The human brain and business strategy have similar, if not identical, goals. Protect ourselves, make us sustainable first to individuals and then through the hereditary transmission of our genes. In my opinion, business strategy should pursue the same objective: durability, sustainability.
They asked Peter Drucker if the sole goal of companies was to obtain profits and he masterfully replied that the relationship between profits and sustainability of companies was the same as that between breathing and living: we have not come to life to breathe but breathing is essential to live; Profits are not the objective but they are essential to ensure the survival of the company.
We know that companies have relatively short lives. Years ago Arie de Geus demonstrated it in her “The living company”; and we also know that the concept of sustainability, which until recently was related to environmental issues, now includes social, organizational. This is what Simon Zadek affirms in his latest book: “The civil corporation” (Earthscan, 2007): “Nobel laureate Milton Friedman encouraged companies to“ be responsible ”by earning as much money as possible because he envisaged economies, controlled by governments, who, in turn, were more or less accountable to their constituents. "The civil corporation" argues that this separation of roles is not a sustainable lens with which to understand the world around us. "
Traditional tools of strategy have proved of little use as many credible studies show. To cite just one, but very significant, I will cite the disappearance of the consulting firm Monitor created by Porter almost 30 years ago, as reported by Forbes magazine. He quotes the publication to Peter Gorski: “even a blindfolded chimpanzee throwing darts into Porter's five forces framework, can select a strategy that performs as well as prescribed by Dr. Porter and other strategic consultants very well paid. Consulting firms doomed? ”
There is a need for tools that make it easier for companies to be civil in all fields, for example information and knowledge management, direction, involvement, dialogue and communication, decision-making, etc. In short, a different strategic thought and action.
The brain has three basic nutrients: oxygen, glucose, and attachment. Attachment is that quality that links us to others, that involves us, that makes us interdependent, that ensures our survival and provides optimal conditions for the transmission of our genes; attachment is a crucial element of sustainability.
It is fascinating to discover what happens in our brains when we feel accepted or rejected by people close to or important to us. What is produced in our brains when we experience the feeling of connection and belonging, or of disconnection and isolation.
Although we hope that love moves the world, what really moves it are human beings relating to each other, either keeping it healthy and viable generation after generation, or threatening its destruction.
The relationships between us, in companies, families, couples, is the most complex thing that humans do, much more than composing a symphony, managing a government, solving global warming, etc., and the need to relate, to be Socially and emotionally intelligent is what has driven the evolution of the human brain, which is the most complex of all that exists.
Our earliest relationships actually build the brain structures that we will use for the rest of our lives; the experiences of these relationships are encoded in the circuitry of our brain between 12 and 18 months of age, all of this in implicit memory without our consciousness reaching them; attachment patterns become rules, templates, schemes for relating to others that operate throughout our lives: the data of our relational lives "known but not remembered." When those experiences have not been optimal, unconscious attachment patterns can continue to shape the brain's perceptions and responses to new relational experiences using the old ways that have solidified,that they cannot understand new experience as new information and thus cannot adapt or develop from it. It is what, looking at the brain from the outside of it, we call defensive patterns or personality disorders. What one professional calls "the recursive tragic patterns that are cast in neural cement."
It is said that the sustainability of a company depends on having sustainable competitive advantages, unique and hardly imitable resources, attractive products for potential customers. From my point of view, these and other requirements are necessary today to create the company; without them he cannot be born. But the requirement of sustainability is the attachment with those clients and with the rest of the “stakeholders”.
Attachment and sustainability, neuroscience and strategy. The relationship is very clear and clear: we need attachment as individuals and as groups (and so do all the company's stakeholders: And it needs a strategy that seeks its sustainability, its durability.
On these two pillars I base my strategic proposal that also feeds on thinking by design, that is, it is inductive rather than deductive.
A good strategy is one that is capable of identifying problems or alterations or anomalies and analyzing them with two criteria:
- Are they important for the survival of the organization? How can we approach them from the attachment with all the stakeholders?
It is not hidden from me that they have a simple appearance but the answers are complex and will require a lot of effort, not the slightest choice, that is, staying with few alternatives and having to discard many others.
Good strategy ends with action. Without it there is no strategy.
