Evan LaPointe
Founder at CORE Sciences
Founder of CORE Sciences and four-time founder who previously founded Satellite (acquired by Adobe where he ran product strategy and innovation), teaching companies how neuroscience can improve teamwork, product building, and decision-making.
Dimension Profile
Key Themes
Episode Summary
Evan LaPointe introduces a neuroscience-based framework for understanding how the brain's three systems — safety, reward, and purpose — drive workplace behavior, decision-making, and team dynamics. He explains why most people over-rely on their brain's 'history department' instead of engaging more creative and experimental systems, and shares practical applications for improving meetings, influence, focus, and team relationships by understanding the brain's natural patterns and intentionally redirecting them.
Leadership Principles
- → The brain has departments like a college campus — most people over-rely on the history department instead of engaging the science and art departments
- → Ask 'what kind of experience am I?' not 'how good am I at my job?' — if you're a miserable experience, fix that before anything else
- → Purpose activates when you understand the impact of your actions and care about the people affected — it works at tiny grain-of-sand level, not just grand vision
Notable Quotes
"The brain is like a college campus that has different departments in it. Most people rely on their history department way too much."
— Introducing his framework for understanding how the brain processes information
"It's critical to ask what kind of experience am I? Not how good am I at my job, but am I a miserable experience? If the answer is yes, you got to fix that first."
— On the most important question for improving team relationships
"When someone says 'That's not my job,' that's actually the reward system speaking, saying 'this thing is not on my reward list and I'm not interested.'"
— On how brain systems explain common workplace behavior
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