Leadership In Uncertainty

Leading a team or organisation through unknown and unpredictable times requires an upgraded set of leadership skills and techniques.

The common advice that leaders must be able to make decisions without having all the answers, and be willing to take calculated risks, puts themselves and their organisation in harms way. And yet, decision avoidance, deferral, outright blocking, or worse, responsibility blame-shifting is even worse. 

The good news is that there are better ways. And, we can see them at play in some of the best, most innovative high-performance value-creation companies on the planet. But don’t look for simplistic answers, and this is NOT something you can fix on your own. It relies on implementing agreed practices for everyone to use in uncertain situations – including leaders, staff, thinkers, change agents and service delivery. Again we have good and bad news. We are doing a lot of it already today… but we will need to keep collaboratively upgrading the practice of working together to meet the challenge.

Let me give you an example of a CEO who saw themselves as the motivator champion of innovation. He sees Susan in the corridor and says “I heard about your project. Brilliant. Just the kind of thinking we need here. This project is going to set up our future. I want all roadblocks out of your way. Let me know if you hit any walls and I will make sure its gets through. Great work! You have my support“.

Sounded good at the time, and middle managers hearing about the CEO’s wishes dutifully shepherded the project through all of its barriers. It got bigger and faster and bigger and faster before failing spectacularly at enormous scale and both personal and financial cost.

I spoke to the CEO and coached him that what he wanted to have said is “Hey Susan. I heard about your project. Brilliant. Just the kind of thinking we need here. I think this project is going to set up our future. I really want to see how this comes through the process. If it falls over, PLEASE come and explain it to me. I will want to know why. I think its brilliant – but either way we are going to learn so much. Great work!. You have my support“.

Here the CEO would have backed the system, the learning, the staff and the thinking – but not made the fatal mistake of pretending that he… or anyone else… knew all the answers. You need to do the innovation work, step at a time, through learning, experimentation and the staged development of increasing certainty of outcomes (will get hands dirty on the disciplines behind this later). You need to consistently use the innovation practices. And, you need to continually improve those practices to build the strength and capacity to engage the scale of the challenge ahead.

The leadership role is all about building and backing the system that we use to create value together. Building the company. Building the practice. Building the capacity. Building and supporting the staff with systems that are safe and effective to use. Systems that value the contribution and intelligence that staff bring with them to their work every day. And learning. Always learning, adjusting, thinking, and creating… and acting in measured steps where value is indicated.

There are better ways of leadership – appropriate to navigate the journey ahead together – and people are using them now.