Ask Better Questions During Complexity

Right now, because of issues related to dealing with complexity, many leaders are pushing their teams for more action, and more effort. They want 200% commitment, and perfect execution. In short, they want all of the time, focus, and energy they can get from the team, and they want it, morning, noon, and night. 

What interests me the most about this form of leading people is that very few leaders are actually focused on outcomes. Instead, many tell me that they want success. When pressed on what this means, it often translates into achieving the goals as defined in the strategic plan, or someone’s annual performance plan. 

I often respond to this line of thinking with a simple question: “So, what difference will that make?” Once the goal is accomplished, we all know that the company will set new goals. There will always be new expectations, and there will always be more things to get done than time available. So, what is the outcome of all this action and effort? 

This is a simple question on one level. Yet, as I visit with more and more leaders and managers, I have come to realize that few, if any, can articulate the line of sight from the goals that they are trying to accomplish to the mission or the vision of the organization.

I believe that the current intense focus on action and effort reflects leaders feeling pressed for time. I also believe it reflects leaders holding unrealistic expectations when it comes to execution. This is happening, in part, because the definition of success is binary, namely done vs not done. There is no connection to mission or vision. There also is no understanding that in order for action to be successful, it actually needs to be successful over time, namely that it happens again and again, quarter after quarter, year after year. 

Brené Brown in her book, Strong Ground: The Lessons Of Daring Leadership, The Tenacity Of Paradox, and The Wisdom Of The Human Spirit (Random House, 2025), understands this perspective when she wrote: “Our job is not to move things off our desk and our to-do list, but to think strategically about systems and to anticipate…. Strategic thinking is more about asking the right questions than finding perfect, strategic plans.”

Jim Collins in a conversation with Brené Brown, as shared in the aforementioned resource, said: “Sound strategy is impossible without clear vision. Muddled strategies flow from muddled vision; clear strategies flow from clear vision. If you want to have a good strategy, you need to first understand with piercing clarity what you are trying to achieve. A good strategy determines how you will achieve your BHAG [Big Hairy Audacious Goal], guided by your purpose and consistent with your values. Vision then strategy then tactics.” 

At this time period, I think we have lost the vision, mission, and the core values that should be guiding action and effort. I also think we have lost a great deal of strategic thinking. Instead, we are just doing a lot of strategic reacting. 

I get that most leaders want perfect plans, and perfect execution. But, in reality, they need to be asking better questions. As Dr. Sarah Lewis, award-winning art and cultural historian, author and professor at Harvard University writes: “The mental discipline and flexibility required to sustain excellence is different, and often harder, than the exertion it took to get there in the first place.” With this in mind, we need more mental discipline and flexibility if we seek to create on-going and sustainable levels of excellence. And this begins with better questions such as What is mission critical right now?, What are we trying to achieve right now, and why?, and What will be the outcome of our actions?.  

With clarity of mission and vision, we can be successful over time even in the midst of complexity. It will take great effort and hard work, but when there is clarity around the outcome, and direct line of sight from action to goals to strategy and ultimately to vision, then the results are impressive. This week, I urge you to ask better questions and create clear lines of sight. 

© Geery Howe 2026

Geery Howe, M.A. Executive Coach in Leadership, Strategic Planning, and Organizational Change

Slowing Down In the Midst Of Complexity - part #2

From Resilience to Thriving

Tasha Eurich in her book, Shatterproof: How to Thrive in a World of Constant Chaos (And why resilience alone isn’t enough) (Little, Brown Spark, 2025), writes that many people right now are “stressed-out strivers: goal-oriented people seeking success and fulfillment, who feel exhausted by chronic, compounding challenges across multiple areas of life (work, career, romantic relationships, family, friends, health, community, and the world).” In this wonderful resource, Eurich argues two things: “First, because resilience is a limited resource, it alone may no longer be a complete coping strategy in this increasingly chaotic world. And second, the best response to constant chaos is not merely to survive it, but to harness it in order to become the best version of ourselves.”

She then says that there are three things needed to thrive. As she writes, “The first three-to-thrive need is confidence: the belief that we’re effective in our actions, capable of achieving out goals, and able to grow and learn new things. The second three-to-thrive need is choice, means feeling free to function without pressure or threat, acting with agency and integrity, staying true to ourselves. The final need is connection, the sense that we belong, get along with others, and experience mutual closeness and support…. Fundamentally, confidence keep us growing, choice keeps us authentic, and connection keeps us together.” 

From my experience, trusting relationships are critical to building healthy connections and a healthy level of community. With these two in place, i.e. connection and community, we can create time and space to pause, de-accelerate, catch our breathe, and gain perspective. We can then move from chronic rushing around, perpetual exhaustion, and continual reactions. Instead, we recover the capacity to move from “emotional and/or cognitive intensity,” referencing Brené Brown’s earlier writing, to emotional and cognitive clarity. This helps us be resilient, and then to thrive in the midst of complexity. 

An On-going Commitment To Learning

Second, in order to de-accelerate and begin to feel less overwhelmed, we need to make an ongoing and long term commitment to in-depth learning and studying. This perspective often surprises people. Most think the solution is time management and understanding the difference between strategic challenges and operational problems. While these may be very important, I approach the need to slow down in the midst of dynamic complexity from a different angle.

Over the last 6+ months, I have been asked numerous times about how I get started, and ended up becoming a consultant, executive coach and trainer in leadership, strategic planning, and organizational change. The people, who are asking me this good question, are individuals who are considering becoming themselves one of these things, or are currently doing it and want to become better at it. Often, these individuals will point out that I got my BA in history with a minor in education, taught high school history for five years, and later got my MA in instructional design and technology. In no way, does this pathway typically lead to being a consultant, executive coach, and trainer in leadership, strategic planning, and organizational change. And, for the most part, I agree with them, though I do point out that the world of training and development, and the world of teaching are nearly one and the same thing. 

What surprises most people is that as I walked the aforementioned pathway, I was always interested in such topics as leadership, teamwork, managing people, and/or communications. Then, as I was invited to do consulting, coaching and training, I choose to do three things at the same time. First, I read everything that I could get my hands on related to specific topics, e.g. teamwork. Being a former history major in college, where we were often assigned 1-2 books per week per class to read, I was a good, and fast reader, who knew how to take notes and where to find key information within those notes. I have a folder in my computer of notes from 100+ different books. They are my library of insight, for lack of a better term. And I am still reading books today because I am still interested in these subjects. 

Next, every time I met a leader who I believed was a good leader, I would ask them what they were reading. Over the course of 90 days, it always stunned me that the best leaders were all reading the same books. So, if two or more leaders in this category, were reading a specific book, I went out and read it too. Then, I studied that book to distill out the key information in order to be able to communicate it to others or reference it in my coaching work. In short, I followed the old Boy Scout motto, be prepared, and I was always learning and preparing myself for what was happening now, and what might be happening in the future. 

Third, I had the courage and where-for-all to listen to my elders and mentors. I understand that not everything in life can be learned from a book. Sometimes, you just have to go to the source, and listen to the full story in order to gain a deeper appreciation and understanding of a specific subject. Overall, it was the combination of these three things, i.e. learning and studying, listening and reading, and finally going to the source of those who have walked this pathway before me, that generated capacity in me to pause, regain perspective, and more thoughtfully respond to the world around me. 

Envisioning the Future

During times of complexity, the world can seen like a hot mess with multiple troughs and Grand Canyons of chaos happening all around us. But Brené Brown in her book, Strong Ground: The Lessons Of Daring Leadership, The Tenacity Of Paradox, and The Wisdom Of The Human Spirit (Random House, 2025), offers an important perspective: “The future can’t be predicted, but it can be envisioned and brought lovingly into being.” And when we choose to do this work together, especially at the individual and group levels, we can, with discipline and on-going focus, lovingly bring this vision into being. 

The first step is to slow down during times of complexity. We do this by understanding the difference between feeling stressed and feeling overwhelmed. Then, we must build trust and move from a focus on resilience to one on thriving. This, along with an ongoing commitment to learning, will all make a difference. 

As these collective actions take place, we then will fully grasp the wisdom shared by executive coach, Aiko Bethea. As she writes: “There is no growth or transformation without expansiveness.” And now, given all that is happening, we need to envision an expansive and inclusive future where all can feel safe, respected and have a sense of  belonging. Then, we can gain perspective, and respond from a place of clarity and connection. This is the beginning to a new and better future for all. 

© Geery Howe 2026

Geery Howe, M.A. Executive Coach in Leadership, Strategic Planning, and Organizational Change

Slowing Down In the Midst Of Complexity - part #1

Introduction

In 2014, John Kotter, who wrote the book, Leading Change (Harvard Business School Press, 1996), which is considered the gold standard for successful organizational change, came out with another book called Accelerate: Building Strategic Agility For A Faster-Moving World (Harvard Business Review Press, 2014). In it, he wrote: “The world is now changing at a rate at which the basic systems, structures, and cultures built over the past century cannot keep up with the demands being placed on them. Incremental adjustments to how you manage and strategize, no matter how clever, are not up to the job…. organizations everywhere are struggling to keep up with the accelerating pace of change - let alone get ahead of it.” 

Twelve years later, he is still correct. Leaders and organizations can not keep up “with the demands being placed on them,” and that “organizations everywhere are struggling to keep up with the accelerating pace of change.” The problem has not gone away. If any thing, it has increased in magnitude and complexity. 

And given this reality, we know, as leaders, that we need to respond, rather than react to this situation. However, privately, many leaders report to me that they are reacting to what is happening more than they would like to, and that they are overwhelmed by the pace and continual acceleration. 

Now, the typical response to these kinds of situations, is to just go faster and faster. This response is best captured by the The Red Queen Principle, namely we run faster and faster just to stay in one place. But based on personal and professional experience, this never ends well. A matter of fact, it often results in burn-out, and then a full melt down with a long pathway to recovery. 

The better choice is to slow down when confronted with the reaction to accelerate during times of complexity. We know we can not stop it, or dramatically change it. However, we can slow ourselves down, and thus gain greater perspective and understanding of what is happening and why it is happening. The key is to figure out how to do this and how to create a realistic sense of pace in the midst of complexity. 

Feeling Stressed vs. Feeling Overwhelmed

To start doing this, we must turn to the work of Brené Brown and her book, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience (Random House, 2021). In this helpful resource, Brown notes the difference between being stress and being overwhelmed. As she writes, “We feel stressed when we evaluate environmental demands as beyond our ability to cope successfully. This includes elements of unpredictability, uncontrollability, and feeling overloaded… Stressful situations cause both physiological (body) and psychological (mind and emotion) reactions.” As she continues, “Overwhelmed means an extreme level of stress, an emotional and/or cognitive intensity to the point of feeling unable to function.” Then she explains, “Feeling stressed and feeling overwhelmed seem to be related to our perception of how we are coping with our current situation and our ability to handle the accompanying emotions.” I appreciate that Brown also references the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn, who describes overwhelmed as the all-too-common feeling “that our lives are somehow unfolding faster than the nervous system and psyche are able to manage well.” Understanding the difference between being stressed and overwhelmed helps us to recognize the depth of our experience with the feeling of constant acceleration. 

The Importance of Trust

So, in order de-accelerate, and begin to feel less overwhelmed with “unpredictability, uncontrollability, and feeling overloaded,” I believe we need to focus on two specific areas. First, we need to recognize the importance of building and maintaining trusting relationships. For many years, I taught that the best leaders I ever met where the ones who were gardeners of trust. They recognized that the followers place their trust in them, and that leaders need to tend and grow this level of trust placed in them.

In the January 8, 2009 issue of the on-line Gallup Management Journal, they reported the following: “To run an organization effectively, leaders must be able to strategize, set visions and priorities, build relationships, influence others, and make things happen. But if you ask followers what they need from leaders, the clear answer is trust, compassion, stability, and hope. These four basic needs are the result of [Tom] Rath, [Barry] Conchie, [coauthors of Strengths Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams, and Why People Follow,Teams, and Why People Follow] and a Gallup research team asking more than 10,000 followers what the most influential leaders contribute to their lives.”

When I review this powerful statement and reflect on people feeling overwhelmed in the midst of continual acceleration, I think about the leaders who had the courage and “grounded confidence,” referencing the writing of Brene’ Brown in her book, Strong Ground: The Lessons Of Daring Leadership, The Tenacity Of Paradox, and The Wisdom Of The Human Spirit ( Random House, 2025), I come to realize that the leaders who understand these four basic needs, i.e. “trust, compassion, stability, and hope,” recognize that they are all interconnected. But from my vantage point, trust is the cornerstone to building the capacity for de-acceleration. For when I trust those around me, and myself too, I gain something very important, namely the ability to move from resilience to thriving. 

To be continued on Tuesday. 

© Geery Howe 2026

Geery Howe, M.A. Executive Coach in Leadership, Strategic Planning, and Organizational Change

Problem Solving Within Complexity - part #6

Being Prepared And Being Ready

At this point, the poet Mark Nepo offers an important insight into solving problems. As he explains, “Being ready centers on the foundational ground we stand on and the clarity of view we meet a situation with. We often mistake being prepared for being ready, through the process of getting prepared can be the exercise by which we ready ourselves inwardly to meet any situation…. In life and love and in meeting our suffering, we need both - to be prepared and to be ready. To be prepared is to know how to step. To be ready is to see where to step. To be prepared is to know how to pick up what is broken. To be ready is to have a some sense of how the pieces go back together. To be prepared is to make a schedule. To be ready is to lean into the day with an open heart when the schedule is lost in the rain.”

Brene’ Brown in her book, Strong Grounds: The Lessons Of Daring Leadership, The Tenacity Of Paradox, and The Wisdom Of The Human Spirit ( Random House, 2025), writes that “What you’re trying to achieve will require a deep, broad, and disciplined commitment to individual change, team change, and systems change.” Brown continues that a transformation of this natures includes “creating stronger levels of self-awareness, cultural awareness, situational awareness, and anticipatory awareness.”

From my perspective, this level of transformational change involves being well prepared and being ready. Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen in their book, Great By Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck - Why Some Thrive Despite Them All (HarperCollins, 2011), explain that leaders of companies, who thrive in uncertainty, and even chaos, do something very unique, namely they zoom out before they zoom in. When then sense danger, i.e. situational awareness, they zoom out. They attempt to discern whether or not there are changes in market conditions. When I have seen leaders do this, they attempt to sense and identify these changes as well as try to frame them up and name them in order that others can understand the changes before they mobilize people into a problem solving process, and later action. 

Collins and Hansen point out that the zooming out process is not about seeing the big picture as much as an attempt to understand how the big picture is changing, and if there are particular changes in the service delivery environment. Then, they assess the time frame for action, i.e. anticipatory awareness, asking themselves three important questions: “How much time before the risk profile changes?”, “Do the new conditions call for disrupting plans?”, and “If so, how?”. Then, with the answers in hand, they zoom in, and focus on problem solving and subsequent execution. During this course of action, Collins and Hansen remind us that “Rapid change does not call for abandoning disciplined thought and disciplined action. Rather it calls for upping the intensity to zoom out for fast yet rigorous decision making and zoom in for fast yet superb execution.”

Improve Decision-Making Expertise

For leaders of leaders, this all comes down to improving rigorous decision-making expertise across the management team, and the organization as a whole. Recognizing the aforementioned approach related to situational and anticipatory awareness, leaders need to help people evaluate the time frame within which they must respond to a problem. As part of this work, they need to help others understand that they are often forced to make decisions with incomplete information, and often do not have the time for a formal analysis of options like they did in the past. They also need to help people understand that there will be failures because of this, and that some failures will require an agile response, i.e. being able to be flexible, adaptable and able to quickly respond to changing circumstance and new information. 

Over time, and in order to improve decision-making expertise, leaders also must connect people, who are facing similar complex problems, with other people, and help all involved engage in after action reviews in order help everyone learn from, and improve their decision making. They must celebrate short term wins, smart decision-making, and innovative solutions, too. 

But from my experience and observations, improved and rigorous decision-making can not effectively happen without comprehending, and then embracing the Stockade Paradox. Jim Collins writes about this paradox in his book, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap. . . and Others Don't (HarperBusiness, 2001). The paradox originated from Navy Vice Admiral, James Stockade’s experiences as a POW during the Vietnam War, where he survived years of torture and deprivation by balancing his harsh and painful reality with a strong belief in a better future. As Collins explains, this paradox is based on the ability to “retain absolute faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, AND at the same time confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” By combining realistic acceptance of current challenges, e.g. we are attempting to solve ever-evolving problems within dynamic complexity, with a stedfast and optimistic outlook, e.g. we can, and we will over time improve our decision-making expertise in the midst of this complexity, will ultimately result in successful solutions. In short, by holding two contradictory truths at the same time, and with the regular coaching and support, leaders can get better at decision-making in the midst of these challenges. 

The Elegant Beauty Of Simplicity

Right now, current events are volatile. Complexity abounds. As a result, people at work and at home are pendulum swinging from fear to hope, and then back to fear, all due to the numerous chaotic situations that are happening around them. 

What we want is to feel less vulnerability, and to experience less uncertainty. What we have come to understand is that these feelings of vulnerability and uncertainty have moved from being episodic to systemic, and the resulting anxiety has become contagious. In short, we are caught in a cycle of intensity and reactivity, all wrapped up in dynamic complexity. 

“The key to complexity,” writes John Paul Lederach, “is finding the elegant beauty of simplicity.” The pathway to this level of simplicity begins with creating an adaptable problem solving process, and to seek a solution, not the solution, recognizing that the problems are evolving faster than the solutions can be created and executed. Next, we must build and maintain healthy teams who work within healthy relational spaces. We also need to focus on building a shared consciousness within our teams and the whole company based on a common identity and a common understanding about who we are, how we work through our challenges. Then, we need to recognize that a truth that influences our feelings can create more change than an in-depth analysis. As we make these important choices over time, all involved will embrace complexity, rather than try to fix complexity. We also need to watch out for grit gaslighting, and to choose empowered execution. 

The search for “finding the elegant beauty of simplicity” requires discipline and commitment on a daily basis. It also requires us to acknowledge our interdependency, and to accept both the constants and the changes of these times. For in the end, the ground level truth of solving problems within complexity is that we have to work with what we are given. And as we do this, we need to remember that respectful engagement, where people move from being anonymous employees to individuals with personal biography and professional skills, needs to be the norm rather than the exception. Then, wise and skillful choices can be made, and realistic and effective solutions can be created, and executed in the midst dynamic complexity.

© Geery Howe 2026

Geery Howe, M.A. Executive Coach in Leadership, Strategic Planning, and Organizational Change

Problem Solving Within Complexity - part #5

Choose Empowered Execution

As a shared consciousness is created within a group or team, and as relational spaces are built and maintained for in-depth communication and transparency, we then need to create viable solutions within complexity. However, the challenge is to not just create a solution, but also to execute it in an effective manner, even if it is a temporary solution due to the continued evolution of the problem. This all leads us back to the subject of empowered execution, which is the sum of empowerment and execution. 

Whenever I think about the union of empowerment and execution, I am reminded of a quote by Jim Belasco and Ralph Stayer in their book, Flight of the Buffalo: Soaring To Excellence, Learning to Let Employees Lead (Time Warner, 1994): “The primary purpose of strategic planning is not to strategically plan for the future, although that's an important purpose of the exercise. It is primarily to develop the strategic management mind-set in each and every individual in the organization. The purpose of the process is not only to produce a plan. It is to produce a plan that will be owned and understood by the people who have to execute it.”

For me, the critical words in the above are “owned and understood by the people who have to execute it.” Creating ownership and understanding, plus a strategic management mindset, are all mission critical to problem solving within complexity. Furthermore, Belasco and Stayer advocate for leaders to “create the environment for ownership where each person wants to be responsible for his/her own performance.” I would add to this the importance of wanting to create an environment where people want their team to be successful, too. This is not going to happen as the result of a singular action, but instead as a result of an ongoing disciplined course of action. It starts with a commitment to build clarity and ownership, not just to create solutions to adaptive challenges.  

The late Stephen Covey understood this when he wrote about the four roles of leadership in his book, The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness (Free Press, 2004). Those four roles are: “modeling (conscience): set a good example; pathfinding (vision): jointly determine the course; aligning (discipline): set up and manage systems to stay on course; empowering (passion): focus talent on results, not methods, then get out of people’s way and give help as requested.” As he explains, “Modeling principle-centered trustworthy behavior inspires trust without ‘talking it.’ Pathfinding creates order without demanding it. Aligning nourishes both vision and empowerment without proclaiming them. Empowerment is the fruit of the other three."

Leadership Choices That Support Empowered Execution

Captain Michael Abrashoff in his book, It’s Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy (Warner Books, 2002) notes that “Empowering means defining the parameters in which people are allowed to operate, and then setting them free.” From my experience and observations, setting people free to execute within defined parameters, starts with understanding something very unique about people who are empowered and execute well over time. 

First, empowered people have confidence in their ability and their knowledge, and in their team and their company. They believe they can make the right decisions, and they believe they are role modeling what is most important.

Second, empowered people can make choices about how to achieve predetermined outcomes/goals. As they make these choices, empowered people believe they are engaged in meaningful work that is making a difference in their work place and their community. 

Over decades of doing this work, I have learned that empowerment is the process of increasing the capacity of individuals or groups/teams to have confidence, to make choices, and to transform those choices into desired actions and outcomes, i.e. meaningful results. In order to make this level of empowered execution become an on-going reality, leaders need to do two things very well. 

First, they must help people to regularly achieve their goals. Teresa M. Amabile and Steve J. Kramer in their article, “The Power of Small Wins” (Harvard Business Review, May 2011), write about their decade of research which included a deep analysis of daily diaries kept by teammates on creative projects. From this research, they discovered The Progress Principle: “Of all things that can boost emotions, motivation, and perceptions during a workday, the single most important is making progress in meaningful work…. And the more frequently people experience that sense of progress, the more likely they are to be creatively productive in the long run.”

Second, these same leaders need to improve their ability to delegate. On the surface, this seems elementary, because delegation is classically defined as “the transferring of authority and responsibility from one person to another in order to carry out a specific activity.” However, within the transferring of authority and responsibility, fundamental flaws are often made that cause failure on many levels. 

Having spent my career as a consultant and executive coach, who was routinely called in to figure out why execution failed, I regularly uncovered a series of common problems within the delegation process. First, the person who was being delegated to did not understand the problem that they were suppose to solve. Remember awareness of a problem is not the same as understanding a problem. Second, the person who was being delegated to did not have the positional authority to execute a successful course of action. In essence, the combination of the aforementioned two things resulted in commitment without understanding, and responsibility without choice. Third, the person who was being delegated to did not know how to measure progress and/or success. This always resulted in a decline of confidence and a lack willingness to take any risks in the course of action to solve the problem they were supposed to solve. Instead, most people just gave up, and dumped the whole problem back on their boss, the one who delegated it to them in the first place. 

But, I don’t fault the person who has been delegated to in this situation. For me, this is a leadership problem, not just a delegation problem. Many years ago, John Maxwell in his book, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow them and People Will Follow You (Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1998), wrote about “The Law of Empowerment: Only secure leaders give power to others.” Yet, I have discovered that ineffective, and often insecure leaders delegate the work, but not the ability to make choices, and rarely the parameters for action. In short, the leader chooses a conquer and control form of delegation rather than a connections and clarity form of delegation. And as a result, the former generates a profound level of personal burn-out and cynicism about problem solving, delegation, and change. However, the later generates commitment and collaboration. As Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan in their book, Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done (Crown Business, 2002), wrote “execution is a systematic process of rigorously discussing hows and what’s questioning, tenaciously following through, and ensuring accountability.” It also is “a systematic way of exposing reality and acting upon it.” And this is one fundamental difference between leaders who solve problems within complexity, and those attempt to solve problems and only generate more problems. 

To be continued on Wednesday. 

© Geery Howe 2026

Geery Howe, M.A. Executive Coach in Leadership, Strategic Planning, and Organizational Change