When I talk to audiences I ask them which they think is the most important part of their body when it comes to learning. Not surprisingly, they point to their heads. I then ask them how much time they spent at school or college or business school learning about their minds and there is an embarrassed and, increasingly these days, a worried silence. People are beginning to understand the real importance of the concept of learnacy, first talked about by Guy Claxton a few years ago.

The situation is similar across organizations of all kinds. There is much talk of global marketplaces, performance, cost cutting, knowledge management, culture, values, leadership development, and so on. But in most cases, how you might use your mind to learn to perform more effectively is simply not on the agenda.

It is as if there is a conspiracy of silence when it comes to learning to learn. We invest huge sums of money in business processes, in research and development, in computer systems, and in management training, but almost nothing in understanding how

Unpacking Your Mind the minds of our employees and colleagues work—or, indeed, how our own mind functions.