“Stories of the past and the present can be based on facts, but a story of the future is just a story. The problem is that the stories we most commonly tell about the future simply extrapolate from the present.” -via Harvard Business Review
In the midst of difficult times, leaders who haven’t spent time leaning into uncertainty or the unknown, can often feel overwhelmed or suspended in a deep sense of individual and organizational disequilibrium. It is in this space, often to gain some semblance of stability, that leaders have a tendency to turn to or play on “inspiration” as their strategic card. It is where they determine to double down, especially when the uncertainty is overwhelming, to rally their individuals, teams and the organization as a whole.
Which might seem like a plausible and positive strategy at first glance. Especially since it seems to be so pervasive right now in organizations under the context of current circumstances.
However, in retrospect, what many leaders fail to realize is that “inspiration” in and of itself, especially in the midst of a crisis, is short-lived in its effect and usefulness. In many ways, it is like cotton candy at the carnival. It may taste good at the moment, and amidst all of the spectacle and excitement, but ultimately, it leaves you unfulfilled and empty. Inspiration, while good at the moment, is lacking any substance or long term substantive power to push those within and the organization as a whole through the difficult terrain of current circumstances. Of the formidable forces of what lies before us, and what also lies ahead.
In the midst of any type of deep disruption, difficulty or crisis, individuals, teams and organizations are often left reeling and rocking in the disequilibrium of the moment. Those same individuals and teams are looking for something more substantial from their leaders and their organization.
When leaders provide the 2C’s, when they are able to engage the AND of both compassion and competency, they can provide a sense of steadfastness in the face of the disruptive, crisis-created instability.
In crisis-mode, individuals are looking for their leaders to engage the compassion, empathy and understanding to truly see them, to see what they are going through. And yet, that is not enough, as they are also looking to their leaders to be equipped with the competency to not only effectively lead them and the organization through these current circumstances, but to provide opportunity to discover and find their own agency, to gain new capacities and competencies that bestow a sense of autonomy and ability to allow them to effectively problem-solve and make necessary and needed decisions at the front lines, when adaptability is most needed and required.
Effectively allowing them to lead up…
When leaders are equipped with both compassion and competency, individuals, teams and the organization as a whole feel more inclined to lean into the ambiguity, uncertainty, and unknowns during difficult times. Which is vital to any organization remaining relevant in the 21st century as each of those are both heightened and amplified by-products of existing in today’s complex, dilemma-ridden environments that most organizations exist within.
Braiding compassion and competency allows leaders to begin to create the team and organizational environment where people can begin to engage in the process of making the future a more tangible and visible space and place.
Which will be incredibly important, as both individuals and the organization they work within will have to be willing to build up ongoing capacity to move more effectively into this creative space. They will have to build in and continuously support the psychological safety that will allow them and their teams to engage in the messy methods and learning necessary to engage the thinking that allows the organization to move into the future in a more relevant manner. As it will require a real vulnerability and openness in order to begin the process of dismantling and unlearning the thinking, strategies, processes, structures, knowledge, and mental models that keep both them and the organization entrenched in practices that have often become outdated or outlived their viability and usefulness.
In many ways, people will be required to engage in rapid reframing to allow them to gain momentum towards parallel pacing our current context and circumstances. Especially, in current conditions, where change is often abrupt, accelerated, and non-obvious, the ability to pivot and iterate towards new narratives and scenarios will be paramount. Requiring not only the unlearning of outdated and outlived practices, mindsets and mental models that impede progress and constrain our view of the future, but will also necessitate the ability to accelerate the acquisition, spread, and ossification of new learning and knowledge, at scale.
Rapid reframing alongside this rapid infusion of knowledge will allow individuals, teams and the organization as a whole to begin to construct new narratives and new scenarios that open up new possibilities for the future. This dynamic interplay of rapid reframing and knowledge infusion will allow the organization to engage in a much more divergent approach to their scenario planning, opening up new avenues and unforeseen prospects for the future. Allowing people to connect often unforeseen dots to the opportunities emerging in this creative process of strategically designing their way forward into the future.
Pushing individuals and teams into these spaces, can be difficult cognitively and emotionally. Especially in the beginning. Which is why both leadership compassion and competency will be vital towards next steps. And it will require new leadership capacities, as this work is neither linear nor predictable, and often incredibly messy and uncomfortable. It requires us to cast aside past bias’ and assumptions that negatively constrain us in the present and limit the future narratives and scenarios that we are able to collaboratively construct and create.
As Hardin Tibbs adds, we must remember that, “One key to unlocking this puzzle is to think about the future itself in a different way.” For which he adds, “This reframing of the future as a psychological space yields powerful insights. Not only does it tell us that the future is a much more confused place than we like to think, but more importantly, it recasts uncertainty as a fundamental source of strategic motivation.”
Which is the paradox of uncertainty that we often don’t realize…
Which is often at odds with how we think about the future. Too often we see the future as this wild animal racing at us, uncertain in how it will come at us. Will it be rabid or docile? Will it come at me slowly or with rapid pace? Will it leave me be or attack ferociously? Can it be tamed or will it run wild? Will it sprint past me or grab me and carry me with it? All very good questions, but lacking in any certainty towards our current or future situation.
For that reason, we often find the ambiguity and uncertainty of the future, much like those questions, as a negative state, as it is something we can neither predict or control. Which is why a reframe of and towards the uncertainty of the future is important, especially in our current context.
As Hardin Tibbs adds, “But the intrinsic open-endedness of the future, its genuine indeterminacy, is precisely the thing that gives us the potential for improvement and development – whether personal or organizational.” Of which he clarifies, “Put another way, to act effectively we need as much information as possible but if we had full information we would be paralyzed and unable to act.”
What Tibbs is trying to get across is that a certain and determined future is not a positive; neither is it worth fighting or working towards, as we can do little to change or guide its course.
It is in the ambiguity and uncertainty of the future that we are actually allowed the realization that the future is neither pre-set or pre-determined. It is with that understanding that we realize the future will require us to strategically create the conditions that allow for a more positive future to emerge. That it is entirely up to us to begin to create the narratives and scenarios that can begin to bring those futures into being. Or as Tibbs illustrates, “This approach to the future provides a way of achieving psychological clarity about our understanding and use of the future. It also allows the future itself to be used as an integrating strategic framework.”
Which then allows us to approach the future from more of a verb stance, being much less rooted in a noun approach. For it is in the midst of this ambiguity and uncertainty, where the verb stance allows us to consider the strategic construction and design of new futures and new possibilities, that a better future and a better world will be realized.
For our individuals and our organizations.
“Reframing helps people to become mindful of the frame they have been using to make sense of and intervene in the world, as well as what is left out of this frame. By rehearsing actions with these alternative frames, new and better options for action can be identified and contribute to a reperception of the present situation.” -Rafael Ramirez via Strategic Reframing
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