The neuroscience of strategic speed interview us

The Neuroscience of Strategic Speed: An Interview with Dr. Srini Pillay

The Neuroscience of Strategic Speed Pillay: If we break this down to the fundamental processes, we’re talking about a leader Harvard Business Press recently published Forum’s book Strategic Speed: Mobilize being able to execute on a plan productively and clearly. People, Accelerate Execution, which is about the alignment and mobilization of people around a strategic initiative. To learn more about this topic, we interviewed Dr. Srini Well, in the brain, we have the thinking brain and the emotional brain. The optimal Pillay, a neuroscientist. He is the CEO of Neuro Business Group, situation is when the thinking brain and the emotional brain are working in concert. an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, and the author of Emotions activate a part of the brain called the amygdala. If the amygdala is over The Winning Executive’s Brain, due April 2011 from Wharton School activated by emotion, it decreases the clarity because it’s like having an earthquake in Publishing. the brain. It starts interfering with what the thinking brain wants to do. As a result of that, In this interview, Srini sheds light on three things. First, he defines the it decreases the time to action, because then the thinking brain is basically saying, “Wait field of neuroscience. Second, he identifies the things that slow us a minute, I don’t know how to put this together.” But if we decrease anxiety, the thinking down at work. And finally, he helps us understand the things that we can then work more effectively. can do once we understand how our brain works to overcome those Dr. Srini Pillay Now, there are caveats to this. In general, chronic anxiety is really the problem. There things. are times when acute anxiety can actually help focus people more toward the problem. Because then the anxiety increases the firing in the thinking brain, and there’s a greater Forum: What is neuroscience, and how have you seen it help leaders? degree of focus. But this, like a lot of phenomena of the brain, is a U-shaped curve. At a particular point you lose the benefits of the anxiety, and chronic anxiety starts to interfere Pillay: Essentially, the concepts are pretty basic. In general, when you talk about leaders, with the processing. you’re talking about people. In the past, using organizational psychology, we’ve been looking at the behaviors in isolation, trying to understand how then to help people improve So, if we can optimize the relationships between thinking and emotional circuits, we can their goals based on their behaviors. increase clarity and therefore increase speed. The reality is that within every leader is a brain. The brain “The reality is that Forum: Do you think people are largely in that state of chronic anxiety now, given the provides another context that we can use to understand within every leader global economic crisis? And if so, what can we do to help people deal with that so that how the leader is behaving, why he or she is behaving in is a brain. The brain we can increase clarity on where we’re going in the future? a particular way. Is there another kind of language that provides another context we can use to get through to the leader? And are there Pillay: I recommend a brain-based strategy to try to increase clarity. A lot of people try that we can use to to say to others, “Calm down, stop being so anxious.” But it’s very hard to intervene at insights that brain science can add to help leaders make the changes that they want to make? understand how the that level, because you’re trying to have a direct effect on the unconscious brain, on the leader is behaving, why amygdala. It’s hard to access the anxiety center of the brain directly. Forum: Do you have an example specifically around speed he or she is behaving of execution? Have you seen neuroscience help with that? The way the brain is wired is that when there’s anxiety over here, it will process that in a particular way. Is emotion over and above other emotions. This is presumably because of evolutionary Pillay: Very much so. The language of neuroscience is, in there another kind of significance in wanting to protect the organism. One of the approaches I use is to target terms of speed, constructed around the broad concept of language that we can the thinking parts that actually feed into that anxiety. conscious and unconscious processing in the brain. “When people are use to get through to The anterior cingulate cortex, or the prefrontal cortex, is When we make any decision, there are a lot of conscious the leader? And are that part of the brain that connects with the anxiety brain. stuck or anxious, it’s processes going on. At the same time, the unconscious there insights that brain And so what we want to do is do things that will improve because they have the brain is also processing information. Information first the functioning of the prefrontal cortex and help diminish same circuit going on in science can add to reaches the unconscious brain. So the unconscious brain, this anxiety. There are a number of different things we their brains, the same in terms of speed, is faster to react. The trade-off is that help leaders make the can do. I’ll mention some: reframing, refocusing, and the unconscious brain is more inaccurate compared to the changes that they want habit memory going on re-engaging. When people are stuck or anxious, it’s conscious brain. to make?” because they have the same circuit going on in their in their brains. If you brains, the same habit memory going on in their brains. If have another frame, it So when we’re talking about speed and optimizing speed you have another frame, it provides a completely different provides a completely with leaders, what we’re talking about is increasing the speed of conscious processes and experience of the situation and can significantly decrease different experience of increasing the accuracy of unconscious processes. anxiety. the situation and can Forum: That is helpful background. How would you explain, from a neuro-scientific Forum: So, a frame might be a completely different way significantly decrease perspective, our finding that leaders who achieve strategic speed focus their efforts on to look at something or interpret something? anxiety.” three “people factors”: clarity, unity, and agility? 2 3

The Neuroscience of Strategic Speed Pillay: Exactly. Take, for example, the notion of a mistake. If, in your mind, a mistake whenever you have an intuition, don’t discard it; put it “Whenever you have an is something that should make you always stop, then every time you make a mistake, on the hypothesis table. Then, see what you need to intuition, don’t discard it; you’re going to stop. But if, in your mind, a mistake is information about having to take do to test it in order to feel more secure about it. This is put it on the hypothesis a different path, then you can increase your awareness of that. And when you come important because a lot of intuitions are actually really across a mistake, rather than say automatically to yourself, “Okay, I’ve got to stop, let valuable insights that can speed up a process. table. Then, see what me just try to stop and go slower,” you can continue at a faster pace and just change the you need to do to test Forum: Several leaders in our case studies intentionally direction. it in order to feel more started meetings earlier or spent significant portions of Forum: That’s a nice segue into the agility aspect of speed. How else can we use brain meetings just talking about what people were seeing. secure about it. This is science to be more agile in our execution of strategies? They did that so that 6 months later, when an ambiguous important because a lot situation came up, they were able to tap into that in their of intuitions are actually Pillay: One of the broad principles is that if you spend a lot of time in the practice phase, collective intuition and solve the problem. when you are then executing, you will then allow yourself to improvise. really valuable insights Pillay: Yes. This is inductive and deductive reasoning. that can speed up a In order to be agile, you need to let go of the side rails. If “In order to be agile, Inductive reasoning is reasoning that’s part of the creative process.” you’re in an ice skating rink and you’re holding on to the you need to let go of the process, and deductive reasoning is the distillation of an rails, you’re not that agile in terms of what you’re doing. action plan from a set of variables. side rails ... One way to If you let go, you can give yourself greater agility. let go of the side rails is And a lot of times people move too quickly to deductive reasoning. As a result of that, One way to let go of the side rails is to know that you to know that you have they don’t build up enough of an infrastructure to be able to move fast. Because the idea have sufficient information. I’m stressing sufficient, and of moving fast is that you need to have a really strong engine. And if you don’t have that sufficient information. not all. When it comes to execution of strategy, people strong engine, because you’ve built something too quickly, you’ll find out soon enough. can become obsessional and feel like they need to have I’m stressing sufficient, every single detail down before they can start to act. and not all.” Forum: The faster companies in our research actually spent a lot of time upfront building And the reality is that you don’t need every single detail. this “engine”—making personal connections, practicing, etc. Actually, that brings us to Sometimes you need to act in order to get better. the last piece around unity. What would you say, in your experience, is important about building unity in speed? Forum: That links to your work in helping leaders tap into their intuition. Pillay: Unity is a very important factor when it comes to “When you have unity, Pillay: Intuition is related to what I was saying about the unconscious process. Tapping building speed, in part due to the concept that I described it registers in the brain into your intuition can be really helpful. earlier, which is the connection of the emotional and as social reward, which One of the lines of thinking I find particularly compelling is the relationship between the thinking parts of the brain. When you have unity, it basically gives the intention and action. A lot of times, what we do is imagine that first we have to intend, registers in the brain as social reward, which basically action center of the brain and then we act. But, studies are showing that sometimes people retrospectively make gives the action center of the brain the green light to go ahead. the green light to go up the intention after they have already acted. The intention sometimes registers later ahead.” than the actual action. It’s as though we make up the story afterwards. Also, unity creates trust. Trust decreases the mental What that shows is that there are a lot of complex factors that go into creating an action; activation, whereas anxiety increases it. When trust decreases the mental activation, it it’s beyond the one thing that you’re thinking of as your intention. So, that’s a rationale releases the pre-frontal cortex, the thinking brain, to do what it needs to do in order to act. to help leaders let go of being obsessional about “why.” Why am I doing this? Why am So unity, through social reward and trust, is a really important factor. I going through this? You can know that, and it’s important to know that up to a point. Also, if you look at the loneliness research, loneliness can actually significantly disrupt But after that it’s important to let it go, because your final action is probably only going to thinking processes and slow things down. Loneliness also decreases the registration of be partly related to your conscious intention. reward. So, unity is really important because it can significantly impact the productivity of This leads us back to intuition, which is a huge challenge for a lot of leaders. Most a company. leaders are pretty good at conscious execution of strategy where they meet the We used to think of these—clarity, unity, agility—as soft variables. Leaders would ignore challenges. But what do they do when they’re in a place where they have amazing them in favor of the hard-core variables. Of course, it’s still really important to attend intuition but they don’t necessarily know how to act on it? to the hard variables, because you still do need to know what’s going on in the balance One of the parts of the brain that conveys this kind intuitive information to the conscious sheet. But in the same way that the thinking brain is connected to the emotional brain, we brain is the insula. I have a strategy called insula mapping, which suggests that also need to know the soft variables. Because if we don’t know the soft variables, we’re not going to know some of the really important determinants of clarity, agility, and unity. 4 5

Forum is a global professional services firm that mobilizes people to embrace the critical strategies of their organization and accelerate results. We help senior leaders with urgent strategic agendas equip their organizations to perform, change, and grow. Our expertise is built on decades of original research; our business insight keeps companies out ahead of their markets, competitors, and customers. Harvard Business Press published Forum’s latest book Strategic Speed in 2010. For more information, visit www.forum.com. © 2010 IIR Holdings, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. 6

The neuroscience of strategic speed interview us

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The neuroscience of strategic speed interview us — Document Transcript