NAVIGATIG TURBULENCEBarney Jordaan

THE VUCA ENVIRONMENT

Volatility

Uncertainty

Complexity

Ambiguity

DIS

OR

DER

‘If you feel like everything is under control, you don’t go fast enough’

– Mario Andretti

THE ANTIDOTE

The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence. It is to act with yesterday’s logic.

Peter F. Drucker

‘The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates and a monthly salary’.

Nassim Nicholas Thaleb

12

Roots & wings

TRADITIONAL VERSUS NEW FORMS OF ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE

TRADITIONAL NEW

Hierarchical Informal organisation

Silos Cross-functional collaboration

Control Self-management

Strive for zero defect Learn from failure

15

‘AGILITY’ RHYMES WITH ‘STABILITY’

AGILE LEADERSHIP

‘They believe that they have all the answers; they ruthlessly eliminate anyone who isn't completely behind them; they under-estimate the obstacles their organisations face; and they stubbornly rely on what worked for them in the past.’

S. Finkelstein (2003) Why Smart Executives Fail

FAILED LEADERS

Humility

Confident

Assertive

‘Voice’

AG

ILE L

EA

DER

S

The new leadership is driven by focus, agility (the ability to make rapid adaptations in response to changing circumstances), creativity, improved decision-making capacity and the ability to instil a culture of trust and collaboration in organisations.

Lewis, M.W., Andriopoulos. C., & Smith, W.K. (2014) ’Paradoxical Leadership to Enable Strategic Agility’. California Management Review 56(3) 58-77.

AGILE LEADERSHIP

KEY CHALLENGES FOR LEADERS

Improved

decision-making

Conflict handling

Trust

Collaboration

Decision-making

AN EVOLUTIONARY MISMATCH: HOW WE PERCEIVE OURSELVES

Vitruvian man

HOW THE BRAIN IS ACTUALLY WIRED

Sensory cortex homunculus man

AN EVOLUTIONARY MISMATCH

Please write down your answers to the following questions. You only have 2 minutes!

a. How many animals of each species did Moses take on

to the Ark?

b. Divide 30 by ½ and add 10.

c. If a plane crashes exactly on the border of Spain and

Portugal where would you bury the survivors?

d. Some months have 31 days, some have 30, but how

many have 28 days?

e. In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the

patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch

to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the

patch to cover half of the lake?

DECISION-MAKING: QUIZ

Conflict

CONFLICT

29

CONFLICT AS AN OYSTER

Oysters and conflict have something in common: a little irritation can produce a thing of beauty.

Thompson, Butkus & Boudreau (2016) ’The Right Kind of Conflict Leads to Better Products’ HBR

Collaboration

Score as many points as you can

Assertive collaboration

OUR RECOMMENDATION

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C O O P E R A T I V E N E S S high

high

low

‘ASSERTIVE COLLABORATION’

NE

Trust

ORGANISATIONAL TRUST

LEVEL OF TRUST

FORMALITY / REGULATION

1 4

2 3

Purcell, J. (1987). ‘Mapping management styles.’

Low

Lo

wHigh

Hig

h

‘Too much formal process can be harmful, in the way that it eliminates the chance for the organisation to prove its self-organising ability. Organisations and managers underestimate the natural antifragility and the power of self-organisation.’

Nassim N. Taleb

‘Netflix has only two types of rules: those designed to prevent irrevocable disaster and those designed to prevent moral, ethical and legal issues. It has no vacation policy and does no tracking of time – the company’s focus is on what needs to get done, not how many hours or days are worked’.

McKinsey Quarterly (2016)

WHAT CAN BE DONE?

IMPROVING DECISION-MAKING

• Devil’s advocates

• Brainstorming

• Pre-mortem

• Contrarian teams

• ‘Silence the leader’: W.A.I.T.

IMPROVING DECISION-MAKING

The best decision-makers know when not to trust

themselves.

FOCUS ON BEING TRUSTWORTHY

• Competence

• Consistency

• Integrity

‘Trusting you is my decision; proving me right is your choice’

DEVELOP CONFLICT WISDOM

• Conflict ‘literacy’

• Conflict skills training

• Implement conflict processes

‘Conflict is inevitable, combat is optional’ - Max Lucado

IMPROVING COLLABORATION

• Change in mindset

• An appropriate skills set

‘It is easy to teach anybody a new fact . . . but it needs light from heaven above to enable a teacher to break the old framework in which the student is accustomed to seeing.’ - Koestler

Sustained change needs a shift in mindset away

from competing to survive to collaborating to

win; from silo mentalities to openness; from

making decisions in small, elite circles to allowing

employees a meaningful ‘voice’ in decision that

affect them, including the creation of an

environment that encourages their inputs and

critique, from seeing conflict as bad to embracing

it as a potential resource; from behaviours that

destroy trust or prevent its development, to the

active pursuit of behaviours that develop trust.

OUR CONCLUSION…