Strategy - from 'Fight-or-Flight' towards more 'Pause-and-Plan'

Strategy - from 'Fight-or-Flight' towards more 'Pause-and-Plan'

This year, probably many of us, of our co-workers, clients, colleagues, or business partners found themselves often times in the following situation: you experience a day with eight, eleven or even more (online-)meetings. You rush from one to another, with the feeling that you are not fully present, or you already think about the next meeting or the tasks which keep adding-up with every new call.

Clearly, this might result in stress. And as we probably all are familiar with, stress causes our autonomous nervous system to go into some kind of ‘autopilot’, either pushing us towards more aggressive behavior, or to avoid conflict and become passive.

You rush from one meeting to another, with the feeling that you are not fully present, or you already think about the next meeting or the tasks which keep adding-up with every new call.

Fight-or-Flight

The familiar expression for this, fight or flight is already more than a century old (Cannon, 1915), and the term was later extended to more passive modes in which animals (or stressed humans) would freeze – clearly stating towards the opponent that ‘I am no threat to you’. Later, other authors (e.g. Bracha, 2004) added fright and faint, both of which states are ever more passive, in that an individual would pretend to be dead or clearly giving up to the opponent or stressor.

Interestingly enough, some studies (Taylor et al, 2000) suggest that a different strategy under stress is tend and befriend. This essentially means looking for close connection to others or for tight bonds with strong individuals and thus gaining some sort of protection or cover from a threat.

And as we probably all are familiar with, stress causes our autonomous nervous system to go into some kind of ‘autopilot’, either pushing us towards more aggressive behavior, or to avoid conflict and become passive

Summarizing so far, during a stress-full day, your behavior under pressure probably falls into one of these categories:

• Fight: You increasingly become aggressive, state your unhappiness with the work, with your colleagues, a client or whomever. Maybe your tongue expresses something you later regret
• Flight, Freeze or Faint: you increasingly become passive, you are not standing up for your needs, and maybe you even don’t answer an urgent call or an email and try to get away for some time
• Tend and befriend: your stress response here is to generally seek acceptance, being reassured of yourself by others. Maybe you try to be ‘nice’, even manipulating, by trying to get on the ‘winning’ side in a conflict. Or, you simply connect to your peers, colleagues and friends to chat with them, and to stabilize your feelings between meetings

None of these strategies is inherently ‘bad’ nor ‘good’. All stem from an evolutionary history and serve a purpose. It is just helpful to be aware of one’s own default strategy and actively try to counter-act these impulses in order to make a conscious and wise decision.

This is where it gets interesting. How can we counter-act these impulses? Well, research shows, the story does not end with Fight & Flight: Now it’s time, (drumbeat…) sit down, have a break, get a Kit-Kat and practice Pause & Plan ??

Pause-and-Plan

Of course, there is a trend of mindfulness, of yoga and meditation. For those amongst us, who rather think analytically than spiritual – give it a try ‘to take a breath’. It has often times clearly shown to work and to be effective. It even increases your productivity during the day and week:

McGonigal (2012) summarizes how mindful, slow breathing while taking a conscious break in silence actually counter-acts many of the negative effects of the automatic response in stress-full situations. The metabolism slows down, the blood pressure decreases and the body provides internal resources for decision-making processes, which otherwise would have been gone to the muscles to be used in the ‘fight’. So, simply by deep breathing you become aware of your reaction patterns and you gain back the ‘control seat’ about your situation. In addition, (Segerstrom et al., 2012) found that your power to get things done, your motivation power, actually can get re-charged several times just by actively taking these conscious decisions to breath, pause and use some time to plan ahead.

So, simply by deep breathing you become aware of your reaction patterns and you gain back the ‘control seat’ about your situation.

Several conscious breaks during the day ensure productivity and go hand-in-hand with other concepts like deep work (Newport, 2016), which encourages uninterrupted working spaces and time slots without meetings. Also, check out what German company of SAP introduced under its Global Head Of People Experience, Cawa Younosi : Labeled as FocusFriday, the last day of the week should remain without regular meetings, thus avoiding unproductive 'rushs' at the end of the week and instead give people space to finish tasks in a productive manner and without interruptions.

If Agility is misunderstood as just being ‘faster’ and without proper processes ensuring planning, retrospectives and conscious decision making by autonomous teams, then the urge for being quick and agile can actually increase the ‘fight or flight’ modes among people.

Permitting myself an analogy for the sake of this year-end… , I would add another thought: Agility in organizations is without a doubt a sucessful and helpful concept, but if misunderstood as just being ‘faster’ and without proper processes ensuring planning, retrospectives and conscious decision making by autonomous teams, then the urge for being quick and agile can actually increase the ‘fight or flight’ modes among people.

If this happens, an organization (just as each individual) gains a lot from taking time for planning, for strategic foresight and for defining a strategy to get there.

Agility should thus not come at the costs of thorough strategic (scenario) planning. Instead it should go well hand-in-hand, with strategic planning defining the larger milestones for the organization.

Agility should thus not come at the costs of thorough strategic (scenario) planning. Instead it should go well hand-in-hand, with strategic planning defining the larger milestones for the organization, whilst agile processes ensure autonomous working modes of teams and individuals. What better time now as the beginning of a new year to step back, breath, pause… and plan.

Sources:

Bracha, Stefan (2004): Freeze, Flight, Fight, Fright, Faint: Adaptationist Perspectives on the Acute Stress Response Spectrum. In: CNS Spectrums. Band 9, Nr. 9, September 2004, S. 679–685.

Cannon, Walter (1915): Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage: An Account of Recent Researches into the Function of Emotional Excitement. Appleton, New York.

McGonigal, Kelly (2012): The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It.

Newport, Cal (2016): Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World.?

Segerstrom, S. C., Hardy, J. K., Evans, D. R., & Winters, N. F. (2012): Pause and plan: Self-regulation and the heart. In R. A. Wright & G. H. E. Gendolla (Eds.),?How motivation affects cardiovascular response: Mechanisms and applications?(pp. 181–198). American Psychological Association.

Taylor, S.E., Klein, L.C., Lewis, B.P., Gruenewald, T.L, Gurung, R.A.R, Umdegraff, J.A. (2000): Biobehavioral responses to stress in females: Tend-and-befriend, not fight-or-flight. In: Psychological Review, 107, 2000, S. 411–429.