Are your leaders sabotaging your strategy?

The global landscape has changed. Today, volatility is a constant, and the ability to pivot rapidly is the difference between survival and obsolescence. For all the focus on market data and geopolitical analysis, the greatest risk to an organisation’s resilience often lies not in external threats, but within the executive suite itself.

This is the behavioural blind spot. It’s the subtle, powerful interplay of cognitive biases, cultural norms, and ingrained human tendencies that can undermine a company from within. A group dynamic that favours consensus over critical dissent, a cultural predisposition to circumvent procedure for expediency, or a leader’s unchecked optimism bias – these aren’t just abstract concepts. They are causal factors with a direct and measurable link to strategic failure.

For senior leaders, the question is not if the next crisis will hit, but if your top team is psychologically prepared to navigate it. A new form of intelligence is required to answer this. An intelligence that moves beyond what a risk is, to understand why it might manifest.

The science of strategic resilience —

Our research, rooted in the interdisciplinary science of Behavioural Economics and powered by four decades of exclusive, causal data, has isolated 15 underlying vulnerabilities – common personality traits and cognitive biases – that form the breeding ground for risk within an executive team. 

These vulnerabilities, often subtle and pervasive, are the antecedents to a defined range of 13 organisational failure points.  By using advanced Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) to establish a causal architecture, it can prove,  for example, how a collective tendency toward impracticality can lead directly to Execution and Delivery Failure under stress, or how a predisposition for Expedient behaviour leads to unauthorised activity.

Causal Links: From Behaviour to business failure — 

BRI’s data indicates that organisations whose top teams exhibit vulnerabilities linked to ineffective decision making are 40% more prone to product obsolescence within five years. It also reveals that only 15% of strategic change initiatives are fully implemented on time and within budget, and that the team’s behaviour under stress contributes to 75% of critical system errors. Furthermore, organisations whose top teams exhibit a collective behavioural profile susceptible to Threat Rigidity are 3.5 times more likely to delay critical strategic adaptations in the face of a threat. These are not coincidences; they are causal links.

Building a Resilient Organisation —

Behavioural intelligence empowers senior leaders to build a more resilient and high-performing organisation. It allows executive teams to identify the behavioural root causes of risk and address them before they manifest as a significant strategic or operational failure. It moves risk oversight beyond a review of systems and processes to a deeper, more nuanced conversation about the human dynamics that truly influence strategic choices and risk appetite.

For every organisation, the path to a high-performing top team is a path to true resilience. By embracing a more holistic understanding of risk – one that includes the human dimension – you can build an organisation capable of anticipating and adapting to complex challenges by addressing the root behavioural causes of failure.

The Behavioural Risk intelligence model can help organisations to —

• Proactively spot behavioural risks before they escalate
• Strengthen decision-making at the highest-level
• Boost team performance and collaboration
• Develop talent with precision
• Secure long-term competitive advantage

At its core, BRI establishes and measures causal relationships between specific behavioural traits, team dynamics, and critical organisational outcomes.

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