Cognitive frameworks - what you have in your head.....
I'll try and make this easy to understand as what is usually going on in our heads is a bit of a mystery to everyone including ourselves.
Managers get inundated with information all day every day and confronted with problems that require them to somehow pull all the appropriate information together to be able to make solid decisions. We meet this challenge by employing cognitive frameworks as a means of framing problems in a way that makes sense to us facilitating information processing and decision making.
For example, we have a cognitive framework about driving and road rules which has been built up through initial learning and then from practical experience. This allows us drive efficiently and with confidence as our cognitive framework means we do not have to reinterpret and analyse each situation we encounter. However, when we first drive in a foreign country we are very aware that we need to take extra caution to understand how the road rules work. Our cognitive framework needs to be refined through additional learning or experience to cope with the changed circumstances.
A well-worn management 2x2 matrix (what in management cannot be displayed in a 2x2 matrix) attributed to Abraham Maslow demonstrates the stages of competency we go through when learning new skills. When it comes to driving our cognitive framework allows us to be unconsciously competent and we do not need to think about what we are doing, we just do it. When we arrive in a foreign country we revert to being consciously incompetent, we are aware that the rules are different and we need to learn them, but (hopefully) quite quickly progress through conscious competence to unconscious competence again.
Let us consider the conditions of competence and incompetence, a word with quite negative connotations, in the business world. Clearly the terms are two poles on a continuum where incompetent means unable to perform the task at all and competent means able to perform the task with a high degree of skill, an expert. Many business disciplines have their own qualifications and this allows an understanding of where an individual currently sits on this continuum. An accredited Chartered Accountant has demonstrated a high level of competence in that area and has developed a comprehensive cognitive framework on the required area. To rather state the obvious, they would not however be seen, or see themselves, as competent in legal matters which is a discreet area with its own qualification system.
Competencies and cognitive frameworks become very visible in situations where we receive quick and comprehensible feedback. Hitting a golf ball provides instantaneous feedback on our golfing competency and likewise, sitting in a room of Information Technology (IT) professionals may (for most of us will) indicate that our own cognitive framework regarding IT is hardly comprehensive and we are in fact consciously incompetent.
Being consciously incompetent is not actually a problem for managers in fact it is vital that they are aware of what they do, and do not, know. In the example above, if the situation calls for in depth knowledge in IT, we simply call on the IT Manager or hire an IT consultant to provide the necessary skill set. As managers are primarily generalists it is the same for issues dealing with areas such as; legal, financial, architectural or human resources. It is when managers are unconsciously incompetent that they are likely to run into difficulties.
Not being competent in a subject matter area does not mean managers cannot make competent decisions regarding that subject matter. What they require is the appropriate information and analysis to enable them to make their decision, as happens day-in day-out in organisations everywhere.
How does this relate to strategic planning?
When an organisation is confronted with a strategic problem or issue who should be involved and how comprehensive should their strategic management cognitive framework be? If strategy and strategic decision making is so important, it would be nice to think those engaged in the activity had a pretty good cognitive framework to call on..........
Managers get inundated with information all day every day and confronted with problems that require them to somehow pull all the appropriate information together to be able to make solid decisions. We meet this challenge by employing cognitive frameworks as a means of framing problems in a way that makes sense to us facilitating information processing and decision making.
For example, we have a cognitive framework about driving and road rules which has been built up through initial learning and then from practical experience. This allows us drive efficiently and with confidence as our cognitive framework means we do not have to reinterpret and analyse each situation we encounter. However, when we first drive in a foreign country we are very aware that we need to take extra caution to understand how the road rules work. Our cognitive framework needs to be refined through additional learning or experience to cope with the changed circumstances.
A well-worn management 2x2 matrix (what in management cannot be displayed in a 2x2 matrix) attributed to Abraham Maslow demonstrates the stages of competency we go through when learning new skills. When it comes to driving our cognitive framework allows us to be unconsciously competent and we do not need to think about what we are doing, we just do it. When we arrive in a foreign country we revert to being consciously incompetent, we are aware that the rules are different and we need to learn them, but (hopefully) quite quickly progress through conscious competence to unconscious competence again.
Let us consider the conditions of competence and incompetence, a word with quite negative connotations, in the business world. Clearly the terms are two poles on a continuum where incompetent means unable to perform the task at all and competent means able to perform the task with a high degree of skill, an expert. Many business disciplines have their own qualifications and this allows an understanding of where an individual currently sits on this continuum. An accredited Chartered Accountant has demonstrated a high level of competence in that area and has developed a comprehensive cognitive framework on the required area. To rather state the obvious, they would not however be seen, or see themselves, as competent in legal matters which is a discreet area with its own qualification system.
Competencies and cognitive frameworks become very visible in situations where we receive quick and comprehensible feedback. Hitting a golf ball provides instantaneous feedback on our golfing competency and likewise, sitting in a room of Information Technology (IT) professionals may (for most of us will) indicate that our own cognitive framework regarding IT is hardly comprehensive and we are in fact consciously incompetent.
Being consciously incompetent is not actually a problem for managers in fact it is vital that they are aware of what they do, and do not, know. In the example above, if the situation calls for in depth knowledge in IT, we simply call on the IT Manager or hire an IT consultant to provide the necessary skill set. As managers are primarily generalists it is the same for issues dealing with areas such as; legal, financial, architectural or human resources. It is when managers are unconsciously incompetent that they are likely to run into difficulties.
Not being competent in a subject matter area does not mean managers cannot make competent decisions regarding that subject matter. What they require is the appropriate information and analysis to enable them to make their decision, as happens day-in day-out in organisations everywhere.
How does this relate to strategic planning?
When an organisation is confronted with a strategic problem or issue who should be involved and how comprehensive should their strategic management cognitive framework be? If strategy and strategic decision making is so important, it would be nice to think those engaged in the activity had a pretty good cognitive framework to call on..........
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