A common activity in businesses of all sizes is strategic planning. Every year the senior leadership team and possibly a pool of employees work together to map out the plans, KPI’s, budgets, and direction for the next 1 – 5 years.
But how much of this strategic planning activity results in significantly improving the current situation?
I once worked for an organisation that was suffering with the downturn in the economy. They put enormous energy into their strategic planning process involving much of the business over several months. However instead of making significant improvements to the way they operated, their results showed little change year on year. There was no money allocated in the budget to invest in people or processes and there wasn’t an appetite for risk or change. It was as though they were too afraid to do something different. It was as though the collective mindset of the senior leaders was closed to possibility and opportunity.
What if the strategic planning process stopped being about doing more with less and instead excited people to achieve great things?
Neuroscience has found that our default behaviour lives in our subconscious and involves the primitive brain (defend & protect), and our limbic brain (emotions, beliefs, past experiences). When we are under pressure &/or feel threatened our brains release cortisol that prepares the body for attack or defence. Behaviours exhibited include distrust, micromanaging, blaming, right fighting, & risk aversion.
They have also found that cortisol works to shut down the parts of the brain in the face of threat. This makes sense given our primitive response is to either fight or flee. Our brain works to conserve and focus our energy on survival. Unfortunately our primitive brain has not evolved and does not know the difference between facing an enemy or the downturn in the markets and responds to any threat or fear as though it is a life or death situation.
The Pre Frontal Cortex is one part of the brain that cortisol shuts down. Research has found that this is where trust, creativity, innovation, and possibility reside. These are the brain activities we need to involve when undertaking strategic planning. If the strategic planning process is about finding ways to do more with less, creating an environment of uncertainty and insecurity, it is likely that this will trigger fear and threat responses and not creativity.
The trick is to change the way the process is undertaken so that the primitive brain calms down which allows the prefrontal cortex to activate. This then provides the opportunity for possibilities and ideas to be shared and discussed.
Research has found we are hardwired to grow and develop. You can see this when you look back at how far we have evolved compared to any other species. We have this ability because we have a large prefrontal cortex. It used to be said that what differentiates humans from other animals was our use of language and our use of tools. Today they have found that what differentiates humans is our ability to look to the future, to continually evolve and seek out possibility. No other animal species does this.
What are the chances of your strategic planning process transforming the business? Unless you allow your business to see out possibility, change will be slow.
So the aim of your strategic planning activity should be to have all participants accessing their prefrontal cortex and calming down their fear and threat brain activity.
Here are some six tips to help achieve this
- Have a range of activities that are designed to open up the PFC. Examples are
- Ask all participants in the strategic planning participants identify where they are at on a scale of 1 (I am resisting) – 10 (I’m open). Ask them what it would take to move forward on the scale.
- Go around the table and ask each participant what their vision is for the business
- Ask each participant what their number one idea is for turning the business around
- Put rules in place for how meeting will run.
- Allow people to share concerns, gripes, or views without judgement. Make it a rule that the only responses are either to say thankyou or to ask one of the following question.
- What if….?,
- How would that look like….?
- Can you explain further…..?
- When you say X what do you mean?
- How would you have responded / dealt with it?
- Hold off making decisions until all input has been provided
- Ask everyone what they are prepared to do differently in order for the strategy to be achieved and what support they need to make the changes.
- Have all participants go into the workplace and talk about the strategic planning process and the outcomes.
These activities are known to activate the prefrontal cortex. This creates an environment of trust and belonging empowering people to challenge and question current systems and processes without fear of recrimination. It enables people’s ability to think of possibilities and a different future for the organisation. Businesses that are struggling to see a brighter future are encouraged to use these principals.
Would you like to learn more about how to conduct your strategic planning differently and get better results? I would love to see if I can assist either with advice or facilitation. Call me now.
