Cognitive Drift = Project Drift: Resolving the Issue

Cognitive Drift = Project Drift: Resolving the Issue

Overcoming Cognitive Drift

As stated previously, a project workload wears down mental energy. This is a normal occurrence in a project and with any prolonged decrease in mental energy there will be side effects, of diminishing enthusiasm and execution levels. If the drops in mental energy are sustained an organization may see execution levels stop being productive and drift to inertia. Cognitive drift is identifiable before the levels of execution drop, especially by the diminishing enthusiasm. As a project becomes more mundane it actually becomes more demanding on mental energy. It’s more difficult to be intense on tasks that are a strain on your senses and many tasks, such as, data collection and cleansing are labor intensive and detail oriented and exhausting. How can you re-engage that enthusiasm during a project?

Re-engaging Enthusiasm

Consider that there really is a project within a project for any transformational change. Looking at RiskCALM₄^®, as an example, there is the project of the technology being implemented; the integrated risk management, automated policies, dynamic communications, automated loan origination with loan documentation, account opening, in-branch and online, however, with all the tools that are part of it; analytics and predictive analytics, automated networks, promotions, cross selling, marketing, etc., there is much to plan for. Each application of these tools is a project in need of a plan. Every aspect of these dynamic business applications in RiskCALM₄^® should be monetized. To monetize the opportunities, will necessitate a coordinated plan. These are the types of projects that are interesting and exciting. The idea of being involved with planning and establishing tasks that will make the company money, open avenues of growth for the organization and its personnel, while doing something for the community and improving the customer relationship, is enjoyable. Yes, identifying and planning for all these changes that are the future, will rejuvenate the mental processes by increasing the enthusiasm as it refreshes the memory cache.

Planning the Opportunities

For example, RiskCALM₄^® has:

Dynamic networking capabilities, giving your organization the ability to aggregate buying cycles. Aligning your organization with buyers’ buying cycles affords you the opportunity to be the first in line for any financing. It also establishes an understanding where the consumer is relative to lifecycle stages and opens the opportunity to; be involved with your community, differentiate yourself to businesses, create new revenue streams and increase lending business, etc.

Consider also, the plans needed to monetize cross-selling, self-analyzing offerings, online social networks, a lending network, predictive analytics, etc.

Conclusion

Energy is a product of a team’s enthusiasm; the vehicle driving cognition of the emotions and processes, in a way that energizes the productivity of an organization, causing its transformation. Enthusiasm in business is such an interesting characteristic, without which there is no energy, without which productivity wanes and transformational projects never transform. Thought leaders, senior personnel, all need a high level of energy and must be capable of conveying a sustainable level to their team, to transform a vision into reality. Communicating a vision means to translate it into real goals, that the team becomes a part of. It’s not just the implementation of a solution but also the application of it that defines its reality.

RiskCALM