The link of Behavioral Strategy with Digital Transformation

Digital Transformation is the ultimate key word for today’s managers and entrepreneurs since we are expecting not less than the next industrial revolution. Everybody talks about it – yet within the corporations the world has not changed so much. Some departments are frontrunners like digital marketing and digital sales,  production process automation etc. But the overall picture within the organization is rather best described by a feeling of high uncertainty – about the future of your own job, the future of communication and the future of information overload and management.

When uncertainty is high, it makes sense to look at what we are dealing with in some more details to gain a better understanding of the possible influencers and outcomes.

An increasing digitalization of our knowledge, of our communication, operating processes, business models, and the continuous development of associated technologies affect social interaction patterns as well as indiviudal lifestyles and working practices of employees and managers.

The organization of these social and industrial changes is a key driver to reach economic sustainability and requires from management and executives efficient and effective forms of individual and organisational decision making and new types of leadership qualities and competencies.

Digital transformations asks for new ways of strategy development, leadership and self management.  Behavioral sciences, especially Behavioral Strategy can provide insights and knowledge how to manage this process of a very deep and thus demanding transformation.

The case for Behavioral Strategy

Strategic Management has been for a very long dominated by the wish for ration, objective, analytic thinking. Although psychologists and psychoanalysts know since ages that the human being is not as rational as wanted, this insight had not been integrated by strategic management. With the upcoming of Behavioral Finance and Behavioral Economics also strategists became slowly aware of the fact that their thinking is distorted by cognitive biases and that even them are influenced by emotions. Neurosciences have helped enormously to make this an acceptable, yet for some a bit of an unapleasable fact.

By Behavioral Strategy we mean a new approach in the field of strategic management using a psychologically informed perspective. It thrives to integrates emotional aspects into strategic management and sees the necessity in deep and shared reflections on your own thinking and your thinking of the future of the corporation.

In integrating these psychological factors success factors can be derived which not only improve the quality of the strategic decisions, but also the implementation will work faster and cause less resistance.

It is worth a try, I promise! And also interesting and fascinating …

Hello strategic thinkers!

This is a new blog on a very recent subject. Behavioral Strategy deals with the psychology of you as the strategic thinker and with the psychology of the corporation where you would want to implement the strategy.

In times of continuous disruption and digital transformation strategic thinking has developed into a new dimension. The world turns faster, so does strategy? This is one of the questions we will be looking for an answer over the next posts.

Also I will be sharing my research on behavioral strategy. This field has only developed over the last years and I have been working since its inception on it.

So please stay with me as I will be developing my experiences from academic research as well as practical consulting.

I hope to at least meet your needs and expectations, feel free to give me feedback or your own thoughts.

Kind regards

Dr. Claudia Nagel
Visiting Professor Hull University, Business School
Head of Behavioral Strategy Institute
Owner of Nagel & Company Leadership Consulting