Hello!

Welcome to the inaugural issue of The Behavioural Strategy Briefing! We're thrilled to have you on board.

This week's featured article reveals that cognitive fatigue—experienced as a decline in performance when mental effort is sustained over time—can lead to inconsistent and poor decision-making strategies. Not surprising, right? We’ve all made a poor decision or two at the end of the day. I’m here to tell you that the impacts are real.

The findings: Cognitive fatigue makes you more susceptible to impulsivity and variable risk preferences over time.

Why it matters for you: 

• Impulsivity and a meandering risk preference causes deviations that when measured over time, significantly erodes value creation, creates attentional drift toward quick wins or shiny widgets, and accentuates the undervaluation of evidence that confronts our beliefs.

• An awareness of cognitive fatigue can help you spot the signs of decline and design practices for critical decisions to be made when your team’s cognitive resources are at their peak.

What you can do about it: Prioritize key decisions early in the day, delegate less critical choices to those who have slack, put the phones aside to avoid heavy multi-tasking, and perhaps introduce a recess or two for a mental break when in a strategic planning meeting.

That’s cool, how does this apply to me and my business specifically?

Explore what decision fatigue means for you and your teams by pasting some of these queries into your favourite Gen AI platform:

• My team is responsible for ### and tends to work in a ### way. How can I apply decision fatigue research to optimize my team’s strategic decision making?

• I work within the ### industry offering ### products / services. Can you provide examples of how decision fatigue has affected decision making in companies that are similar to mine?

• I am planning an offsite for my team to (refine our strategy, ideate on metrics of success, prioritize our efforts for the year ahead,..). What is a sample agenda that prevents against the impacts of cognitive fatigue so we can make sound decisions?

• I feel like my team may be suffering from cognitive fatigue. What are the signs and symptoms of decision fatigue in individuals and teams?

Go get ‘em!

M

PS We value your input! Share your thoughts on this week's briefing, ask questions, or suggest topics for future issues by replying to this email. Would also love to hear how the prompts made you think differently about your day-to-day.

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