During a recent phone consultation, she told me she was feeling overwhelmed by too much change. Some of it was happening at the management team level and other parts were happening at the front line staff level. From her perspective, everyone was wanting to change everything. The outcome was that everywhere there were messes to clean up and she just felt lost in it all.
As I listened, I was reminded of the following quote by sociologist John Berger in Margaret Wheatley’s book, Turning To One Another: simple conversations to restore hope to the future (Berret-Koehler, 2001): “There is no continuity between actions, there are no pauses, no paths, no pattern, no past and no future. There is only the clamor of the… fragmentary present. Everywhere there are surprises and sensations, yet nowhere is there any outcome. Nothing flows through; everything interrupts.”
More and more people are having this experience and struggling deeply with it. They do not know where to begin, where to focus or where to invest their limited time and energy.
My answer to her that day may sound simple but it is not easy. In situations of this nature, we need to lead with strategic thinking, not just reactive, operational problem solving. According to Aaron Olson and and B. Keith Simerson in their book, Leading With Strategic Thinking: Four Ways Effective Leaders Gain Insight, Drive Change, and Get Results (Wiley, 2015), strategic thinking comprises three activities: assessing situations, recognizing patterns, and making decisions.
From my vantage point, we talk a lot about decision-making in the world of leadership. We also talk some about recognizing patterns. Clearly, we do a lot of assessing of situations, i.e. technical, adaptive or crisis. And yet, we continue to struggle.
I think the solution comes down to being able to switch back and forth between two different mindsets, namely reflexive, cause-oriented thinking and proactive, response-oriented thinking. In the former, we seek to understand whether or not the problems could have been prevented. We also want to know if the impact is only internal to the organization or was it being driven by external factors.
On the other hand, response-oriented thinking focuses on what can we improve given what is happening. We look for the positive impact and how to contain the negative impact.
For those of you who are intrigued by this line of thought, I encourage you to read the following article: Margolis, Joshua D., and Paul G. Stoltz, “How to Bounce Back From Adversity”, Harvard Business Review, January-February 2010.
The fragmentary present is not going away. Interruptions will happen. Lack of continuity is becoming normal. Our first choice is to be clear about which mindset we will utilize to deal with what is happening around us.
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