Speaking at Hult
Dubai, Dr Vicki Culpin, Research Director at Ashridge says managers may
be sleepwalking to disaster due to a lack of quality rest
Dubai, 25 March, 2015:
The Research Director at Ashridge Business School, Dr Vicki Culpin,
today called on managers everywhere to consider the benefits of more
sleep in order to reap the rewards of productivity while avoiding poor
decision making and inefficiency.
During a keynote
address given at a joint Middle East and North Africa summit between
Hult International Business School and Ashridge Business School at Hult
Dubai campus, Dr Culpin drew on Ashridge research that cited the
examples of Chernobyl, Exxon Valdez, Three Mile Island and the
Challenger Shuttle as global disasters caused by human error, in these
cases as a direct consequence of sleepiness.
“While most
people’s lack of sleep won’t result in cataclysmic loss of human life,
inadequate rest can cause knock-on problems within your organisation.
Only a reduction of 1.5 hours sleep for one night can lead to a 32 per
cent decrease in daytime alertness”, says Dr Culpin. If a manager has a
team of three members who are working with only that minor level of
sleep deprivation, then the impact on performance is equivalent to one
full-time individual.
She went on to
say that it is both the quality and the quantity of sleep that impacts
upon thinking and behaviour. Managers in particular are affected by
reduced sleep, with 72% of managers in a recent study noting that they
found it difficult to concentrate on tasks because of lack of sleep.
Not all
behaviour is affected by poor sleep. Logical, deductive and critical
reasoning, the types of skills and abilities measured in a traditional
IQ test, are unimpaired, even after long periods of sleeplessness.
However, leadership skills and competencies, known as ‘executive
functions’ are highly susceptible to even relatively minor sleep loss.
Dr Culpin warns
that executive performance degrades with tiredness and affects the key
management skills of comprehension and coping with a rapidly changing
environment, multi-tasking; producing innovative solutions to problems,
as well as assessing risk and anticipating the range of consequences of
an action, among others.
These important
insights were revealed to an audience of 80 people from Hult
International Business School and Ashridge Business School, who met at
Hult Dubai for the first Middle East summit between the two business
schools
Earlier this
year a legal agreement was finalised for a strategic alliance between
the two schools. The intention is to work towards merging operations to
create the world’s most relevant full service business school. Efforts
will be focused on expanding the schools’ combined undergraduate and
graduate offerings including new online programmes as well as expanding
Ashridge’s executive education to more clients around the world.
