Strategic planning and leadership

Previously, we discussed the behavioral characteristics that are expected from leaders in the 21st Century. Leadership strategic planning in a company or organization involves setting goals, determining actions to achieve the goals, and mobilizing resources to execute those actions.

Strategies describe how the goals will be achieved by using resources. Strategic planning is analytical therefore we will talk about math, statistical knowledge, game playing, and utility value. Strategic planning is a process that has inputs, activities and outputs, therefore Lean Six Sigma as a methodology has all the tools that the strategic planner will require to use in order to implement their plans as they are developed. Obviously, all actions start at the brain level therefore we will focus on understanding the type of brain that a leader should have to think strategically. The outcome will be a required behavioral characteristic set that will become a key factor in determining how the new leader will be.

The brain performs two types of processes as controlled and automated. Controlled processes are serial, effortful, evoked deliberately, good introspective access because they happen when the person is consciousness. Automatic processes happen in parallel, effortless, are reflexive and have no introspective access because the person does not access the consciousness (Schneider and Shiffrin (1977). When the brain is confronted with a new problem, it initially draws heavily on diverse regions, including, often, the prefrontal cortex (where controlled processes are concentrated). But over time, activity becomes more streamlined, concentrating in regions that specialized in processing relevant to the task. In one study (Richard Haier et al. 1992), subjects' brains were imaged at different points in time as they gained experience with the computer game Tetris, which requires rapid hand-eye coordination and spatial reasoning. When subjects began playing, they were highly aroused and many parts of the brain were active. However, as they got better at the game, overall blood flow to the brain decreased markedly, and activity became localized in only a few brain regions. Given the severe limitations of controlled processes, the brain is constantly in the process of automating the processing of tasks i.e. executing those using automatic rather than controlled processes. Automatic and controlled processes can be roughly distinguished by where they occur in the brain. Regions that support cognitive automatic activity are concentrated in the back (occipital), top (parietal), and side (temporal) parts of the brain. The amygdala, buried below the cortex, is responsible for many important automatic affective responses, especially fear. Obviously, leaders that instill fear in their company or organization should never be involved in leading people since the cost of failure to communicate openly and truthfully will lead to losses. Controlled processes occur mainly in the front (orbital and prefrontal) parts of the brain.

The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is sometimes called the "executive" region, because it draws inputs from almost all other regions, integrates them to form near and long-term goals, and plans actions that take these goals into account (Timothy Shallice and Paul Burgess 1996). The prefrontal area is the region that has grown the most in the course of human evolution and which, therefore, most sharply differentiates us from our closest primate relatives (Stephen Manuck et al. 2003). Automatic processes whether cognitive or affective are the default mode of brain operation. They make “noise” along all the time, even when we dream, constituting most of the electro-chemical activity in the brain. Controlled processes occur at special moments when automatic processes become "interrupted," which happens when a person encounters unexpected events, experiences strong visceral states, or is presented with some kind of explicit challenge in the form of a novel decision or other type of problem.

The struggle between rapid unconscious pattern-detection processes and their slow, effortful modulation by deliberation is not a fair contest; so automatic impressions will influence behavior much of the time. Considering that we want leaders to be awake when they are responsible as strategic planners, we will not consider the leaders who have their brain in an “automatic” mode since they cannot reach the consciousness level.

In the next articles, I will continue with the type of brain/mind that will be recommended for working in strategic planning.