Reacting to unplanned change

I'm often working with leaders who are forced by external circumstances to make big changes to how they work. Sometimes those changes are brutal, requiring massive budget or staff reductions. Such situations are hard to get through at the time. They throw more questions at you than you have answers for. In this Interview on Max's Island Podcast, we discuss my business navigating a period of sudden death and reinvention. 

If you are a leader looking for support in uncertainty and forced change, get in touch. I'd love to support you through it.

Thanks to Tony Hagan for a different and refreshing podcast experience on Max’s Island.

BYO Certainity

I’ve had the privilege of working with some amazing emergency response professionals. They regularly deal with chaotic situations. There’s a lot of inherent risk, both to their teams and to others. Despite that, they respond quickly and decisively. They bring a high degree of certainty to highly uncertain situations.

Many other teams are slowed down by uncertainty. They spend so much time trying to establish a clear picture that they lose momentum. Worst case, they add even more uncertainty. So how do response teams do it? 

Here are some of the patterns I’ve seen:

• Practice critical skills until they are instinctive. This means the focus can be up and out rather than in detail. Picture what it's like when you drive a car on a familiar route. You don’t think about indicating because you’ve done it thousands of times. Instead, you can focus on where you are going. 

• Tight trust. Teams have ways of working together that are well defined. It’s much easier for people to ‘have each other's back’ if you are clear about what that means in your team and have clearly agreed on the behaviour that creates the result.

• Bring Calm. Regardless of how chaotic the environment is, emergency response teams bring calm. Even if they don’t feel calm, they have practiced being calm, and they know that settles the situation.

• Prioritise attention. Teams have a set of priorities that are clearly defined to help decision-making. When faced with uncertainty, there’s often an overwhelming amount of important considerations to deal with. They need a way to quickly decide where their attention goes and in what order. Without that, everything is urgent, and attention is scattered. Build a priority set and have the discipline to use it.

• Character and demeanour. Teams discuss presence. How do we show up? What are we known for? How do we behave? Having an agreed set of expectations for this goes a long way to creating certainty. 

In our current climate, all teams need to bring their own certainty with them to their work. Expecting to find certainty in external circumstances will always be a flimsy recipe. How do you BYO certainty in your team?

Contradictory Truths - a leadership superpower

We started a short series last week on the chaos many businesses are experiencing and how it seems unlikely to ease anytime soon. Leaders need everyday superpowers in the face of such adversity. 

The ability to ‘hold’ more than one seemingly contradictory truth is a superpower. When we can only hold one truth, we sometimes lose sight of what we can control. We also add stress to the situation. 

For many leaders I work with, a current truth is “Our work is hard”. It’s definitely true. Challenges arrive thick and fast. Results matter and often carry consequences. Resources and bandwidth are stretched. Just as one hurdle is cleared, more appear. The list is longer than the hours available.

If "Our work is hard” is the only truth we hold, work is an exhausting grind. People feel there’s only so long they can hold onto the bar. 

More than one truth changes the game. 

How about “Our work is hard. Hard is good. We are great at hard”. 

Hard is good because it drives innovation, progress, and capability. It’s good because it matters — if it didn’t, it probably wouldn’t be hard. And if we are great at hard, then we embrace the important challenges we face, rather than feeling defeated by them. All three can be true at once, even if they feel contradictory. 

Here are some other examples:

So much is out of our control. There are always things we can control that make a genuine difference.

There’s so much rapid change. We adapt just as fast. We relish the pressure.

We care deeply about the results. We hold the results lightly.

We have high expectations. We know when it’s good enough.

This thinking helps leaders and their teams find energy and nuance under pressure. It changes the conversation. If you’d like to apply it to your team, follow these steps:

1.  Identify the complaints you most regularly hear, say, or think. 

2. Identify some contradictory and parallel truths. Discuss them — work out why they are also true.

3. Make sure they are genuine to you/your team; otherwise, it will be short-lived. 

P.S. If they don’t feel genuine to start with, it’s valuable to run a 2-week experiment where you pretend it’s genuinely true. Sometimes you’ll find it really is, sometimes the perspective you gain will work out the kinks and find something more authentic for your situation.

Let me know how you go!

What's Next

I’ve been working with several leadership teams for longer programs (1 - 2 years). Lately, many are making the same observation — The level of chaos they are currently experiencing is incredibly high, and a massive source of stress.

The uncertainty caused is rarely internal to the organisation. It’s the unpredictable and unexpected curveballs like:

• Trump is starting a war

• Fuel prices

• AI implications

• Reforms that fundamentally shift business models

Some are waiting (hoping) for an imagined future period of time where the uncertainty resolves, and there is a period of relative rest/stability.

My crystal ball has got a massive crack in it, so the reliability of my predictions of the future is low — but I reckon a better mindset is to assume the chaos will continue at the same pace, scope, and variety. 

Why is it better? A massive source of stress is when expectations don’t line up with reality, especially when the reality is worse than we expected or hoped for.

If you want to make it even more robust, consider this:

There’s little point in trying to predict the nature of future chaos/uncertainty unless you have some specific expertise or information. There’s a lot of value in broad forecasts (eg, what happens if fuel shortages become a daily reality vs what happens if fuel stays much the same for the foreseeable future vs what happens if things return to normal sooner than expected).

There’s little value in trying to foresee details in domains where we don't have sufficient expertise or information. It is tempting to come up with a prediction as a way of generating certainty, but it actually makes the stress worse if it’s inaccurate (and for most situations, that’s a pretty predictable outcome).

Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll talk about what leaders can do to add certainty within their organisations and the superpower of paradoxical thinking.

A Kinder Voice

I’ve written over the years about treating people around you with kindness. It’s a good and powerful way to act. Recently, I’ve been reminded anew about how we treat ourselves — the self-talking-voices-in-our-head that throw self-directed harsh judgement in ways we would never talk to another person. Mine have been noisy of late, and it's been a theme of a few coaching sessions, too. 

What are the loudest voices for you? Mine tend to fall into 4 groups, and I reckon they must be common as they are referred to by lots of people, from ancient philosophers to modern psychologists:

• The Tyrant - holds us to impossible or unreasonable standards. This voice has lots of should, must, right, and wrong. Our efforts, no matter how they go, are never quite good enough.

• The Judge - constantly looks over our shoulder and tells us we are not good enough.

• The Critic - looks at our efforts/outputs and picks holes in every little thing.

• The Cynic - whispers to us that we are likely to fail and keeps reminding us of past situations where we were not our best or something didn’t go well. 

These voices have a place, but when they get really noisy, they can hold us back and hurt us. Over the years, I've found the best way to treat them is with kindness and a little humour. Notice the voice. Notice what it's saying. See if you can work out what it's trying to do — often it’s about safety or mitigating fear. Ask yourself what a kind and supportive friend would say to you, and listen to that more balanced opinion. 

And when the harsh voices pipe up again, have a little chuckle to yourself. Without that kind humour, the voices can easily pile on with criticism of the voices themselves — a fascinating loop indeed.

Getting Hammered

Have you ever had an emotional response to a set of circumstances that led to a bad decision, which made things worse? I reckon you have — you are human just like me.

Way back in my early 20’s, I was working on the farm. Ploughing a paddock of recently cleared bush. We’d made a mistake by burning it first to make it easier to plough. That left a field of fire hardened, super-sharp spikes everywhere. Tyre Killers!! On the worst day, I spend more time fixing flats than moving forward. I was frustrated beyond belief and getting angry about the situation.

Eventually, I blew my cool and belted a tyre as hard as I could with a big hammer. The recoil nearly broke my wrist, which blew up like a balloon and was sore for days. It was my first conscious insight that emotion rarely helps a decision, and often makes it worse. 

Emotion is important because it tells us a lot about the situation and ourselves. It has to be dealt with. Knowing if we are angry, scared, frustrated, timid, passionate, bored, etc., is useful. Feel the feels, and respect them. Deal with them, don’t bottle them up. And then do your best to keep the emotion out of whatever decision needs to be made.

What circumstances are you in at the moment? How do they make you feel? What impact could that emotion have on your next move?

The Reality Paradox

Simple but not easy. That saying rings so true for me when it comes to accepting challenging realities. Simple, smart, wise — definitely not easy. It can take me ages to arrive at acceptance. And it’s a powerful place to be. I reckon it's hard because it can feel like quitting, or losing hope, or dropping standards (Sometimes all of the above if the reality is challenging enough). Acceptance is none of those things. It simply gets us focused on the right pieces — the pieces where we can make a difference. 

The reality paradox is finding acceptance while holding onto your ability to act meaningfully. Without the paradox, it’s fatalism. We have no say and are pushed where the winds of chance will take us. With the paradox, we get to act on the parts of the experience that make a difference. Sometimes the field of action is small — perhaps only choosing how we will face this adversity. Sometimes it’s vast - deciding on something that changes everything. 

Either way, the faster we can find acceptance, the better. What’s that like for you? I understand the wisdom and it can still take a long time to arrive. And I reckon that's OK — especially if I can accept it with grace.

On Perfection

Last week's article ‘On being right’ drew quite a few responses from readers about how wise it is not to go in hard, and also how challenging it can be to do that in practice. Several people highlighted the parallels with wanting perfect outcomes. 

There’s a pragmatic balancing act when it comes to solving problems. We can easily get bogged down in way too much detail, seeking the perfect outcome. Perfection very often stops us from moving at a sensible pace and sometimes bogs us down completely. 

Getting something done at an acceptably good standard, getting it out and moving on is usually a lot better than fussing over tiny details that will not contribute much in the way of results, but will increase the amount of work to be done. There are few exceptions to this. Notable ones are high-consequence decisions that are difficult or impossible to reverse, or high risk situations where controls need to be very carefully implemented - Those scenarios are pretty rare.

Good enough and done will almost always beat perfect, but still polishing. Get after it.

On being right

‘What we are doing carries substantial risks. I’ve got the data to prove it. I’ve been trying to get the decision makers to see it, but the conversations are going nowhere.’

This was the essence of 3 recent coaching conversations with leaders who have significant influence, but they are not the decision makers. All three had been working hard to prove their point and galvanise a decision or action. It’s not going well for any of them. 

Going in hard seldom works - even if you are right and can prove it. It’s inherently adversarial and tends to get various parties digging in on their perspective. When we try to influence like that, we can argue until well after the cows come home. 

Going in hard forgets:

• There may be other factors I can’t see from my position.

• Other parties may have investment (time, money, resources, ideas) in the way things are. If they feel personally attacked, they are likely to dig in.

• Even if I have the problem right, I may not have the solution right.

• Even if I have both the problem and the solution right, I’ll need others to fix it. I need agreement or at least alignment.

• If the perfect solution gets no buy-in, it’s no solution at all. A partial solution with solid buy-in will beat it hands down. 

• There may be an even bigger problem that is the cause of what I can see.

• What else might be missing?

Instead of going in hard, get curious about what constraints might be present for others. Are there ways to work with them to remove those obstacles? Explore for understanding, not for ‘right’. You’ll likely expand your influence.

Faster than before

Once a team gets clear about what's important, both culturally and transactionally, they can start to build speed. Clarity brings the possibility of mantras… pieces of language that are packed with shared meaning.  

For example Atlassian, a global company founded and headquartered in Australia, has several mantras. One of them is “Be the change you seek”. For them, it means:

• Take initiative rather than seeking/waiting for permission. 

• If there’s a problem, find a way to get involved in the fix.

• If there’s a gap in the market, fill it.

• If the product is not up to standard, change it. 

Smart leaders build mantras with the people around them. Then they find clear examples to reinforce their meaning. Mantras and clarity go hand in hand. Once you have them, you can remind people of what is important and set direction with a few words dense with shared meaning. It takes effort to get to that place, but on the other side of it is speed.

Do you have any mantras? If not, what might they be?

Get the Reps in

If you want to get good at something, repetition is critical:

• Skills - reps

• Strength - reps

• Handling pressure - reps

It’s the same for building culture in a team or organisation. Doing something occasional and expecting it to stick is like lifting a dumbbell once and expecting massive biceps.

It simply won’t work. Get clear on what the guiding principles for your team and work are, and then find ways to get the reps in:

• Discuss success stories and applications to other areas of the work

• Notice when things go less well, and harvest lessons learnt

• Get people to share examples of things that are important and do it often

• Refer to core principles in decisions of consequence

When teams filter everything through what matters to them, alignment and consistency can't help but follow. 

What’s important in your world?
How and where is it reinforced? 

If you can't remember the last time team culture or standards were shaped, or if it only happens once a year, then you are missing lots of low hanging fruit.

Trust - Stopping Erosion

I love visiting gorges. The carvings made by water, etched into the landscape over millions of years, are breathtaking. Water doesn’t seem significant enough to work its way through hundreds of metres of solid rock, but over time it has its way. Observing a given moment, the erosion is imperceptible. Once you understand the mechanism, it’s obvious.

There’s a similar pattern with trust in workplaces. Like water, there are forces that erode trust. Viewed in a moment, they seem insignificant. Over time they wear trust down. They multiply and the erosion gets deeper and harder to fix.

Here are three and what to do about them:

1. Open loops. When people make suggestions, ask about progress or for a decision, they often don’t hear anything back. Even if they ask many times, there's still no reply. It doesn’t mean nothing is happening. I talk to many busy leaders who are working hard, with good intent to make stuff happen. But in the busyness, it’s easy to forget to update people. It erodes trust, because it seems like there's neither care nor action. Close those loops.

2. Talking behind people’s backs. Even if we don’t consciously notice it, someone bad-mouths someone else, we wonder what they are saying about us when we are not around. We become more guarded. Address issues early and often.

3. Agreement without agreement. In a meeting everyone agrees, but then agreement is undermined in practice. Have robust conversations to reach agreement, and then back the agreement. Sometimes this means living with something that is different from the choice I personally would have made. That's OK.

In places where there are already deep gorges worn into the landscape of trust, it takes time and intentional effort to rebuild. It is possible, and can be surprisingly rapid if there’s willingness to do the work.

What does the trust landscape look like where you work? Is it effective or ineffective?

Don’t let legislation lead

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you’ll know that WHS legislation has recently changed in Australia to include psychosocial hazards. Organisations now have a legislated responsibility to ensure that people are safe from undue psychological impacts of work. As of this week, there's been additions to enshrine people’s right to disconnect from work, meaning they cant be compelled to respond to out of hours communication unless it is unreasonable (e.g. when you are on call, or under a specific set of conditions for a limited time)

You could take the approach of finding out what the new rules are and then follow the legislative lead. That will take you down a rabbit hole of minimum standards and a compliance mindset. A better approach is to build the culture you and your team want/need for optimal performance and then create it together. The standard you set will be much greater than the minimum required, and will have the added bonus of boosting engagement and performance.