Where Strategy Meets Human Wiring

Every fall, executives gather in boardrooms to build their strategic plans. Using pretty charts and spreadsheets to support the lofty goals. Yet, year after year, many of these plans quietly dissolve into missed milestones and unrealized potential. Why? Because strategy doesn’t fail in the abstract—it fails in the human mind.

Recently, a colleague sent me a podcast interview with Dr. Jim Doty, a renowned neurosurgeon and researcher, provocatively titled “How to Manifest Anything You Want and Unlock the Unlimited Power of the Mind.”

At first, I rolled my eyes at the word “manifest.” It conjured images of wishful thinking, mood boards, and quick-fix self-help. But my colleague isn’t into woo-woo stuff, so I listened. And the insights gained revitalized how I think about both personal growth and business strategy.

Doty’s insights into neuroscience, the heart-brain connection, and the way we rewire our mental patterns are directly relevant to the world of goal achievement in business. Strategic planning, after all, is not just about what organizations want to achieve—it’s about how people think, feel, and act their way into that future.

Here are the high points of the conversation, paired with my reflections on how it applies to both life and successful business strategy execution.

The Negativity Bias: Silent Killer of Ambition

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Doty begins with the human longing we all share. We all want to be seen, valued, and comfortable in our own skin. Yet our wiring stacks the deck against us. The brain has a negativity bias—a deeply ingrained loop of self-criticism: “You’re not good enough because…”

This voice, while rooted in survival instincts, becomes destructive when it dominates daily life. For leaders, it manifests as hesitation to pursue bold ideas. For organizations, it shows up in timid strategies disguised as “realism.”

Fear and doubt keep people and businesses from betting on their own future. And when teams live in constant “fight or flight,” creativity and collaboration shutdown.

To illustrate, the President of an operating company within a global conglomerate leads his team to overcome fear and doubt. The CEO had asked him for a twenty percent reduction in operating costs. The President shared that if he had asked me for 5% I couldn’t have given it to him. But when he asked for 20%, we had to step back, rethink, and consider unusual options that we would have previously glossed over.  We gave him 25%.

I offer that the lens for the 5% is more closely associated with the fear and doubt lens. The 25% is more closely associated with the positive and opportunity lens, which means that yes; we can get dramatically better results.

Service as the Strategic Advantage

Doty contrasts this negativity loop with the brain’s natural reward system: we are hardwired to feel whole and satisfaction when we serve others. Not performative service. Not transactional favors. Genuine care and contribution!

This idea carries profound implications for business strategy. Too often, organizations craft plans focused narrowly on profit or competition. The human mind and heart can align with a mission more easily than with money. But when leaders anchor strategy in authentic service—to employees, customers, communities—something shifts. Alignment becomes easier. Energy flows more freely.

Service is not only ethical; it is strategic. It rewires the organization toward resilience, trust, and long-term loyalty.

Strategic question: What if service, not just competition, was the actual driver of sustainable advantage?

What Fires Together Wires Together

Neuroscience tells us that thoughts repeated with focus and emotion physically change the brain. “What fires together, wires together,” Doty notes the power of writing down goals by hand, speaking them aloud, and visualizing them vividly.

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It struck me that this is precisely where many strategic plans falter. The plan is written once, presented, and then filed away for future reference. It can become a lifeless document.

However, when leaders repeat the vision—through words, symbols, and consistent action—it begins to wire itself into the organization’s collective mind. Strategic planning, then, is not a one-time event but an ongoing rewiring process.

As an illustration, one of Jack Welch’s (GE CEO during 1980 and 1990s) mantras during the early days as CEO was number one or number two, or you’re out. He set the bar to be leaders in each of our businesses. Initially, not everyone fully understood what that meant, but day-to-day, everyone could repeat it. Overtime, the question arose: are we leading or following? Where do we want to be?  Does this get us there?

Belief, Doubt, and the Long Road of Change

Even with visualization and repetition, progress falters if belief is absent. Many individuals—and many organizations—struggle because their default mode is doubt.

Doty argues that belief takes time to cultivate. New neural pathways don’t appear overnight. Similarly, strategies don’t succeed in giant leaps but in increments. What matters is persistence: inch-stones, not milestones. Every brand in the technology space that is ubiquitous today started small, accomplishing the small steps, to become the giants they are today.

Leadership, patience, and mentoring are crucial for navigating growth. A bold strategic plan will almost always meet resistance in its early days. Without sustained belief—without leaders modeling persistence—the old wiring wins.

CEOs of many large business entities share that cultural transformation can’t be an “initiative”. CEOs prioritize it and spend a significant amount of their personal time reinforcing it daily by words and actions, to embed it in the culture of the business. 

Gratitude and the Energy We Carry

Doty shares research on gratitude and hope. Walk into a room weighed down with divisiveness and people sense it instantly. Walk in with openness and appreciation, and the atmosphere shifts. Our “aura,” neuroscience suggests, extends several feet, affecting others before we even speak.

These attitudes of gratitude and energy resonated with me personally. I’ve long given journals as graduation gifts, believing that writing helps anchor reflection, hope, and gratitude. In organizations, this same principle applies. Reflective practices—whether leadership journaling, team debriefs, or celebration rituals—keep strategy grounded in energy that sustains rather than depletes.

On a personal level, journaling, both writing it and reading it, facilitates thinking about what went well and what didn’t go well, letting go of unproductive behavior, and creates space for new perspectives that are more advantageous to achieving what we want/ need. 

Motivation and Authentic Presence

Years ago, an acting coach told me: “You’re not responsible for the audience’s reaction, only for creating authentic moments.” That wisdom holds in leadership. We cannot control how every employee reacts to a strategy.

But we can control whether we approach them authentically, with genuine motivation rooted in a meaningful mission, and care rather than ego.

Authenticity and genuine motivation turn strategic plans into living realities. People don’t follow numbers on a slide. They follow leaders whose presence feels real. Frequently, the team will emulate that presence as best they can. And that creates the foundation for a sustainable culture.

Challenges

Taken together, implementing these highlights points to a path where the leaders at all levels, with or without titles, become models for these behaviors daily. Initially, this can feel like a tremendous weight on one’s shoulders. However, once belief kicks in across the whole team, it is simply business as usual.

Another point to consider is that there can be a significant difference between what you want and what you need.  Dr. Doty recommends that we look to a deeperl evel to recognize the difference between society's shiny trappings as indicators of success and what our brain and heart connection tell us is true success. Where are we going to spend our energy?

Both life and business opportunities have changed dramatically in today’s world. This shift generates fear and anxiety for many and requires more and different skills and abilities than just a generation ago. While we acknowledge the reality of how scary these shifts can be for some, we also need to step up and recognize that fear-based solutions are not the answer. The most significant challenge is connecting with people on a human level, so they can see the opportunity and chart a path away from fear toward possibility.

Conclusion: Strategy Is Human Wiring at Scale

What I took from Doty’s conversation is that manifestation isn’t magical—it’s neurological. And when you extend that logic to organizations, strategy is nothing more than a collective manifestation.

If leaders and teams allow negativity to dominate, plans stall. If they anchor in service, gratitude, belief, and persistence, plans advance. The science is clear: what fires together, wires together.

The work of strategy, then, is less about writing the perfect plan and more about rewiring the human mind—individually and collectively—to believe, repeat, and embody the future we want to create.

So the action for leaders is:

Are you managing process and documents, or are you rewiring minds?

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