thinking about strategic thinking v4.0

7/27/2019 Thinking About Strategic Thinking v4.0

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T H I N K I N G A B O U T

S T R A T E G I C T H I N K I N G

Ned Herrmann loved to laugh, and he loved to tell a good story to make a point.At one of his seminars about the whole brain, I heard Ned tell of a business

meeting during his tenure as an HR manager at General Electric in which an

exasperated executive blurted out, What the hell does the brain have to do with

business? One can imagine that executive sitting on his hands, impatiently

listening to Ned talk about psycho-physiology when there were decisions to be

made. Ned could barely finish this anecdote before breaking into a fit of

laughter. Everything that Ned stood for in his second career as a consultant,

teacher, and founder of the Herrmann Institute might be contained in the

antithesis: Whatdoesnt the brain have to do with business?

Before we address that question, lets consider some remarkable brains of human

historySir Isaac Newtons, for example. Scholars say that in the history of

science and intellectual inquiry, a brain likeNewtons comes along every five hundred

years or so. Newtons contemporary and

sometime rival, the philosopher Gottfried

Leibniz, told the Queen of Prussia that in

mathematics there was all previous history,

from the beginning of the world, and then

there was Newton, and that Newtons was

the better half. James Gleick says that

Newton computed as most people

daydream. Biographers tell us that Newton

would sometimes awaken in the morning,

begin to get out of bed, and then sit on theedge of the bed for hours, riveted by the

thoughts and insights coursing through his

mind.

Another brain of note, to which we will turn in later chapters about strategy and

decision-making, is that of Alan Turing, one of the pioneers of computer theory.

After studying under Albert Einstein at Princeton, Turing was one of the

mathematicians who cracked the codes ofEnigma, the German secret writing

and coding machine during World War II. The Enigma machine could produce

Figure 1: Sir Isaac Newton


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a nearly infinite number of ciphers, which allowed the Germansor so they

thoughtto communicate with wireless devices without worry that the Allies

could intercept and read their messages. These days, we speak of encryption

quite a bit, but in the time of the Second World War, cryptanalysis was an

esoteric and mystifying endeavor. Like many people of genius, Turing was an

eccentric character. He was arrested in pre-war England for walking down the

street with a gas mask onit alleviated his allergies. He was known to run milesand miles to work in old flannels and a vest with an alarm clock tied with

binder twine around his waist. One colleague said he was given to long,

disturbing silences punctuated by a cackle that wracked the nerves of his

closest friends. The work Turing and his associates accomplishedusing

mathematics to crack the Enigma deviceswas so vital to the Allies eventual

triumph that it was not fully disclosed to the public until the 1970s, decades after

the war ended.

Then there is the remarkable brain of the nineteenth-century French

mathematician Henri Poincar. His work set the stage for many of the profound

theories of the twentieth century in applied mathematics, physics, and celestial

mechanicsindeed, Poincar sketched out a preliminary version of the special

theory of relativity, later fleshed out by Albert Einstein. During a period inwhich he was working hard on a vexing mathematical problem, circumstances

led Poincar to do some travel and to get his mind off of his mathematical work.

Following a whim, he decided to board a bus, just for the ride. As Poincar says,

I entered an omnibus to go to some place or other. At that moment when I put

my foot on the step the idea came to me, without anything in my former thoughts

seeming to have paved the way for it, that the transformations I had used to

define the Fuchsian functions were identical with non-Euclidean geometry.

That is, Poincar experienced a jolt from the blue, a sudden insight and answer to

his intellectual questions that seemed to come out of nowhere. We might say that

as he boarded the bus, Poincar experienced a riveting Newtonian moment.


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Figure 2: Gottfried Leibniz told the Queen of Prussia that in mathematics there was

all previous history, from the beginning of the world, and then there was Newton,and that Newtons was the better half.

Do the eccentricities and flashes of insight from these men of genius matter tothe rest of us? Yes, if we want to understand and excel at strategic thinking. If

you agree with Ned Herrmann that the brain does indeed have something to do

with business, strategy, and decision-making, lets turn to the brain itself for a

moment, in search of our own flashes of insight.

BRAIN WAVES

Scientists can tell something about whats going on in your brain with a

measurement instrument called the electroencephalogram, or EEG. This device

is a medical tool used to measure the electrical activity of the brain, via

electrodes attached to the scalp. Using this technology, brain activity has been

organized into four categories:

Brain activity measured as waves at 13 to 40 cycles per second are called beta

waves. This is the most intense activity observed in the human brain and is

characteristic of concentrated effort, as when working out a math problem.


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A somewhat more restful state, called

alpha, is indicated when brain

waves are measured at 8 to 13 cycles

per second. During a period in alpha

state, we are awake, but relaxed in a

manner you might think of as

effortless alertness. The slowestactivity, measured at one half to 4

cycles per seconds, is called delta

and is evidence that we are asleep.

This leaves a very interesting state, measured at 4 to 7 cycles per second, called

theta. If you have ever felt yourself drifting toward sleep during a dreary

business meetingperhaps hallucinating just a bit before catching yourselfyou have experienced theta. Somewhere between wakefulness and sleep, we

experience a sort of reverie that has been a fount of creative thinking since the

day the first verse dawned on the first poet.

Yes, you may well get your best ideas in the shower, while driving or jogging, or

while someone else prattles on about who knows what. The daydream-like theta

state seems to be an occasion for the brain to correct and renew itself, to form

new connections, leading to visions, new insights, and, well, creative thought.

Surely, it was the onset of theta that allowed Henri Poincars mind to generate

mathematical insight as he boarded a bus.

Aware of the treasures of the

intellect just before sleep, artists

and intellectuals alike have found

ways to tap into their theta state

in manners both benign and

dangerous. Not so long ago,people like Timothy Leary were

touting hallucinogenic drugs as

windows into the subconscious.

On a healthier track, the artist

Salvador Dalihe of the melting

clocks and strangely shaped

human figuresused to sit in a

comfortable armchair holding a serving spoon in his hand. As he would begin to

drift through the theta state toward sleep, the spoon would fall to the floor with a

Figure 4: Salvador Dali's Persistence of

Memory

Figure 3: The Four Brain States


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clang. Alarmed back to a wakeful state, Dali would immediately grab a pencil or

brush and sketch the things he had just seen during his theta state.

The mathematician Poincar, reflecting on his own thought processes, such as

the epiphany he experienced as he boarded the bus, wrote that creative thinking

involves a period of conscious work followed by a period of unconscious

work. Once insight is revealed by the unconscious, he said, conscious work isnecessary once more to put the finishing touches on an idea, rendering it into a

useful concept. The unconscious mind, said Poincar, is not purely automatic;

it is capable of discernment; it has tact,

delicacy; it knows how to choose, to divine.

What do I say? It knows better how to

divine than the conscious self, since it

succeeds where that has failed. In a word, is

not the subliminal self superior to the

conscious self?

In The Courage to Create, Rollo May

concludes that the insights we crave do not

simply come to us as a result of carefulconcentration. Rather, the brain must work

and learn, then relax a bit during the theta

state so that new connections andrealizations can be formed. I have often told

students in my Strategic Thinking workshop

that to build a truly creative work

environment people should wander around

aimlessly an hour a day, waiting for thetheta state to do its magic. This inevitably

draws laughter, as in, yeah, like thats gonna happen! But the truth is, its no

joking matter.

Still, make no mistake. Innovation, insight, and invention do not occur without

hard intellectual work. Henri Poincar said that mathematical discoveries,

small or great, are never born of spontaneous generation. They always

presuppose a soil seeded with preliminary knowledge and well prepared by

labour, both conscious and subconscious.

Figure 5: Henri Poincare's

mathematical solution came to him

in a flash of sudden and unexpectedinsight


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THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE BRAIN

Most of what we know about the human brain we have learned in the past

handful of decades. In the 1960s, Dr. Roger Sperry showed through his

physiological research that the left and right hemispheres of the brain perform

distinct and specialized functions. Today, Dr. Sperrys insights have becomecommon knowledge. It is not at all unusual to see an advertising campaign

(theres that word again!) [campaign is defined in chapter 1] showing how our

right brain feels about an intoxicating new product, and how our left brain

truly appreciates the logic associated with the choice of that same product.

In his 2003 book, Looking for Spinoza, the respected neurologist AntonioDamasio shows that normal decision-making uses two complementary paths

through the brain. In Path A, we conjure up relevant aspects of a situation,

options for action, and logical thinking about possible outcomes. In this manner,

we use our rational faculties to come to reasoned conclusions. Path B runsparallel with Path A and involves our emotional and visceral reactions to a

situation. On this path, prior emotional experiences to a situation are activated

and, in a fashion, relived or re-experienced. Often, the gut reactions arisingfrom these emotions lead directly to the decisions we make, whether or not theyare consistent with the rational conclusions resulting from Path A.

Damasios conceptualization of human thought

processes is consistent with our developing

understanding of how the whole brain is used

to form impressions: the left side of the brain

processes information in a logical, sequential,

and orderly manner. In tandem, the right side of

the brain contributes to perceptions through

abstract visioning (in the cerebrum) and

emotional reactions (in the limbic system.) Tofully understand the ways people form and

maintain impressions and perceptions, a whole

brain approach is necessary.

Ned Herrmann has described the brain as

consisting of four independent quadrants, each

of which is highly specialized. The quadrants

derive from the fact that both the cerebral

(upper) and the limbic (lower) areas are

Figure 6: Four distinct

areas of the physiologicalbrain are represented

abstractly as Quadrants

A,B,C & D


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separated into left and right sides. The limbic system is located generally in the

inner or lower area of the brain and includes a number of important structures

such as the hypothalamus, hippocampus, amygdala, olfactory bulb, and

thalamus. The image at left depicts the four quadrants of the physiological brain,

which Herrmann calls A, B, C, and D, as four quadrants of a circle, color-coded

for easy reference.

Lets return to the electroencephalogram, or EEG machine. Remember, this

device is a medical tool used to measure the electrical activity of the brain, via

electrodes attached to the scalp. With an EEG, technicians can isolate the

location of brain activity related to different types of thinking. For example,

show a subject a sad movie, and parts of the right limbic area of the brain will

light up with activity as the viewer experiences strong emotion. Have her do

some math, and the left cerebral area will fire up.

Figure 7: Depiction of the Herrmann Four-Quadrant

Model showing color coding

In Herrmanns model, the left cerebrum is the A quadrant and is color-codedblue. A-quadrant thinking is characterized as logical, analytical, fact based, and


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quantitative, as shown in the graphic above. The green B quadrant represents the

left limbic area, where brain processing is characterized by a focus on detail,

organizing, planning, and sequential thinking. Right brain processing consists

of the red C quadrant, the seat of feelings and emotions, and the yellow D

quadrant, or the upper right brain, the seat of holistic or big picture thinking.

BRAIN DOMINANCE

Ned Herrmann observed that as individuals we tend to have preferred modesof thinking. That is, one individual tends to perceive the world more through an

upper left-brain lens, or filter, while another individual tends to view things from

a lower right-brain orientation.

Using the Herrmann methodology, people can be assessed and assigned a score

of a one, two, or three for each of the four quadrants. A 1 indicates a dominant,

or preferred, area, a 2 indicates

a secondary preference, while a

3 indicates an area of

avoidance. My profile? Formy four quadrantsA, B, C,

and D, respectivelyI am a

2311, indicating a strong

preference for seeing the world

through a right-brain filter as

well as a tendency to avoid

details and sequential

endeavors, or what I call thetedious. Does this profile

cause me problems as I strive to

keep order in my world? You

bet. Does it cause me to think and write about business strategy and to viewworld history as a fount of valuable metaphor as we make decisions of every

sort? Evidently.

A useful way to think about brain dominance is to consider your handedness.

You probably did not decide to be right or left handed; you just prefer one

hand or the other. You were born that way, and we can say that your handedness

is innate. Still, you can use your off-hand, just as we right-brain-dominant folks

can call on our left brain to process information when we so desire. Nonetheless,

Figure 8: Ned Herrmann


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people are generally predisposed to a certain style of perceiving and interacting

with the world at a very young age.

For this reason, it is generally best to help people discover their preferences and

recognize their weaknesses. It is much easier and more natural to leverage our

strengths than to battle our weaknesses. That is, it is better to find areas of work

and endeavor that come naturally to you than to force fit yourself into situationsin which you will struggle.

Figure 9: Graphic on left shows the typical brain profiles of representativeoccupations. The graphic on the right shows that males and females tend to vary on

the A and C quadrants, but not on the B and D quadrants.

STRATEGY CREATION AS A WHOLE-BRAIN PROCESS

The strategistis one who is concerned about the future of his or her personal,

family, or organizational life and spends time considering possible directions

upon which to set forth. We are all strategists.

Strategy is, simply a plan that precedes action; it is the chosen direction, or set of

directions, we follow in our quest toward the fulfillment of our larger mission orpurpose.


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Strategic thinking, on the other hand, is a particular mode of thought that keeps

us engaged in understanding aspects of our environment that may affect our

efforts to follow the chosen direction. To formulate strategy, the strategist must

engage the right cerebral D quadrant, but formulation alone is insufficient.

Conceiving strategy and bringing it to fruition is a whole brain process.

In the movie Working Girl, Tess, the lead character played by Melanie Griffith,comes up with a creative idea for how to accomplish a corporate merger, but as a

mere working girl she is not in a position to get her idea heard. Katherine, the

villainess of the story played by Sigourney Weaver, does have a position of

influence and puts Tesss idea forth as her own. In the pivotal scene of the

movie, Tess gains access to the company CEO (through Harrison Fords kind

assistance) and tells him how she conceived of the idea: she was reading a

gossip column in a tabloid newspaper, turned to the business pages, and saw a

connection of ideas that she realized would apply to the strategic situation

confronting the company.

When confronted, Katherine cannot account for how the solution occurred to her.

She has no epiphanal moment to share. She cannot point to any preparation of

mind or any trigger or stimulus that would plausibly lead to the conception of anidea. The lack of a trail of thoughts proves that the idea was not hers. The

wise CEO recognizes this, gives Tess a desirable job, and bumps Katherine out

of the company as the movie moves to a satisfying Hollywood ending. Thatending is believable because the notion of a trail of thoughts as a prerequisite for

an ideaa period of preparation followed by a burst of inspirationis consistent

with the way people replace old thinking with new.

Strategy-making begins with an idea, and yet many articles and books about

strategy do not address the question of how to generate ideas. The typical tome

provides a new way of analyzing and understanding the strategic situation

without showing ways to conceive of new and profitable directions to take. An

old Steve Martin gag comes to mind. You say to me, Steve, how can I be a

millionaire and not pay taxes? . . . Its simple, first, get a million dollars.

Unfortunately, the little step at the beginning can be the hardest part. Tounderstand just how to derive ideas for solutions to strategic problems, lets look

at the creative process itself.

The graphic below depicts Ned Herrmanns steps in the process of idea

generation. These steps illustrate the variety of thinking modes necessary to

generate and nurture useful ideas. Once interest in a problem is established,

preparation is by and large a left-brain, analytical thought process. Before the


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moment of illumination can arrive, though, the brain needs to let go of

concentrated effort, engaging the less structured thinking of the right brain in a

manner that Herrmann calls incubation. As we have seen, during a relaxed theta

brain state, new connections can be formed. Once illumination, such as the flash

of insight as experienced by the mathematician Poincar or the working girl

Tess, has occurred, the left brain must take over to verify, or evaluate, the

efficacy of the idea at hand.

Interest ApplicationVerificationIlluminationIncubationPreparation

Becomingaware of the

problem

Making thesolution

happen

Selecting the

solution

Generating

ideas

Sensing

possibilities

Defining the

problem

Creating strategy, like any important endeavor, involves the whole brain. That

is, a variety of thinking styles are engaged in the strategy-making process. But,

as with soup ingredients, some modes of thought are more prominent in the mix

than others. I use the term strategic thinking to describe the big picture, D-

quadrant thinking one uses in considering the strategic situation (SS)the

elements of the Strategic Environment (SE) and Strategic Intent (SI).Nonetheless, the making of strategy requires engagement of the other three

domains of thought. Using the Herrmann system, we will consider, in turn, all

four brain quadrants as they relate to strategy. The following graphic shows how

the four processes of strategyformulating, articulating, executing, and

evaluatingalign with the four brain quadrants.


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Following the circle to the right, we can view the process of strategy-making as a

sequence of formulating, articulating, executing, and evaluating strategy. Ofcourse, the process is not so sequential, as each part of the process goes on

simultaneously, with a variety of thinking loops going on at once. For example,

a simple loop of formulating to evaluating and back again is constantly in motion

as ideas occur to us and are immediately subjected to our own judgment andevaluation as to worthiness for future execution.


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This yin and yang of the right and left brain, with ideas popping up in the former

and critiqued in the latter, brings to mind the notion of dialectics expounded by

the philosopher G.W.F. Hegel: Every condition of thought or of thingsevery

idea and every situation in the worldleads irresistibly to its opposite, and then

unites with it to form a higher or more complex whole. The notion of dialectics

was foreshadowed by Empedocles and embodied in the golden mean of

Aristotle, who wrote that the knowledge of opposites is one. The geographyof the brain provides a new way of thinking about the old notion of thesis to

antithesis to synthesisthat is, right brain to left brain to whole brain.

Developing a working strategy for an organization, then, requires a variety of

thinking styles, including both right- and left-brain processes. After

interviewing a variety of well-known leaders, Warren Bennisperhaps the most

eminent student of leadership of our timewrites inOn Becoming a Leaderthat

I was struck again and again by the fact that, whatever their occupations, they

relied as much on their intuitive and conceptual skills as on their logical and

analytical talents. These are whole-brained people, capable of using both sides

of their brain (p. 103).


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FORMULATING STRATEGY CALLS FOR STRATEGIC THINKING

C.K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel have suggested that strategic thinkers do three

things:

1. They think about the environment around them.

2. They think about the future.

3. They engage others in doing the same, resulting in a deeply shared,well-tested view of the future.

Biographers of Napoleon Bonaparte talk about his ability to size up a situation

with a single coup d'oeil, (pronounced koo-DOY), meaning a stroke of the eye

or glance. Napoleon

was so knowledgeable

about his strategic

situationthe landscape,

the enemy, available

technology, similar

situations from the

pastthat he could

understand and respond

quickly to ever-changing

circumstances. In the

first Gulf War, in 1990,

Norman Schwarzkopf

took advantage of the

latest technological

advances to obtain real

time data on the

strategic situation inKuwait and Iraq, which

enhanced his ability to

understand the strategic environment and think strategically.

In addition to paying attention to current conditions, the strategic thinker is

oriented toward the future. He or she is intent driven, looking at the dynamics

of the competitive environment with purposes and desired outcomes in mind.

With strategic intent in mind, the strategic thinker also understands that strategy

must emanate or diffuse to others. In preparation for the next phase

Figure 10: Napoleon Bonaparte was said to have thecoup d'oeil -- an intuitive grasp of the strategicenvironment


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articulation of strategythe strategist initiates conversations, beginning to

activate the group mind to refine and craft strategy.

Of course, there is debate among experts as to what exactly constitutes strategic

thinking. Michael Porter, perhaps the most widely cited expert on organizational

strategy, says that strategic thinking rarely occurs spontaneously. As if to

prove his point, Porter provides a dry, deliberate, and distinctly unspontaneousmethodological approach to the quest for competitive advantage. Other eminent

strategy theorists have argued just the oppositethat strategy-making can also

be thought of as a creative process, as rich in spontaneity and magic as any other

art. After all, even mathematicians like Poincar and Newton held that their most

prized insights burst in part from spontaneous thought. Certainly, nothing about

the field of strategy is any more formulaic and logical than that of mathematics.

Henry Mintzberg argues that organizational strategy is often emergent. That is,

we do not arrive step-by-step at the answers to strategic questions as we do at theresult of a math equation. Rather, strategy emerges and changes as the strategist

observes the world and reflects upon the dynamics of the competitive

environment.

In articulating his pin-prick model, Evan Dudik suggests that having a single,

straightforward strategic plan can be debilitating. He argues that overly

specific strategic plans limit an entity to one particular set of attempts and

outcomes, which is tantamount to putting all your eggs in one basket. Rather,

Dudik suggests, a variety of strategic initiatives should be pursued as a mass of

pin-pricks, rather than following one favored strategy, striking in one forceful

but clumsy blow. Just as a general might authorize a series of skirmishes to

identify weak points in an enemys position, so might the strategist instigate a

variety of exploratory actions, monitoring each for signs of a larger opportunity.

In this manner, rather than nurturing one big idea, the strategist maintains a

portfolio of ideas, each of which has some chance of becoming a strategic

breakthrough Abraham Lincoln recognized the importance of keeping his

options open. He said, My policy is to have no policy. I shall not surrender this

game leaving any available card un-played. That is to say, Lincoln reservedleeway for events to dictate strategya notion now known as emergent strategy

(Sandburg, The War Years, p. 200).

The ability to keep options open, to avoid locking in on a particular approach, is

influenced by ones brain dominance and other forces of personality.

Confronted with an important strategic decision during the 1998 NFL player

draft, the San Diego Chargers employed Jonathan Niednagel for his


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psychological insight. That year, the Chargers owned the right to choose any

player on the board from the pool of players leaving the college ranks. The

top two players that year were Peyton Manning of the University of Tennessee

and Ryan Leaf of the University of Oregon. Using a personality instrument

known as the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), Niednagel found that

Manning had what is called an ESTP profile, while Leaf was an ESTJ. The

difference between the two men, according to the MBTI, boiled down to Pversus J. In Myers Briggs parlance this is Perceiving versus Judging, or what

wed more commonly call

spontaneity and flexibility as

opposed to structure.

With this information in hand,

Niednagel offered a strong and

unwavering prediction. While

there was not much difference

between the two quarterbacks

in terms of physical ability,

Manning would be far more

suited to the NFL game.Mannings proclivity toward

the perceiving (P) end of a

psychological continuum meant

that he would be able to scan

the football field for fast

developing options and make appropriate snap judgments. He possessed the

glance, the coup d'oeil. Niednagel predicted that Leaf, on the other hand,

would be shackled by his judging (J) personality profile. He could be expected

to lock in on a particular receiver downfield and would not be able to perceive

the other options available to him as each football play developed. Manning was

selected first overall in the 1998 NFL Draft. Ryan Leaf was the second pick that

year, going to the San Diego Chargers, who ignored Niednagels warnings.

Subsequent events validated Niednagels analysis. Peyton Manning, of course,went on to a Hall-of-Fame-caliber career in the NFL. Ryan Leaf struggled

through a brief and unsuccessful career as an NFL quarterback.

The story of the two quarterbacks illustrates the extent to which thinking style

affects the ability to make quick tactical decisions on the field and serves as a

fitting analogy to long-term, strategic decision-making. Locking in on options

following through on specific, carefully orchestrated strategic planscan indeed

limit a strategist in pursuit of long-term mission and desired outcomes.

Figure 12: Peyton Manning possesses the coup

d'oeil, as measured by the Myers-Briggs TypeIndicator


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Strategic thinking, then, is characterized by openness to new and different ideas.

And one way to generate new and different perspectives on strategic situations is

through the use of metaphor, or its close relative analogy, perhaps the most

advanced form of human thinking. As Aristotle said in Poetics, the greatest

thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is a sign of genius, since a good

metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars.

In their Harvard Business Review article entitled How Strategists Really

Think, Giovanni Gavetti and Jan W. Rivkin show that reasoning by analogy

plays a major role in the thinking of successful strategists. As an example, these

writers point to Intel chairman Andy Groves story of how he came up with an

important business strategy. Attending a management seminar, Grove heard the

story of how fledgling mini-mills in the steel industry began in the 1970s to

offer a low-end productinexpensive concrete-reinforcing bars known as rebar.

Establishing market share with the low-end products, these steel companies then

began to migrate up the hierarchy of products toward the higher-end, more

lucrative steel products. U.S. Steel, which had ceded the low-end products to the

smaller and seemingly insignificant players, was caught unawares by the

companies attacking the market for their core business and lost market share

over a number of years.

An epiphany struck Andy Grove as he sat in that management seminar, thinking

about the steel industry. Using what Gavetti and Rivkin call analogicalthinking, Grove saw that Intel was sitting in a similar situation to that of U.S.

Steel in the 1970s. Intel had theretofore leaned toward ceding low-end computer

chips to niche players, a strategy that, Grove now realized, would put Intel in a

dangerous situation. He began to see low-end computers as digital rebar, a

metaphorical image that helped him in articulating his strategy to Intel

management. If we lose the low end today, Grove said, we could lose the

high end tomorrow. As a result of this thinking, and the deliberations that

followed, Intel redoubled its efforts to market the low-end Celeron processor

for low-end personal computers.

The opportunity to engage in metaphorical or analogical thinking exists for anyone of us at any time. We all walk around with a vast library of experiences

from work, education, hobbiesto draw upon as we engage in strategic

thinking. The trick is in becoming more open to seemingly unrelated thoughts

and allowing appropriate time for brain processing in the theta mode.

To engage in strategic thought, you must think and reflect on the big pictureon

the diverse players and forces in your environment. Think about the future. Use


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your right brain for intuition and wisdom. As Isaac Newton said truth is the

offspring of silence and meditation.

ARTICULATING STRATEGY CALLS FOR EMOTIONALLY

INTELLIGENT THINKING

To establish direction, a strategy must be articulated to others. To become a

strategy in action, strategy must emanate from the strategic thinker. This

element of strategy-making, often ignored, was reinforced by Prahalad & Hamel

in their maxim that the strategist understands the environment and the future, and

then spends quality time engaging others in understanding strategy.

Communicating, expressing, teaching, articulatingthese actions require a

special interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence that is characteristic of right-

limbic C-quadrant thinking.

In Leaders, Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus conclude, Leaders articulate and

define what has previously remained implicit or unsaid; then they invent images,metaphors, and models that provide a focus for new attention. By so doing, they

consolidate or challenge prevailing wisdom. In short, an essential factor inleadership is the capacity to influence and organize meaning for the members of

the organization.

Perhaps the ultimate avatar of saying the unsaid and organizing meaning as

an act of leadership was Abraham Lincoln, who used his deep understanding of

the emotional needs of the American people to graft his vision of the future ontotheirs. He developed an accurate sense of the mood of the people though

constant, eye-to-eye encounters. As one biographer said, wherever the soldiers

were, there would be Lincoln . . . he always had a kind word for [the soldiers].Frequently telling them his vision of America and how important they were in

achieving victory (Phillips). Lincoln, who made countless visits to hospitals

and funerals, displayed a remarkable degree of compassion and caring, which inturn inspired loyalty and commitment to his vision.

Lincolns deep empathy for the people of America motivated him to agonize

over finding just the right words to articulate his vision of the future. Gary Wills

points out in Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America that in

Lincolns three-minute Gettysburg address, he was able, through a careful choice

of words, to reestablish the meaning that Americans attribute to the Constitution.


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Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a

new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are

created equal. This brief introductory sentence encapsulates what we now

consider the reason for the American Civil Warfreedom and equality for all

people. Gary Wills and other historians tell us, though, that until Lincoln spoke

these words, these ideals were notwhat the war was about. At the time, many

believed they were fighting for a way of life, with such issues as the dynamicsof the Southern economy also at stake. At the 1864 gathering at Gettysburg,

Lincoln knew that he needed to articulate what he believed the nation was

fighting for, and he didso effectively that now, Wills says, the Civil War

means, to most Americans, what Lincoln wanted it to mean. Drawing on

language from the Declaration of Independence about all men being equal, he

elevated that notion to a single, supreme proposition about which we must all

agree. Wills says that by accepting the Gettysburg Address, its concept of a

single people dedicated to a proposition, we have been changed. Because of it,we live in a different America.

Lincolns ability to resonate with the

peopleto empathize and inspireis

evidence that genius takes many forms. IsaacNewton, in sharp contrast to Abraham

Lincoln, offers ample evidence that people

with high IQ do not necessarily possess a

high aptitude for empathy or even self-

awareness. Despite his vaunted brainor

perhaps because of itNewton evidently

missed out on much of the joy and pleasure

of life. He never married or became

emotionally close to another person. Despite

living for 84 years on the small island and

country of England, curiosity never moved

him to travel to the sea to observe with his

own eyes the way the tides moved in

accordance with his theories of mass andmotion. Throughout much of his life,

moreover, Newton was little interested in

sharing or publishing the fruits of his

thinking and investigation. He kept many of

his findings secret. Eventually, Newton did publish hisPrincipia Mathematica,

which introduced The Calculus and changed the field of mathematics forever.

Figure 13: Lincolns ability to

resonate with the peopletoempathize and inspireis

evidence that genius takes many

orms.


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It is apparent, though, that he was motivated to do so more by the desire to mark

his place in intellectual history than to contribute to the good of humanity.

Two men of geniusAbraham Lincoln and Isaac Newtonso profoundly

different, each from the other. We may ask, how are we to understand the

differences between their two ways of thinking and perhaps put both to use?

In 1995, Daniel Goleman published a book called EmotionalIntelligence, drawing considerable attention to a mode of intelligence far

different from the cognitive, calculating intelligence of Isaac Newton. Goleman

gives us a language to talk about the strengths and weaknesses of people like

Newton and Lincoln. Evidently, Newton had a high IQ but, unlike Lincoln, a

low EQ, or Emotional Intelligence Quotient. In a nutshell, people with a high

EQ display two primary traits: first, they are aware and in control of their own

emotional worlds; second, they are empathic and concerned about the feelings

and emotions of others.

In a seminal work calledFrames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences,

Howard Gardner delineates a variety of forms of intelligence not measured by a

typical IQ test. Relevant here are two forms of intelligence that he called the

personal intelligencesthe inward-facing intrapersonal intelligence and the

outward perspective ofinterpersonal intelligence..

Gardner defines intrapersonal intelligence as access to ones own feeling life

ones range of affects or emotions: the capacity instantly to effect

discriminations among these feelings and, eventually, to label them, to enmesh

them in symbolic codes, to draw upon them as a means of understanding andguiding ones behavior. Interpersonal intelligence, by contrast, is the ability to

notice and make distinctions among other individuals and, in particular, among


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their moods, temperaments, motivations, and intentions. In a nutshell,

interpersonal intelligence concerns empathy and social skill, whereas

intrapersonal intelligence concerns self-awareness, self-regulation, and

motivation. These two domains of the intellect line up nicely with Golemans

notion of EQ. The following tables, drawn from Golemans work, explicate the

qualities of each of these forms of intelligence.

Interpersonal Intelligence

Effectiveness in leading change

Persuasiveness

Expertise in building and leading

teams

Proficiency in managing

relationships and building networks.

An ability to find common groundand build rapport.Social Skill

Expertise in building andretaining talent

Cross-cultural sensitivity

Service to clients and customers

The ability to understand the

emotional makeup of other people.

Skill in treating people according to

their emotional reactions.Empathy

HallmarksDefinition

Effectiveness in leading change

Persuasiveness

Expertise in building and leading

teams

Proficiency in managing

relationships and building networks.

An ability to find common groundand build rapport.Social Skill

Expertise in building andretaining talent

Cross-cultural sensitivity

Service to clients and customers

The ability to understand the

emotional makeup of other people.

Skill in treating people according to

their emotional reactions.Empathy

HallmarksDefinition

Intrapersonal Intelligence

Strong drive to achieve

Optimism, even in the face of

failure

Organizational commitment

A passion to work for reasons that go

beyond money or status. A propensity

to pursue goals with energy and

persistence.Motivation

Trustworthiness and integrity

Comfort with ambiguity

Openness to change

The ability to control or redirect

disruptive impulses and moods.

The propensity to suspend judgment-

to think before acting.

Self Regulation

Self-confidence

Realistic self-assessment

Self-deprecating sense of humor

The ability to recognize and

understand your moods, emotions,

and drives, as well as their effect on

others.

Self Awareness

HallmarksDefinition

Strong drive to achieve

Optimism, even in the face of

failure

Organizational commitment

A passion to work for reasons that go

beyond money or status. A propensity

to pursue goals with energy and

persistence.Motivation

Trustworthiness and integrity

Comfort with ambiguity

Openness to change

The ability to control or redirect

disruptive impulses and moods.

The propensity to suspend judgment-

to think before acting.

Self Regulation

Self-confidence

Realistic self-assessment

Self-deprecating sense of humor

The ability to recognize and

understand your moods, emotions,

and drives, as well as their effect on

others.

Self Awareness

HallmarksDefinition


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As Ned Herrmanns frustrated associate might have said, what the hell does

emotional intelligence have to do with business? Does it really matter? A

number of research efforts in recent years have pointed to the importance of

understanding emotional intelligence in the business or organizational

environment. A recent review article by Cary Cherness of Rutgers

University provides nineteen case studies that show how emotional

intelligence contributes to the bottom line in work situations. For example:

The US Air Force found they were three times more likely to selectsuccessful recruiters when senior officers use EQ as a screening and

selection tool for hiring.

A study of 300 top-level executives from 15 global companies showedthat EQ accurately differentiates outstanding from average performers.

A competency study involving 200 companies showed that cognitiveability and technical skill accounted for one third of the difference

between mediocre and high performers, whereas emotional competence

accounted for the other two thirds.

The Center for Creative Leadership has found that theprimary causes ofcareer derailment among executives are related to EQ.

There are myriad ways that a strategist might call on emotionally intelligent

thinking for positive effect. An accurate understanding of our own emotional

state is helpful in avoiding several traps in decision-making, including snap

decisions based on short-term emotional reactions to events. Since strategic

decision-making is often a group process, a strategist must also be able to gauge

the emotions of others. We will deal with several impediments to effective

group decision-making in chapter X.

EXECUTING STRATEGY CALLS FOR DETAIL AND SEQUENTIAL

THINKING

It is tempting to assume that Herrmanns B quadrant (color-coded in his

model as green) is not related to thinking about strategy and its formulation.After all, the limbic left brain is the seat of sequential thinking and detail, a far

cry from the big picture thinking we associate with strategy. Such an


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assumption, though, limits our ability to craft strategy. Indeed, any important

endeavor requires a truly whole-brain approach.

Consider the art of Michelangelo. To create the famous ceiling of the Sistine

Chapel, Michelangelo had to call on right-brain processing to develop his grand

vision. But he also had to execute his vision. That is, Michelangelo had to tap

into his left-brain capacity for detail in order to finish his work of art. I imaginethat there were days of tedium as he persisted in bringing his vision to life. In

the same manner, conceiving, articulating, and following through on a grand

strategy requires the use of ourwhole brains, including B-quadrant thinking.

Figure 14: Michelangelo needed to call on his "whole-brain" to

accomplish his vision at the Sistene Chapel

Larry Bossidy, the veteran chairman of Honeywell and CEO of Allied Signal,

was struck that among the shelves of business books published each year on

strategy and leadership none focused on the subject that obsesses successful

executives: the essential grunt work of delivering results.Execution, Bossidysaid, is "the missing link between aspirations and results. It is a systematic

process of rigorously discussing hows and whats, questioning, tenaciouslyfollowing through, and ensuring accountability.

Great and significant deeds are accomplished only through the mastery of a vast

sea of detail. As a strategist, one must identify the most important details in a

given operation and make sure that these details are well monitored and

managed. In his press briefing after the Gulf War of 1990-1991, Norman

Schwarzkopf praised the thousands of individuals who had managed his

logistical operation. In the largest military logistics operation in history,

America moved 550,000 troops to the Middle East in a short period of weeks


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and months; seven million tons of supplies were shipped; 122 million meals

were served; 32,000 tons of mail were delivered. By definition, a strategist

keeps his or her eyes on the big picture, not the details. Nonetheless, an effective

strategist must understand the necessity of detail-oriented, sequential thinking in

executing the strategy.

Here are some things a strategist can do to hone B-quadrant abilities and bridgethe gap between vision and result:

1. Identify which details are critical to the execution of your strategy.Manage and monitor these details.

2. Identify the people who can manage these details and delegateappropriately.

3. Understand the basics of project management.

The distinction between laying out a strategy and getting it done is often cited as

the difference between leaders and managers. While the leader, like Abraham

Lincoln, is one who determines the right thing to do, the manager is one whomakes sure the organization does things right. As Warren Bennis says, The

difference may be summarized as activities of vision and judgment

effectiveness versus efficiencydirection versus routine.

EVALUATING STRATEGY CALLS FOR SYSTEMS THINKING

There is no such thing as failure; there is only feedback.

One of the Laws of Neurolinguistic Programming

Explicating his view of strategy as an emergent process, Evan Dudik puts forth

the notion of the strategist as experimenter. Following his pinprick model, welaunch a number of strategic initiatives as would an experimentertry

something, watch for results, adjust, and try again. In classic experimental

design, the experimenter generates a hypothesis about cause and effectand then

puts the hypothesis to test. Clayton Christensen calls the hypothesis about acause and effect relationship a theory. He says that building a useful theory

involves three steps:


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1. Carefully observe, describe, and measure phenomena.

2. Group observations into distinct categories, distinguished byrecognizable attributes.

3. Develop a theory that explains how a certain set of attributes leads

to a certain resultthat is, articulate a theory of cause and effect.

For the strategist, a useful theory provides a way of understanding the dynamics

of the complex strategic environment, recognizable indicators or warning signals

of change, and agreed-upon means of dealing with change.

In his influential book The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge refers to hypotheses

about cause and effect as mental models. To Senge, mental models are deeply

ingrained assumptions, generalizations, or even pictures and images that

influence how we understand the world and how we take action (Senge 1990:

8). Mental models are useful and, indeed, unavoidable. By nature, we form

beliefs about cause and effect. One person may form a mental model that says

people are best moved toward excellent work by the promise of monetary

rewards. Someone else may hold to the mental model that the best determinant

of good and diligent work is the intrinsic satisfaction of the effort itself. Both of

these mental models can be stated in cause and effect terms. A good mental

model is disconfirmable. That is, we can put models and hypotheses to the test

through experimentation or simply through continued observation of events and

results.

To put theories or mental models to work, we use an approach referred to as

systems thinking. While strategic thinking involves consideration of the big

picture, systems thinking begins when we consider a real-world phenomenon

and seek to understand the cause and effect relationships characteristic of a

system. A systems thinker wonders how an organization works, looking at the

parts as dynamic aspects of the whole. It is the interrelationships of the elementsof an organization that interests the systems thinker.

While D-quadrant (big picture) thinking, as we have seen, is critical to

determining the direction to take toward the future, wed have no means of

judging the efficacy of one possible strategy over another without A-quadrant(logical, analytical, fact-based, and quantitative) thinkingwhich is to say,

systems thinking. To formulate a workable strategy, the strategist must

understand the connections among the constituent parts of the system, must


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understand how internal organizational capabilities dovetail with the dynamics

of the external environment.

Once a theory of cause and effect is established, then, the strategist learns to

observe and utilize feedback from the environment. Feedback is a term that

grew out ofsystems theory, also known as cybernetics, which emerged in the

1940s and 1950s.

The practice of systems thinking starts with understanding a simple conceptcalled "feedback" that shows how actions can reinforce or counteract

(balance) each other.

Ultimately, systems thinking simplifies life by helping us to see the deeperpatterns lying behind the events and the details. [check reference]

Though a mental modela hypothesis about cause and effectprovides a useful

way of understanding the dynamics and working of the world around us, blind

adherence to entrenched models can be dangerous. Once we close our eyes to

disconfirming evidence, once we fail to see the weaknesses of our assumptions

about cause and effect, we have failed as systems thinkers. History, of course, is

replete with examples of people adhering stubbornly to old paradigms despite

overwhelming evidence that a new way of thinking has become necessary.

Mental models become the frames through which we view the world. We attend

to what is inside our frame, oblivious sometimes to what occurs outside our

frames, which can lead to dangerous blind spots. Frames can be useful insofar as

they direct our attention toward the information we seek. But they can also

constrict our peripheral vision, keeping us from noticing important information

and, perhaps, opportunities. Once liberating, mental models can become

shackles.

As an illustration of the way in which mental models and frames can get out ofhand, consider Donald Schons concept of a generative metaphor. A generative

metaphor is an implicit metaphor that can cast a kind of spell on a community.

All solutions are understood in terms of the implicit metaphor. Some work

cultures, for example, use a sports analogy as their generative metaphor,

ubiquitously describing events in sports language and casting solutions as game

plans. A generative metaphor like this can be healthy, but it can also restrict

creativity and problem-solving, since the team may miss out on ideas and

options not endemic to the metaphorical world at hand.


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At times, an over-used generative metaphor can lead to a group dynamic known

asgroupthink, which we will consider in Chapter X. When cultural propensities

like this become problematic, leaders can stimulate positive organizational

change by introducing new and useful generative metaphors as they

communicate with others. The new metaphor can provide people with a lens

through which to see things anew and lead to positive change in the work

atmosphere and business results.

Perhaps the most important use of systems thinking in modern organizations is in

the pursuit of what Donald Schon, Chris Argyris, Peter Senge, and others have

called a learning organization. Schon defines a learning organization as

systems capable of bringing about their own continuing transformation. Senge

says that learning organizations are organizations where people continually

expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and

expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set

free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole together.

CHAPTER CONCLUSION

In this chapter, we have explored the mental tools of the strategist. To enable

good strategic decision-making, the strategist should:

Understand the conditions necessary for creative thinking, includingpreparation, incubation, illumination and verification (whole brain).

Use strategic thinking to understand the strategic environment andformulate strategy (D quadrant).

Call on emotionally intelligent thinking in order to articulate and diffusestrategy to others (C quadrant).

Attend to sequence and details in order to execute strategy (B quadrant).

Use systems thinking in order to evaluate strategy and recognize theneed for strategic change (A quadrant).

Now lets review a few specifics, in case you yourself have been stuck in a theta-

like state of reverie . . . Isaac Newton explained the tides, but never saw the sea.

Henri Poincar solved a vexing math problem by notthinking about it. Abraham

Lincoln said enough in a three-minute speech to reframe our national character.


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Isnt the human brain a curious and remarkable instrument? Surely the brain

will serve us well as we endeavor to make decisions, be they strategic,

operational, or tactical. In the next chapter, we turn to the process of decision

itself.

BRAIN QUADRANT EXEMPLARS

Quadrant Exemplars

A Systems Thinkers Thomas Jefferson, Kurt Lewin (knownas the Father of Social Psychology),

Michael Porter

B Logisticians and Administrators General Gus Pagonis of the Gulf War,

Leon Panetta, former presidential chief

of staff

C Empathic Leaders Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi,

Walt Disney, Oprah Winfrey

D Strategic Thinkers Winston Churchill, Bill Gates, Steve

Jobs

thinking about strategic thinking v4.0

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