Organisations thinking fast and slow

The task of strategic integration arises whenever an organisation must continue and change as it is confronted by its own dynamic context. The term implies leaders' central plans and teams' distributed adaptations remain connected, in the manner of a complex adaptive system. One way to explore this connection in greater depth is to extend Daniel Kahnemann's 'thinking fast, thinking slow' metaphor from mental life to organisational life.

In his now classic book Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow, psychologist Daniel Kahnemann described our mental life using the metaphor of two agents, called 'System 1' and 'System 2'. Oversimplifying somewhat, System 1 engages in ‘fast’ thinking, that is, reaction, while System 2 engages in ‘slow’ thinking, intention. In evolutionary terms, System 1 contributes to us noticing the rustle in the bushes that may signify prey while System 2 contributes to us arranging the bushes into a garden so that food can be cultivated and set aside.

One feature of this dual arrangement is that a conflict can emerge between both agents, especially when System 2's intentions constrain or redirect System 1's impulses.  This is because there are some vital human tasks that only System 2 can perform, like intensive computations, tasks that require effort and self-control as opposed to ease and automatic response.

A second feature of this arrangement is that we delude ourselves into thinking System 2 is the protagonist of this little drama, when in fact it is at best the supporting actor. The reason for this is profound: “When we think of ourselves, we identify with System 2, the conscious, reasoning self that has beliefs, makes choices, and decides what to think about and what to do.” However, it is “System 1 effortlessly originating impressions and feelings that are the main sources of explicit beliefs and deliberate choices.” [1]

This framing makes it clear that, in organisations, different work is performed along different timescales. For teams at the periphery, recognising the emotion expressed in a customer's face may take one second while answering a user question may take five minutes. For leaders at the centre, completing a new product launch may take one year while enacting a corporate plan may take three. This suggests that we can label the work of teams as ‘fast’ and responsive, relative to the ‘slow’ and deliberative work of leaders.

Having observed this, might we also detect signs of the same conflict arising whenever System 1 is constrained or redirected by System 2? On a more political reading of organisations, we may feel we detect little else. The tension between those who know the user best and those who know the organisation best is standard fare in our daily conversations, our office politicking, and our workplace memes.

Just look at how often senior leaders complain that frontline teams are not adequately “aligned” while frontline teams complain that senior leaders are “out of touch” with the grounded realities of their work. Middle management, mediating between senior leaders and frontline teams, come to be simultaneously condemned as a "permafrost" that repels the important directives of senior leaders and praised as a "buffer" that protects frontline teams from unrealistic edicts of those same leaders.

In this way, Kahnemann's mental drama is analogous to our organisational dramas, which fascinate and appal us even as we set about performing our parts in them. Yet there is one final aspect that may be usefully explored through the metaphor of thinking organisations: the prevalent delusion of 'senior leaders as protagonists'. Just as we tend to identify the essence of our mind with the 'conscious reasoning self', we also tend to identify the essence of our organisations with the senior envisioning leader.

Thomas Carlyle epitomised the 'great man' theory of history when he asserted: “The History of the World is but the Biography of Great Men.” [2] A casual perusal of innumerable books, blogs, and news stories shows that too many analysts and commentators are prepared to follow him into interpreting organisational life in just such a reductive and sexist way. Jobs is Apple. Altman is OpenAI. Not only does this betray an obliviousness to the place and limit of metonymy, but it also quickly descends from sober analysis to sly propaganda.

Leaders are a crucial part of organisational life, and deft strategic leadership is without substitute. But stating this is not at all the same as proposing that leaders are the essence of organisations or that they are the masters and drivers of transformation. Just as a biographical reading of history had to give way to a social reading of history to better grasp how past events unfolded (thinking la longue durée), our popular readings of organisational life populated by glorious leaders and obscured teams must be refined. Only then do are we open to the ways that the 'effortlessly originating impressions and feelings' that arise when frontline teams and users or markets interact can give rise to 'the main sources of explicit beliefs and deliberate choices' that permeate our organisations.

[1] Daniel Kahnemann, Thinking Fast and Slow, (London, Penguin, 2012). p.21.

[2] Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History, [1840] (Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 1993), p.26.