Published in May 2024
This article forms part of a new series inquiring in to the experience of leading in transformative times, and navigating the human response to change and uncertainty (Part 1)
Over the last few years I’ve found my work with senior teams and organisations to be increasingly related to navigating less certain futures than ever before. The past few years has seen a number of global (or ‘big out there’) challenges showing up in boardrooms and executive discussions prompting the question of what ‘good’ looks like in leading and teaming in transformative times.
What has become clear is the level of interconnectedness of our critical systems – whether economic, energy, resources, political or social – which of course can be both an opportunity but also a challenge to our ability to predict and lead with certainty in the years ahead. When this interconnectedness is then supplemented by progress in technologies and shifting social expectations that have the potential of fundamentally changing how we live and work, the scale and complexity of the change ahead can feel overwhelming to many senior leaders today.
A senior executive I work with describes his role now leading global operations as being significantly different to what got him to the executive level position. The level of complexity, the pace of change, the unknowns and hype around some of the new technology makes this a role he feels out of his depth at times.
He describes life as a senior leader as more complex than ever before with customers rising expectations around market shifts, sustainability and digitalisation, and yet shareholders demand similar levels of performance for the short-term. The tension between delivering today, whilst creating a new tomorrow feels real and challenging – requiring ‘ambidextrous leadership’ in a less than certain environment
The shifting focus in my work has had me pondering on the shift that senior teams seem to be going through across multiple sectors – away from knowledge and experience being sufficient at a senior level – unless paired with cognitive capacities to work with not knowing and uncertainty.
One size can’t fit all with the number of moving parts and discrete context – but are there core skills we can be developing to ready for the changing landscape? And are there things that we need to stop doing? Things that might have served us in more predictable, stable times but that actually exacerbate our response to transformative times? How to collectively navigate and lead in the unknown is the core of the question I will be exploring through this series, and hope you’ll find it of interest in your own journeys.
'Gen T' and the 'Super-cycle'
American researcher and behavioural guru Brene Brown published a podcast (see references below for link) with futurist Amy Webb recently where they talk about what it feels like to lead and live through the current levels and pace of change, and uncertainty. Amy describes the converging of three technology trends (AI, wearable devices and biotechnology) as a technology ‘super-cycle’. This super-cycle, when combined with instabilities and uncertainty in the global environment around us can lead many of us – whether leaders or not - to feeling overwhelmed or paralysed in knowing how to respond.
I was intrigued given the growing interest in responding to uncertain futures showing up in my work. For some it feels hugely exciting and energising, but for many others it feels big and out of their control. The level and scale of change that is and will continue to transform how we live and work is here to stay, but how much of our sense of being overwhelmed or out of control is about learning about the new technologies, and how much of is about our relationship with certainty or a challenge to our identity?
Amy talks about how historians will look back on this period as a great transition – or all those alive today as being a collective ‘Gen T’ or Generation Transition’ - the group who lived through extraordinary levels of change to the world we knew.
In my own work I see stratospheres that stretch to the ‘big and out there’ stuff right down to the ‘everyday, here and now’ stuff, as each of us try to navigate the changing landscape and shifting expectations, whether in our organisational lives, our communities or schools. Together, this oscillating between what’s happening out there and what it means for me in here can feel overwhelming as we realise no one person, organisation or government can ‘fix’ or even control the unfolding interplay of these converging factors (despite the political claims), and this level of ambiguity and feelings of out of control can trigger natural responses of denial, withdrawal or avoidance. Not something we can ignore as leaders when others are watching and feeling for our response to an unfolding future, as part of processing their own response.
Over-riding the impulse to brake
In the podcast, Amy Webb describes the level of uncertainty like when your car hits black ice. The instinct is to slam on the brakes but that only makes it more chaotic. What we need to do is steer in to the skid, but that takes conscious thought – and training - to over-ride the instinct to brake. She describes steering in to the slide and causing movement as ways to slow down the skid – to buy time to make small choices that will give a little more information on how to respond.
The metaphor really hit home for me. Both in how we train ourselves to override the instinct to brake, as well as how to steer to buy time, to gather data and to learn more. And of the need to be calm whilst increasing our capacity for uncertainty.
In the organisations I work with there are some senior leaders striding forward, confident and excited by the prospects of new technology. And there is also a larger set that are finding the leaps in technology, combined with a period of geopolitical and economic uncertainty, as well as growing climate and planetary limitations, rising social expectations and growing inequities, as just too many tectonic plates moving at once.
From an evolutionary point of view, the human nervous system is primed to look for danger, and change is often construed as danger. So our response to finding this hard isn’t just an individual one but an evolutionary one. So how can we further evolve as ‘Gen T’ to better ready ourselves for this level of transition? What can we do to build the muscles for adaptation and strength in our hearts to care for ourselves and others as we each make sense of the transitions ahead, and manage our own response to uncertainty as we navigate these journeys?
Looking back to move forward
I was curious to wonder if we were historians looking back at this period of Gen T – what would we say enabled the transformation(s)? What shifts or behaviours would steering into mean when we don’t know or can only see uncertainty ahead? I offer the following thoughts at the beginning of this series whilst recognising that this is about learning and adapting as things unfold. Please do share if you see / experienced things differently as this series is intentionally designed to share and learn collectively (and for my own thinking to evolve).
Readying for transition
For me an umbrella catch-all seems to be how can we prepare for an unknown future - or if we continue the black ice metaphor - how we prepare for a variety of road and environmental conditions.
I am curious how living through a transformative period might reshape our relationship with ‘knowing’ and what we class and measure as success. How it might reshape our role in society and the assumptions we make in relation to our communities and natural resources. And how it relates to our relationship with control. What I’m really curious to discover is how an organisation that embraces not knowing looks and feels – will we want to be part of them?!
So far, in my journey I’ve been gathering things that have come in to focus, and offer below an initial cateogorisation that seem to fall in to a ‘knowing gap’ vs ‘being space’. Within the ‘being’ I’ve included some skills that are showing up, but in the teams I’ve been working with to date it hasn’t been enough to leap to them without doing the introspective, individual work, as well as narrow the big ‘out there’ knowledge gaps. I think this is about getting really clear on the case for change, as so long as the discussion continue on the why we’re not doing the work toward the how.
In each part of the series, I’ll focus on a different aspect in terms of skills, behaviours and shifts that I’m experiencing or interpreting as seeming to help ready teams for leading in transformative times.
I start now with a ‘being’ one as I’ve found I just can’t get to any others without tackling this one first. There may be no order to these, but for now this one seems compelling to be first.
Narrow the ‘Knowing’ gap
(as a way of getting started, moving beyond overwhelm)
| Expand focus on ‘Being’
(as a way of paying attention to what helps and your relationship with not knowing/ being out of control)
|
Familiarise yourself with the wider picture (and beware the ‘vortex of clarity’)
| (1) Clear the road to allow space
|
Develop future literacy skills | Exploring your experience and relationship with uncertainty |
Learn about transformation at a behavioural level | |
| Skills: - Ambidextrous in leadership - Multi-vision – present, backwards and future-focussed - Systems thinking - Manage (vs resolve) tensions and polarities - Balancing values and outcomes (power, inequities, behaviour)
|
Clear the road to allow space
Rather than step on the brakes – or perhaps worse still, the accelerator to magnify what we already know and do - how do we take stock to consider how to build the ‘how’ (cognitive state, capacity and capability) of responding to change and uncertainty, rather than only focussing on predicting the ‘what’. The future will be bursting with potential and possibility but how do we unleash the energy and hope critical to focus us forward to help navigate the transitions ahead – in how we live, work and relate with each other.
'I'm too busy to change!'
This has been one of the biggest reflections for me in the past year. Just how much the today / near-term / present is masking/clouding/getting in the way of time and focus on what’s to come. For me too, I realise that where I’ve tried to tack my future-focussed activities on to my ongoing work and focus areas, they have suffered. They just don’t make it up the priority list when I have more pressing needs due today. I see this replicated with my clients too, where some have cleared the decks for a clear focus on the future, and others remain in the pressures and details of today, struggling to create or explore future shifts.
I was there too. I can only share that what I’ve had to do with my own business is get really clear on my intention to step more in to the future, and to stop work that isn’t serving that purpose. I've had to develop the ambidexterity in leading my own business to explore more, rather just operationalise. I’ve found there has to be sacrifice, but with that sacrifice comes motivation to move forward. I can’t stay only with the sacrifice. The lure of today is so strong but over the months I realise quite how much of the future it’s already devoured. So I had to make a choice.
I had to start transitioning my focus and my work toward my intention - and to edit out things that didn’t serve that. I’ve had to get really clear on my boundaries – professionally and personally – and I’ll be honest, I’ve surprised myself that the response to me voicing these hasn’t been received negatively. In many ways it’s helped others to be clearer in what I need / want, and what they need / want.
Desperately paddling through overwhelm and busyness
What strikes me as I work with organisations each week – from across the public, private and third sectors – is just how busy we all are. And how much we’re aware of impending change, but often with a low little sense of preparedness.
When I started in the workplace it was very clear how decisions were made, and by whom. It generally went up a line of authority – through the formal delegation of authority matrix – to whomever was thought sufficiently senior enough for the scale of decision being made. We viewed this as a sensible approach to making critical decisions that could draw on the wisdom and experience of experienced elders. Of course this may not have been what it felt like in practice always, but you could see the logic. And it worked where the events or situation was something that those more experienced had seen before. But the problem we’re dealing with in our collective generations of organisational life and society is two-fold – firstly, we’ve never seen the like before, and so our experience, and tried and tested ways of analysing, measuring, and manage often don’t work (and even worse, give a false sense of security that wastes time). Secondly, this is then compounded by the reality that the challenges we’re dealing with are so inherently interlinked that it’s like playing whack-a-mole – what makes a shift or change in one area might actually exacerbate or stimulate a new problem showing up elsewhere. So we need to take a broader, or more systemic look, than ever before.
What? This isn’t what I have been working toward in my career…! What this represents is a challenge to both the skills (and pride) in what has served us well in our careers thus far - and even to our sense of identity – poking at our sense of value and self-worth. You can start to get a sense then to better understand why some find this so challenging – it’s not just content, or technology, it’s about me. About how I think the world works, and my place in it. About my children and their children. And again we’re back to overwhelm.
What is the role of Gen T, and how does it challenge how we think and know today?
The situation seems to be even more pressurised when we add in what seems a new norm unfolding around the busyness of organisational life – which I’ve experienced across private, public and third sectors. Because the old world and norms are no longer sufficient, there is an increasing set of pressures to try to sustain the unsustainable, which is creating a frenzy of more doing.
How much of your day is tied up with the BAU - but faster, cheaper, and with more scrutiny and transparency than ever before? We hear the winds are changing, and new things are coming – that may well obliterate us – but I’ve just not got time to pee between meetings let alone pivot a whole organisation!
So what can we do?
Stop hitting the brakes!
We can see ‘hitting the brakes’ as signals in our everyday lives that indicate if our balance is off - that we are only exercising one of the ambidextrous muscles. Like playing tennis with one hand tied behind your back. Tune in to the signals of when you're braking...
If you notice yourself in what seems an endless cycle of meetings that sucks all time for reflection and perspective. Take note.
If you find even more busyness than space. Take note.
If you find yourself at the limit of your capacity to hold uncertainty. Take note.
If you turn down meetings about exploring tomorrow, to focus on today's fire.
‘Steering into the slide’
Start with you.
The first for me was a degree of acknowledgement and acceptance. That the world and my place in it – as I understood it and had worked hard toward – is no longer sufficient or viable. I will have to change and adapt for these unfolding times as much as the next person.
The challenge is here. It isn’t singular, linear or fixable by a few. We’re all going to have to look more at how we’re interconnected. How to move collectively in the battles of sustaining (and rebuilding) the health of our ecology, how to close the social inequity gaps that remain persistently present. How to build for better rather than bigger. How to pass on to our kids something we can say, ‘we did our turn… ‘
As part of my own work (and despite my intolerance of glib top tips), here’s what I’ve found helpful to enable movement in my own journey, and overcome what can feel like destabilising feelings of overwhelm.
Convening - spaces for transformative work with a wide cross-section of people enabling the system to come to life and to better understand key relationships and interconnections
Connecting – people, ideas and cross-boundaries with compassion, curiosity and a real attention to developing my capacity for not knowing
Curating – ideas from far and wide, enabling intersections and interdependencies to be seen and understood, like the NHS warm home prescription as a way to tackle hospitalisations of the elderly with cold-related illnesses
Cultivating – this speaks to a focus on the health and dynamism of the environment for plays that release energy in an intended direction
Cycling – reconnecting and circling back – as humans and with ideas and concepts. The need to routinely reassess and revalidate - what have I understood, what might this mean, where am I now, what else is possible, who might need help?
I’m sure you’ll have experienced others so please feel invited to share. No one voice will be sufficient in this space so please see this itself as an act of connection.
Welcome to Gen T. Let us be one for future generations to remember well.
End.
As this is a series, there will be more to come in the months ahead. I’ve love to hear if my experience resonates with you, or if you’re experiencing something completely different – feel free to get in touch on Debbie.wayth@futureultd.co.uk or check out my website debbiewayth.com
References;
Ambidextrous leadership - comes from original reference to ambidexterity in organisations where they (or leaders) can both explore and innovate, as well as operationalise and execute. Rosing, K., Frese, M. and Bausch, A. (2011). Explaining the heterogeneity of the leadership -innvoation relationship: Ambidextrous leadership. The Leadership Quarterly.
Brene Brown and Amy Webb podcast - https://brenebrown.com/podcast/whats-coming-and-whats-here/
For a fuller description of the technology trends, see the report from Future Today Institute, which Amy Webb is CEO.
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