INTRODUCTION
Strategy documents don't fail because they're wrong. They fail because nobody uses them.
In a world where most strategic plans end up collecting dust in shared drives, smart leaders know that the ultimate challenge isn't creating the plan—it's getting teams to actually execute it. But what if there was a way to tap into the primal instincts that drive human decision-making to create strategies that stick?
Welcome to the fascinating world of the reptilian brain: the oldest part of our brain that controls our basic survival instincts.
By understanding how the brain naturally processes change, makes decisions, and determines what deserves attention, you can design internal systems that encourage adoption instead of abandonment.
Quick Overview Of The Reptilian Brain
The Old Brain is wired for survival and activates fight or flight responses. While our New Brain handles abstract thoughts and rational thinking, the Old, or reptilian, Brain's primary concern is keeping us alive. This primal instinct drives decision-making processes, often before our logical brain even registers what's happening.
Here's how the three parts of the brain work together to influence whether your team adopts new strategic initiatives or ignores them:
Image of the three-brain model showing the Reptilian Brain, Limbic System, and Neocortex, courtesy of Beverly McMaster
Using neuroscience to enable execution
By understanding and appealing to the reptilian brain, we can design strategic rollouts, decision-making systems, and organizational changes that work with human nature rather than against it. This means creating adoption experiences that the brain recognizes as safe, valuable, and worth paying attention to.
Start with the beginning + end
While the entire implementation journey matters, pay special attention to the kickoff and close of any big initiative. The beginning not only sets the tone for adoption, but is also when our brains are naturally most alert. The Old Brain becomes especially active during periods of change, when it perceives we're most likely to be "in danger." This is why investing in both your team’s onboarding (how you introduce new direction) and your review cadences (how you close loops and celebrate progress) is so critical.
When rolling out a new strategic direction or transformation, seize the opportunity to make a powerful first impression. Be intentional about crafting a launch experience that provides clarity, builds trust, and creates psychological safety right from the start. Frame the change in terms that people can grasp immediately. Make it concrete, not abstract. Once during a transformation from waterfall to agile, we abstained from using any agile jargon and instead translated it into the organization’s current business terms, emphasizing the value of the change. Only once the team was well on its way and achieving progress from the changes did we introduce agile terms.
The same goes for strategic reviews and retrospectives. Leave teams with a lasting positive impression of what's working. When people exit a planning session or quarterly review feeling clear and energized rather than overwhelmed and confused, they're far more likely to continue executing on what was discussed. By creating endings with clarity and acknowledgment, you reinforce the behaviors you want to see continue.
Then switch it up!
Consistency matters for building reliable systems. However, because our brains are always looking to conserve energy, they actually tune out when things become too predictable. Combat this by strategically varying your approach, especially for recurring meetings and processes.
Never let ‘em get too comfortable. For recurring strategic rituals like weekly standups or monthly reviews, consider changing the format occasionally. Maybe one month you lead with wins, another month with obstacles. Switch who facilitates. Vary the questions you ask.
Who says strategy updates have to be boring slide decks? Feel free to swap out formats. Try a working session instead of a presentation, use visual dashboards instead of spreadsheets, and experiment with async updates when appropriate. After all, early implementation is about an excess of communication; make it fun!
Personalize and celebrate ‘clicking’ moments. When someone makes a decision that perfectly aligns with the new direction, acknowledge it specifically. These micro-moments of recognition keep teams engaged and signal that the strategy is alive, not theoretical.
Infographic capturing the six strategies listed in this blog post to use to appeal to the brain when considering change management initiatives.
Appeal to the need for survival (in a totally not terrifying way)
When designing how new initiatives gets operationalized and adopted across your organization, keep in mind the decision-making brain's priorities. The survival part of our brain is always motivated by these six traits:
It is self-centered. This is why individual clarity matters more than organizational alignment (at first). Before asking "are we all aligned?", make sure each person can answer "what does this mean for my work?" Personalize the strategic implications for different roles and departments. Show people how the strategy makes their specific jobs clearer, not just how it benefits the organization abstractly.
It appreciates contrast. Contrast allows our brains to make quick, safe decisions. Without explicit clarity about what's changed and what hasn't, the brain gets confused and defaults to old patterns. This is why "we're pivoting our strategy" fails without specifics. Instead, communicate clearly: "We're stopping X to focus on Y" or "This used to be the priority, now this is." Create before/after clarity. Make trade-offs explicit. Become the leadership team that simplifies complexity and helps people make decisions with confidence.
It craves the tangible. Despite our alertness during change, our old brain constantly scans for what is predictable and safe. This is where systems, rituals, and dashboards become crucial. Deliver on your implementation promises consistently. Create tangible artifacts that people can reference: decision frameworks, priority matrices, visual roadmaps. Abstract strategy triggers anxiety. Concrete systems feel safe.
It values the beginning and end, and forgets most everything in the middle. I'll say it again: Invest in your strategic onboarding and your review cadences. If you shared something critical at the strategy kickoff, reiterate it at every major milestone and definitely at quarterly reviews. Don't assume people remember the middle. Repeat the most important points at both the beginning and end of the implementation journey.
It's highly visual. Our reptilian brain can process visual information and make decisions before our logical brain catches up. This is why strategy documents full of dense text get ignored while one-page visual roadmaps get referenced constantly. A visually clear strategy isn't everything, but creating visual decision tools helps dramatically. One-pagers, swim lanes, color-coded priorities—these aren't just nice to have, they're neurologically essential for adoption.
6. It's surprisingly emotional. The emotional triggers for the Old Brain are more primitive than our complex feelings, but they're powerful. This part of the brain processes not just fear and threat, but also reward, recognition, and progress. This is why celebrating early wins matters so much. It's why acknowledging when someone makes a decision aligned with the new strategy reinforces the behavior. The emotional processing in this part of the brain influences our choices faster than rational analysis.
This is where strategic implementation becomes human-first work. The reptilian brain's emotional processing influences decision-making faster than any logical argument. The emotions your rollout creates—confusion or clarity, threat or safety, overwhelm or progress—strongly influence whether your strategy gets adopted or abandoned.
Understanding this emotional component of the reptilian brain is essential when designing how strategy gets operationalized across your organization. By designing implementation experiences that work with these primal instincts rather than against them, you create strategies that teams actually use to make daily decisions, rather than documents that disappear into the drive graveyard.
Getting to rollout is just the start.
Implementation is a decision system. Pay close attention to how you introduce new initiatives, reinforce them, and embed them into how people work. Your approach will determine the answer to the only question that matters: will your team actually use this?
Make sure the answer is "yes" at the beginning, during adoption, and in your ongoing rituals.
