How do you define chaos? How do you recognize when you’re in the middle of it? More significantly, as a leader, what do you do about it? How do you continue to move your organization forward and drive to the outcome that you want?
Although you may have a definition of chaos and can visualize what chaos looks like, no two chaotic circumstances are the same. Chaos follows bad news as well as good and usually involves some form of randomness—people running around directionless or simply frozen in place. For example, the award of a contract requires delivery for which you may not be fully prepared (people running around) not unlike the loss of a contract that requires a contraction (people frozen in place), waiting for the next shoe to drop.
How about a global Black Swan pandemic to define chaos? The coronavirus is stretching our public health system to a breaking point. Our economy is in a free fall. Industries are being shuttered. Over 20 million Americans have applied for unemployment. We are experiencing unprecedented chaos.
The trouble, however, is that we did not see this chaos coming. History will assign blame to our failures to see the indicators and to respond more swiftly to this virus. However, what can we learn from it now?
The inevitability of chaos should sharpen our awareness. Sadly, the indicators, like those presaging the global coronavirus pandemic, can hide in plain sight or be discounted as unreliable. In today’s environment of “big data,” they may lack a discernible pattern not unlike a drunkard’s walk. As your corporate world collides with your private world, as you seamlessly blend your digital data inputs, chaos can seem the norm.
One thing is certain; chaos results in change. So within this environment that increasingly is more chaotic, more random, often inexplicable, you exist; you thrive; you make decisions.
Read more at: https://chiefexecutive.net/decision-making-in-chaos/