the role of the imaginative space associated with the parasympathetic nervous system. You can’t do change too well if you are following the old patterns.
I have seen many cases of confirmed analytical corporate types who have given up coffee for good and also those, like myself, who use it when they need to pay attention to the high-focus aspects of their work – timesheets, accounts, report formatting etc.. So while some caffeine may be useful for a particular task, regular use is certainly not helpful. The conclusion I come to is that the reason corporates ‘use’ coffee – whether consciously or not – is that fearful people are easier to control.
Steve
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