Belgravia Leisure’s leadership team is using cognitive science to build a better business

Belgravia Leisure summarises its experience from the recent Kognitive PRIORITISE workshop. Copublished with Belgravia Leisure.

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Recently our [Belgravia Leisure] strategic leadership team came together to participate in a workshop conducted by Ethan Glessich from Kognitive — an experiential training that delivers insights, tools and ongoing support to help new ideas flourish and productive behaviours stick.

The session focused on the enhancement of productivity, performance and effectiveness within our teams, laying a strong foundation to implement key productivity-enhancing initiatives.

The simple truth beneath the complexity

Organisations are complex. Interconnected systems and processes, advancing tools and technology, changing IP, customers, cultures and more.

Beneath all of this complexity, however, at every organisation’s core, are people making decisions, interacting and taking action. More than anything else, the quality of these decisions, actions and interactions drive the organisation’s performance, productivity and profit.

The range and breadth of Belgravia Leisure’s business only exemplify these challenges and the cognitive load it places on decision-makers. In recognition of these undercurrents, Belgravia Leisure’s leadership team recently partnered with management consultancy Kognitive, to help its leaders better understand the drivers of decisions and behaviour, and take proactive measures to cultivate a productive culture and keep people focused on what matters most.

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Through a series of interactive brain games and activities, Kognitive helped us discover that while we tend to think of ourselves as rational, logical decision-makers, cognitive load and emotion have an enormous impact on the quality of our decisions and behaviour.

Rather than trying to suppress or ignore the emotional undercurrents, the Kognitive training taught our leaders how to balance the cognitive and emotive dimensions of decision-making, to leverage our brain’s cognitive and emotional strengths.

Nick Cox, Belgravia Leisure’s CEO said, “It was incredibly insightful to learn how and why our own brain can often sabotage our rational decisions and even guide our action away from our longer-term goals. I’m looking forward to using the insights from the Kognitive workshop to refine the way we roll out our strategy update, so we can all unite behind our common purpose of Bringing Leisure to Life“.

Beyond the bigger picture

As decision-making and prioritisation are so central to everything we do, our leaders took away insights to apply to a diverse range of areas of our businesses.

Nicole Dunn, NSW Regional Manager said, “It’s great to know I’m not alone in sharing the frustrations of the challenges of working memory. I can now better identify it and proactively manage it to help myself and our team achieve better outcomes as well as working to timelines.”‍

Damian Gorman, Executive Manager of Business Development said, “I now understand the reasons behind why some of our previous pricing strategies have worked so effectively, and how we can build on these strengths into the future.”‍

Mark Maybury, Group Manager People & Culture said, “The tools were very practical and useful. I’ll definitely use them both personally and to support our broader teams to bring our CLEAR values to life.”

The journey continues…

While the Kognitive training gave us a better understanding of decision-making and practical tools to help us stay focused on what matters most, as we discovered in the workshop, the hardest part can often be consistently taking action over time.

While this may have always been the case, we are now better equipped and empowered to overcome our hidden biases and proactively work towards building a better business for our staff, partners and customers to enjoy.

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Kognitive is a management consultancy that helps people and companies improve productivity and performance. It is led by Ethan Glessich, a former aerospace engineer and management consultant, and Dr. Patricia Martos, a neuroscientist who holds a PhD in cognitive neuroscience, a master in neuropsychology and a bachelor in psychology.

To learn more about how cognitive science can help us improve our businesses and personal productivity, check out Kognitive’s free ebook: The Cognitive Revolution or free productivity video series.