Flexible thinking and the hidden risks of default thinking

Organisations that invest heavily in capability are recognising that the way people think, especially when conditions change, impacts team dynamics, innovation, productivity and decision making.

What is flexible thinking?

Flexible thinking involves shifting perspective, questioning a first answer and adapting when the old approach stops working.

Flexible thinking underpins adaptability, sound judgement and innovation. For individuals, psychological flexibility (noticing an unhelpful thought and acting on personal values rather than habit) can be learnt and has been linked to lower stress levels and better day-to-day functioning (Macri and Rogge, 2024)¹.  For organisations, cognitive flexibility is linked to greater innovation (Gao et al., 2024)² and aids effective leadership by encouraging a team's ability to adapt (Bonini et al., 2024)³.

The brain science

Cognitive flexibility is one of the brain's executive functions. It can be described as the mental 'gear-change' that lets you drop an approach that has stopped working and pick up a better one.

Recent brain-imaging studies show that training can shift patterns of frontal-lobe activity toward more efficient processing (Li, Liu and Chen, 2026)⁴, and a 2025 literature review found that regular physical activity produces small but reliable gains in executive function, including the “shifting” that underpins flexible thinking (Singh et al., 2025)⁵. The brain that thinks flexibly is, in part, a brain that is looked after.

"...findings provide strong evidence that exercise, even light intensity, benefits general cognition, memory and executive function across all populations, reinforcing exercise as an essential, inclusive recommendation for optimising cognitive health".

(Singh et al., 2025)⁵

The hidden risk of default thinking

The brain is built for efficiency, not open-mindedness.

When faced with a challenge, we usually go with our first answer, our gut instinct. Overriding that first answer takes deliberate effort, and plenty of people just don't bother.

A 2025 study, using a "think twice" (intuitive-then-deliberative) design, focused on a specific reasoning bias in a lab setting. It was designed to show who actually gets better at spotting their own thinking errors. People worked through reasoning problems twice, first on gut instinct, then again after a pause to reflect. What separated those who improved was not their seniority, title, or intellect. It was being actively open-minded that made them stop and notice that their first answer didn't fit the evidence. The willingness to question themselves mattered more than raw brainpower (Boissin and Pennycook, 2025)⁶.

That is the hidden cost of default thinking.

Yes, it is quick, comfortable and confident, but it can lead to problems when conditions or situations change.

Unfortunately, the more experienced and senior someone is, the more they tend to fall back on tried-and-tested ways of thinking. Years of "this is how we do it" harden into a default. So instead of seeing more options, they often see fewer. The expertise that makes them valuable can quietly narrow their thinking.

This can be tricky for those working in learning and development. The longer the experience and seniority, the easier it is to run on autopilot, meaning your most senior people can end up with the narrowest range of options, not the widest.

Simple tools to encourage flexible thinking

You can't will people out of a default, but you can design suggest tools that interrupt it. A few that are simple to embed:

• Consider the opposite. Before locking in a decision, argue the other case out loud. The habit of questioning your first answer is what distinguishes the people who actually think more flexibly (Boissin and Pennycook, 2025)⁶.
• Name the assumption. For any plan, ask, “What would have to be true for this to work?” Then test the shakiest item first before you commit resources.
• Run a premortem. Imagine the project has failed a year from now and write the story of why. It surfaces risks that optimism hides while there is still time to act on them.
• Rotate the vantage point. Ask how a customer, a competitor, or a brand-new hire would read the situation to widen the options before you narrow them.
• Look after the hardware. Encourage the basics, including movement, sleep, and recovery, because executive function, including flexibility, depends on them(Singh et al., 2025)⁵.

Make it safe, then make it routine

Tools only work if they are safe to use. Flexible thinking increases when people are not punished for saying “what if we're wrong?” It comes down to psychological safety, provided by leaders and colleagues as part of your organisational culture.

Embed these simple tools where decisions are made and reward their use. The aim isn't to make people doubt everything. It's to give them a reliable pause between the first answer and the final one, inside a culture that rewards taking time to question.

¹ Macri, J.A. and Rogge, R.D. (2024) ‘Examining domains of psychological flexibility and inflexibility as treatment mechanisms in acceptance and commitment therapy: a comprehensive systematic and meta-analytic review’

² Gao, X., Wang, L., Lu, L. and Wu, W. (2024) ‘The influence of bootleg innovation on individual innovation performance: the mediating effect of cognitive flexibility and the moderating effect of leadership’s emotional intelligence’

³ Bonini, A., Panari, C., Caricati, L. and Mariani, M.G. (2024) ‘The relationship between leadership and adaptive performance: a systematic review and meta-analysis’

⁴ Li, G., Liu, Y. and Chen, A. (2026) ‘Meta-analysis of computerised working memory training: behavioural gains, training parameters, transfer mechanisms, and neural correlates’

⁵ Singh, B. et al. (2025) ‘Effectiveness of exercise for improving cognition, memory and executive function: a systematic umbrella review and meta-meta-analysis'

⁶ Boissin, E. and Pennycook, G. (2025) ‘Who benefits from debiasing?’