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Leading at the Edge of Chaos
by Daryl Connor
Organizing Human Due Diligence
The Do's and Don'ts of Ongoing Turbulence
- Start being honest with yourself and your employees: more, not less turmoil lies ahead.
- Start interpreting extended periods of calm as a distress signal -- it means your sensors aren't working properly.
- Start thinking of things that appear stable as really being composed of rhythms or fluctuating waves of movement that form predictable patterns.
- Start paying more attention to how you learn than what you know.
- Start concerning yourself with whether people you are responsible for can successfully assimilate additional changes when new initiatives are being considered.
- Start reminding yourself and your employees that everyone's job now is to succeed in unfamiliar environments.
- Start increasing your tolerance for ambiguity during periods of uncertainty.
- Start viewing some of today's disruptions as the bases for tomorrow's new possibilities.
- Start operating as if anything that looks like "the answer" to major problems or opportunity is more expensive and less durable than is apparent.
- Start thinking about many contradictions as paradoxes.
- Start recognizing when to slow down (and do things right the first time) in order to move faster through change
- Start translating "either/or" choices into "both/and" thinking.
- Start experimenting with everything you can, (cf.: Built To Last) but remember to maintain the core values of you are so you will have an internal reference point for making key decisions.
- Start taking some of the mystery out of change by learning to understand its patterns and dynamics.
- Start learning from your previous attempts at implementing change, and incorporate these lessons into new behaviors when facing major transitions.
- Start taking responsibility for architecting the future.
- Stop waiting for things to slow down
- Stop promising yourself and your employees that your organization is just one change project away from tranquility.
- Stop feeling sorry for yourself because life has become so challenging.
- Stop feeling like a victim when you don't get what you want.
- Stop assuming stress is always bad; a certain amount is necessary for learning.
- Stop thinking that you and your employees are entitled to always feel comfortable during change, or that your organization has failed if this doesn't happen.
- Stop being distrusting or resentful when your boss doesn't have all the answers about the future. (cf.: Barry Oshry, The Possibilities of Organizations)
- Stop depending more on rhetoric and hype than on action to achieve your change goals.
- Stop being enamored with your own achievements -- complacency and arrogance inhibit your ability to develop new expectations.
- Stop being drawn to the excitement of initiating change but bored or distracted with what it takes to sustain it.
- Stop relying on your own knowledge, assumptions, and perceptions as the only valid bases for determining what to do next (cf.: Mutual Learning Model)
- stop thinking that any one person or any single group can resolve the really important issues in isolation.
- Stop running from the unexpected -- instead, move closer to identify what new dangers are to be avoided and what new opportunities can be expected.
- Stop thinking only in terms of your own survival during change -- it will invariably destroy the people and things around you and ultimately lead to your own self destruction.
- Stop being afraid of abandoning things that have worked for you in the past.
- Stop being surprised at life's surprises.
Source: Leading at the Edge of Chaos, Daryl Connor, page 214-216
Ashley Guberman, Primary Goals Consulting