#221 from R&D Innovator Volume 5, Number 6          June 1996

Cognitive Management™
by James P. Eicher

Mr. Eicher, of Sunnyvale, California (phone 408-744-1332) is the creator of Cognitive Management™, a theory of management which applies research from the cognitive sciences to organization and management behavior.  He is co-author of the learning instruments, The Neurolinguistic Communication Profile; Rapport:  Matching and Mirroring Communication (Organization Design and Development, King of Prussia, PA); Post-Heroic Leadership:  Managing the Virtual Organization (HRD Press, Amherst, MA); and Conflict Style Profile (HRI, Del Mar, CA).

“If it’s not written down, it’s not real,” a manager recently informed me.  “What exactly do you mean?” I interjected.  “Are you talking about project assignments?  Reports and presentations?  Some type of performance requirement?”

“Well, it really doesn’t matter...all I know is if I can’t see it, a note or something, it’s as if the work didn’t really occur, as silly as that sounds.  My counterpart down the hall, he can remember everything that’s said to him, always talking to his staff.  And Sue, she’s a doer, always hustling the work she needs to get done and walking her staff through the ropes.  Me?  I like clear, concise notes and progress reports; something I can look at.  The other stuff doesn’t work for me.”

A bureaucratic requirement for paperwork, or an indication of this manager’s cognitive rules?  Are stated communication preferences such as these arbitrary and/or capricious?  If not, can they influence individuals and organizations in ways that can benefit both?  I’ll discuss how certain observable behaviors indicate the internal thinking and perceiving, i.e., the cognition of managers, and how this information can be applied.

Cognition focuses on verbal and non-verbal behaviors that indicate internal mental processes, i.e., thinking, perceiving, decision making, problem solving, etc.  Cognitive style is based on categorizing the perceptual and information processing preferences which people use to analyze work tasks, judge other’s performance, manage projects, and develop products/services. 

Knowing your own cognitive style, and the cognitive style of people you work with, provides a powerful augmentation of accepted management and leadership practices.

Perceptual Rules and Information Processing

Organizing management behavior around rules of perceptual preference provides tremendous explanatory power.  Take Susan, who, like most managers, has a voice mail system.  Yet she demands that her assistant take all of her calls, including those recorded on voice mail, and write each one down as a memo, and then each morning line them up chronologically on the upper right hand corner of her desk.  Frank, on the other hand, religiously uses his voice mail system for both sending and receiving messages.  And Sam?  If he receives a call, he’s likely to walk down the hall or to another building and get into a face-to-face discussion, if time and location permit.

In addition to perceptual preferences, another key element of cognitive style is how you process and organize information “in your head” and work environment.  The most useful model for understanding information processing preferences is left brain/right brain processing.  Left brain patterns of organizing information are indicated by the preference to conduct tasks in a step-by-step manner, pay attention to detail, be concerned about completing tasks on schedule, and the need to know the logic behind a task.  Right brain patterns are indicated by the preference to conduct many tasks at once, attend to the “big picture,” complete tasks at inconsistent time intervals, and the need to know only the general reasoning behind a task. 

Next, I’ll present some examples of how awareness of cognition improves communication, thinking, problem solving, learning, and teamwork.

Neurolinguistic Communication and Problem Solving

Let’s go back to the opening statement by our veteran manager.  Was her preference, to receive and categorize information from her employees in a visual, written format, arbitrary?  Probably not.  Chances are she has a subconscious preference to receive work-related information in a visual format.  Similarly, her peer down the hall prefers to talk to his employees to get the scoop on what they’re doing and to monitor their work behavior.  And what about their boss?  He’s a “hands on” kind of guy, the kind who likes to get into the thick of things.  He’s always walking around, poking his nose into labs, cubicles, and the lunch room.  Capricious?  Or an indication of a perceptual pattern?

These seemingly random and trivial patterns indicate the dominant cognitive style each of these managers use.  Specifically, these are perceptual preferences each of them has for attending and gathering work information.  Roughly characterized, perceptual rules are organized around three major information-gathering sensory organs—the eyes (visual preference), ears (auditory preference), and the body (tactile/kinesthetic).  Thus each manager has a cognitive style which reflects visual (“show me”), auditory (“tell me”) and tactile/kinesthetic (“walk me through it”) rules of perception (termed ‘neurolinguistic’ communication).  Once you know the cognitive style of another, you can match his or her style to maximize the chances for communicating your particular ideas and concepts.  Rapport can be developed and problems more easily solved when cognitive styles are understood, matched, and communicated.  Knowledge of cognitive styles allows individuals to develop flexible responses to communication based on objective criteria and not “personality.”

Learning Styles

When designing your workplace for continuous improvement and learning, it’s necessary to know the learning style of the individuals you work with.  For example, in the area of employee and customer training, everyone has an optimal learning style, say for learning to use new computer software. 

Some learn best by watching the images, text, and icons on the screen (visual).  Others learn easiest by explanation, question and answer, and discussion about the mechanics of the program (auditory).  And yet others learn best by doing “hands on” work, and must sit at the keyboard getting the “feel” for how a program works (tactile/kinesthetic).  Providing a style to suit each learner will increase both the speed of learning and the amount of retention.

There are a variety of other applications and benefits of knowing and using cognitive styles, such as conflict resolution, negotiation, interviewing, project management, creating high-performing teams, and sales.

How you think and organize your experience, like your observable behavior, becomes habitual.  Breaking out of your particular cognitive biases demands self-knowledge and the motivation to change.  Applying cognitive styles demands recognition of the style, its strengths and limitations, and being flexible to match style to the appropriate work conditions.

Summary

This discussion of cognition suggests a fresh analysis of organizations and a new set of tools to do the job.  Understanding cognition and other information system psychologies will help managers and individual contributors to accurately value knowledge, improve learning and communication, and lead to less hierarchical, more team-based organization structures.

Managers tend to create a work environment that reflects the type of information they prefer to attend to, their preference for organizing information, and their preference for work output.  But managers need to break out of their habitual ways of thinking and decision making.  The cognitive sciences can help managers be flexible to design more efficient processes that take into account information from the total organization—suppliers, customers, partners, etc.

The flexibility and versatility gained when using conscious—as opposed to simply intuitive—knowledge of cognitive style allows an individual to improve communication and thinking in a deliberate—and enjoyable—manner.

 What’s your style?  And what’s the style of those who interact with you?