PSYCHOLOGY: THE INNER MIND
METACOGNITION:
Often companies get caught up in the web of planning and strategizing in order to keep abreast of the competition. This can slow a
company’s growth if it is not meticulously reviewed. In Judo Strategy: Turning your Competitors’ Strength to Your Advantage, the authors
present Drypers as an interesting case. When Drypers entered the diaper market, Procter & Gamble offered coupons for $2 off a packet of
pampers. Drypers knew they could never afford such a deal. Not one to be outdone, the company’s then CEO, Dave Pitassi, came up with a
novel idea. He had just finished reading a book on judo. The authors say: “Drypers piggybacked on its rival’s attack.
The company launched a state-wide advertising campaign to tell consumers that P&G coupons could be used on Drypers and sales shot up. In a matter of weeks, Drypers had added as much as 15 points to its market share in some stores. Within two months, the company was running at full capacity. By harnessing its competitor's momentum, Drypers had used P&G to underwrite its own promotional campaign.” “In judo, seasoned competitors know better than to push back against an advancing opponent. Instead they sidestep the charge and use their opponent's momentum to pull him down. Similarly, companies can throw their competitors off-balance by embracing their initiatives rather than responding in kind.” Effective strategic planning this certainly is. There is deep thinking, called metacognition. Metacognition is your knowledge and awareness of your cognitive processes. While engaging in this process, the mind shifts from knowledge of the outside world to knowledge of the processes inside your head. Knowledge of our cognitive processes guides us in arranging circumstances and strategies to advance cognitive performances. And the process in itself can be fascinating. The mind uses its cognitive processes to understand itself. Noted thinker, Argyris (1977) offered the notion of double loop learning to give a deeper understanding of metacognition.
He offered a figure of two concentric circles.
Explaining Argyris' theory, Strategic Leadership and Decision Making states: “Construe the smaller, inner circle as cognition and
the larger, outer circle as metacognition. The ball in position A orbits in the realm of acquiring knowledgecognition. If, for some
reason, the ball breaks its smaller orbit and gets out on to the larger, outer circle - in position B - the ball can look down and
into the smaller, inner circle. This is the process of metacognition - getting out on the outer circle, then investigating from a
higher position the cognition going on the smaller, inner circle. The benefits of metacognition would be realized when the ball
returns to the smaller, inner orbit and manages itself in a new way, appropriate to the times and situation.” Metacognition
results in conscious regulation and rearrangement of the sequence of thinking in the face of complicated problems. It is often
called a process as well as a skill – strategic management of the self. Each person honing this skill will translate into an
entire body of effective resources. In the commercial capital of India, Mumbai, dabbawallahs (people who deliver lunch boxes)
have demonstrated an incredible ability of metacognition. Every single day, over 5,000 dabbawallahs collect over two hundred
thousand tiffin boxes from homes and deliver them to their rightful owners in their offices. Incidentally, their system of
working, which completes all operations in three hours, resulted in them being awarded the Six Sigma certification in 2001.
The workers have devised a unique system in which each box is given a code. This system has a 99.99 percent performance rate,
despite the tiffin boxes changing hands four to six times a day.
