The balls are already in the air.
Look at the image. The three blue balls are flowing in an arc outward from the figure’s hands - they have been thrown, they are in motion, the arc is established. But the brain in the image is still lit. The neural activity that produced the throw is visible at the same moment as the throw itself.
This is not simultaneous. The brain threw first.
The neuroscience of motor planning has a specific finding that jugglers experience but rarely know they are experiencing: the decision to throw a ball, measured by brain activity, precedes the physical release of the ball by approximately 200 milliseconds. The brain has made the throw before the hands have made the throw. By the time the ball leaves the fingertips, the decision is already in the past.
The lit brain in the frame
The image does something unusual: it shows the brain and the arc at the same time.
Most representations of juggling show only the arc - the visible, external, photographable part of the practice. The neural activity that produced the arc is invisible in real life. You see the balls. You do not see the decision.
This image makes them simultaneous. The glowing brain is not decorative. It is the claim that the arc is downstream of something you cannot see in any other image of a juggler.
The claim is correct. The throw that is visible in front of the figure was decided inside the figure before it happened.
What this means for how we think about leadership
Leadership in organisational change is often described in response terms: the leader responds to what is happening, manages the situation, addresses the issues that arise. This framing is accurate but incomplete.
The image shows the other half of the picture. The leader who is only responding is tracking the ball that is currently in flight - attending to what is already in motion. The leader who is planning the next throw before the current one has resolved is doing something structurally different: living in the near future of the change, preparing the conditions for what is coming rather than managing what is here.
In juggling terms: the novice watches the ball. The expert watches the space where the next ball will peak.
The arc you see in front of the figure was decided inside the figure before it happened. The visible action is always downstream of an invisible intention.
The problem with only watching the balls
In most change programs, the monitoring structure is built around what is visible: milestones reached, deliverables submitted, surveys completed, adoption metrics reported. These are the balls in flight. Tracking them is necessary and correct.
But the lit brain in the image is not watching the balls. It is ahead of them.
The change program that only monitors balls in flight - that has no forward-planning structure, no anticipatory attention toward where the pattern is going to be next - is running on reactive mode. It will catch what it catches, and drop what it drops, and be surprised by what it is surprised by.
The program with anticipatory structure - that tracks leading indicators, that asks “where will the next resistance point be?” and “what do we need to have ready before the next phase lands?” - is running on the brain-throws-first model. It has decided the next throw before the current one has resolved.
Further reading
- Libet, B., Gleason, C.A., Wright, E.W., and Pearl, D.K. (1983). “Time of conscious intention to act in relation to onset of cerebral activity (readiness-potential).” Brain, 106(3), 623-642. The foundational paper establishing that neural activity preceding voluntary movement begins 200-500ms before the movement itself - the empirical basis for “the brain throws first.”
- Haggard, P., and Eimer, M. (1999). “On the relation between brain potentials and the awareness of voluntary movements.” Experimental Brain Research, 126(1), 128-133. Extended Libet’s findings; showed that the lateralized readiness potential specifically predicts which hand will move, not just that movement is coming - relevant to the hand-specificity of juggling motor planning.
- Wolpert, D.M., and Ghahramani, Z. (2000). “Computational principles of movement neuroscience.” Nature Neuroscience, 3(suppl), 1212-1217. The computational forward model framework that explains how the brain pre-plans the throw before the current catch completes - the mechanism behind anticipatory juggling.
- Huys, R., and Beek, P.J. (2002). “The coupling between point-of-gaze and ball movements in three-ball cascade juggling.” Journal of Sports Sciences, 20(3), 171-186. Eye-tracking study showing expert jugglers fixate where the next ball will peak - not where the current ball is. Direct empirical support for the anticipatory orientation described here.
Read next: The Practice That Rewires You - how sustained physical practice changes the brain doing the planning. Juggling and the Science of Attention - the eye-tracking evidence for anticipatory versus reactive gaze strategies.