Companies are fixated on providing certainty. Exemplified by the primary expectation on leaders and managers to remove uncertainty. Why is this so, and where does this originate from?

Roadmaps are frequently used to remove uncertainty. However, relying on traditional roadmaps in complex situations creates a fallacy. A big issue is that they don’t take the element of surprise into account.

One differentiator between being good at managing complexity and uncertainty, and being bad at it is strategy. Unfortunately people’s common perception of strategy is simplistic and misleading.

In this episode I elaborate on some misconceptions, strategy’s main purpose and how to practice strategy.

Good Strategy/Bad Strategy - Richard Rumelt

Working in complex situations creates lots of ambiguity and room for interpretation. Because of this people tend to become puzzled, confused or stuck. When working with uncertainty you can still find options that are reasonable and useful in the specific context. In this episode I talk about some principles and practical tools that are helpful to make sense of and act in complexity.

Visualisations for the examples I share

Complex situations makes it challenging to become a leader that’s appreciated. People and situations within an organisation set a diverse set of expectations on leadership. I’ve noticed that people who repeatedly provide appreciated and appropriate leadership share some common traits that distinguish them from other leaders.

Besides sharing these traits I also share the most basic and useful framing of what leadership entails, that I’ve come across.

Here's an illustration that summaries the traits I’ve noticed so far.

Some of the key people and work that has influenced my thinking and practice in the context of this episode:

When people struggle with collaboration they tend to share some typical statements that they hope will improve the situation. Unfortunately, due to ignorance, these statements trivialise complexity. Together with other traits they lead to several negative consequences. 

My observations are that most organisations suffer from trivialisation. To avoid the negative effects of trivialisation it helps to increase awareness of situations that are complex and the traits that encourage and discourage trivialisation.

Announcement that the podcast is back from hiatus with several new episodes being uploaded regularly.

Season 2 of Adaptable is just around the corner! 👏🏾 🥳 🙌🏼

All organisations, teams and leaders have the same goal; to build something that’s successful. In our experience none of them have found the path to success either strait or obvious. Far from all have reached the level of success they aimed for. We’ve found that having Empowered Product Teams have greatly increased the chances for an organisation to meet user needs and deliver business value.

In this episode we go through:

Some of the resources we use in our work and in this episode:

Wardely Mapping introduction by Simon Wardley

As a leader in a complex business context one of your key interests should be to improve the performance of the people you lead. Recent research has found that becoming an inclusive leader directly impact peoples performance. It has also identified a number of traits connected with the capability of Inclusive Leadership. We go through each trait and look at how they can be applied in practise with a few concrete examples.

Our sources for the research and traits can be found in the following articles:

Why Inclusive Leaders Are Good for Organizations - HBR article

The Key to Inclusive Leadership - HBR article