Living with so much uncertainty is hard. Our brains perceive ambiguity as a threat, and they try to protect us by diminishing our ability to focus on anything other than creating certainty.
We can measure uncertainty in magnitude and duration. By both measures, the extreme uncertainty accompanying the public health and economic damage created by the COVID-19 pandemic is unprecedented in modern memory.
Extreme uncertainty demands continuous learning and constant review of assumptions. Instead of establishing a plan and ensuring the organization sticks to it, as in more normal times, managers must understand and respond continuously to dynamic and wrenching change. Rather than making periodic reviews of a static plan, they need to meet for iterative decision-making sessions structured around three imperatives: discover, design, execute.
The cycle of learning and redesign must include responding to reflect the evolving situation, questioning established assumptions. We cannot treat any beliefs as sacrosanct. Organizations should accept that they will be wrong and celebrate learning quickly from experience.
Instead of establishing a plan and ensuring the organization sticks to it, managers must understand and respond continuously to dynamic and wrenching change.
How can we train ourselves as leaders to be as effective as possible at driving motivation and engagement during periods of great uncertainty?
The answer is to understand the underlying principles of motivation and engagement on which we can create context-specific actions to nurture the outcomes that benefit all.
People needed three things to become intrinsically motivated:
1. Autonomy: The freedom to determine how to achieve one’s goals
2. Mastery: The opportunity to demonstrate mastery through and receive recognition for contributions to the team
3. Relatedness: The ability to connect with other people, from colleagues to clients to community
If leaders can identify the underlying principles of what people most need to deliver their best work, they can creatively adapt to every context that may arise, regardless of the uncertainty. They just need to think about need.
Extreme uncertainty—defined in terms of novelty, magnitude, duration, and the rapid pace of change—generates a challenging operating environment for managers and organizations. The radically changed circumstances call for new forms of leadership, new ways of working, and new operating models. Crisis-tested managers will develop a tolerance of ambiguity, a quickened operating cadence, and a culture of constant refinement, review, and revision. Management structure and processes need to be adapted, too, as the crisis unfolds, to ensure the organization is sustainable and can take advantage of new opportunities.
Discuss the structural uncertainty. Identify who is responding to it appropriately and whom it is going to blindside. “Seek contrary viewpoints.”Every time a new development arises, ask who might benefit from it and whom it might threaten. Schedule 10 minutes in every meeting that lasts more than an hour to discuss “anomalies” – new and surprising factors – “in the external landscape.”
Read more:
-How Do You Drive Engagement and Motivation in Times of Extreme Uncertainty? http://ow.ly/FDv130rj2TU
-7 strategies to help you live with uncertainty http://ow.ly/Foim30rj2TT
-When nothing is normal: Managing in extreme uncertainty http://ow.ly/lu0830rj2TS
-The Attacker’s Advantage – Mastering uncertainty is the most important thing a leader must do in a changing world, via getAbstract: http://ow.ly/GkVq30rj2TH
