Simple Habits for Complex Times

Leaders have grappled with volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA) for millennia, but circumstances differ today.

Today, unlimited information and data confront leaders, much of it flowing in real time and changing by the minute. Leaders must consider more factors than they can predict by relying on the past. Consider what is possible in an unknown future.

Evolution made people pretty good at making decisions according to what worked in the past. But in many circumstances, previously reliable understandings no longer apply. Now you must consider a range of possible scenarios, but knowing when and how to do that kind of thinking doesn’t come naturally to many people. Mastering this necessary new skill means forming new habits of mind.

Get used to asking new and genuine questions.

Avoid asking questions whose answers you think you know or questions whose answers you’ll ignore. Ask considered questions you truly want answered to open a broader range of possibilities and paths. People want to find a problem’s cause and make changes to fix it. This might work for a simple problem...