Question

1. Look at the cognitive biases listed in your reading. For each of those listed, explain how this cognitive bias would negatively affect a leader during the neutral zone.

2. Which is the bigger threat to forecasting for your team or organization; Cognitive bias or Strategic Misrepresentation? Explain thoroughly.

3. Offer your opinion on the ‘scout and beacon’ approach to identifying emergent benefits and dis-benefits. (2 points)

Answer 1

• Cognitive biases affect our ability decision making because our cognition helps us to solve problems, adapt to effective manners and work with scientific strategies. When a leader develops cognitive biases, loss their open and creative diaspora and experiences pre-defined social values and traditional methods of problem-solving. The primary responsibility of a leader is to get team support and help them to achieve essential goals in a good manner but the development of cognitive bias affects their decision as well as the collective decisions of the team, it also creates conflicts and a lack of trust. Such as Bandwagon effects, influence the ability of decision making because it limited the out of the box thinking and follows the traditional approach.
• I think we cannot categorize the intensity of threats during forecasting because every threat that affects the decision is important, in my opinion, cognitive bias can lead a person to the strategic misrepresentation, the cognitive bias is a primary factor while misrepresentation is a secondary factor and both affects the forecasting and prediction.
• The emergent benefits are the part of improved productivity, Beacon and Scout approach is limited to the role of leaders and effectiveness of strategy but it is only a small part of the whole picture because many factors affect emergent benefits such as moral commitment, scientific approach, and object-oriented attitude. In my opinion, the adoption of an agile approach to product delivery plays a crucial role and it helps a leader to achieve appropriate strategy rather than follow the traditional path. The interpersonal communication also affects benefits and results, the optimization of existing business and identification of new emergent opportunities should to the primary objective.