Undoubtedly leading through uncertain times can be incredibly challenging. But while it’s certainly difficult, it’s not impossible. In this post, we discuss three strategies and some practical key tips that can help leaders gain clarity to lead effectively in challenging, uncertain times.

During major change cycles such as these, where the status quo is in flux, the environment and the way ahead is vague, fuzzy, uncertain, it is critically important that leaders are able to navigate the murkiness. We know that uncertainty drives confusion, stagnation, low morale, disorganization which can be demoralizing for organizations and even leaders themselves. To avoid this, leaders must be able to provide and facilitate clarity for themselves, their teams, and their organization.

In this series, I share three easy to deploy practical strategies I’ve found immensely helpful in gaining clarity and leading teams during cycles that are uncertain.

Strategy 1: Take a Knee – Time (and a Plan) is your Friend

The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot. ~Michael Altshuler, Author

Leaders often think that at the first sign of challenge, complexity, or chaos, we immediately have to spring to action and do something – anything. In life-or-death or fast-paced situations of course yes, but for most scenarios we experience, that is not the case. For most scenarios we experience, we can actually afford to use time to our advantage, strategically and proactively to gain clarity.

In 2015 I was tasked to support a major transitional effort modernizing a new system that would transform the financial processes of millions of people, impact the job security of thousands of technicians and analysts, and transform the fundamental roles and responsibilities of our organizations in the U.S and overseas. It was an incredibly large effort spanning over 20+ years (still ongoing) and I was tasked to lead a major aspect of the transitional effort off the ground with a small team.

I was given three months from my start date to provide a strategy and action plan for the next steps in the transitional effort. During my first few days on the job, I quickly became aware of the massive scope, complexity, and uncertainty of this effort. No one quite knew how to tackle this behemoth of a challenge and I knew clearly early on, I needed some time, not only to gain clarity for myself but to facilitate it for my team and our executives.

Key Tip 1: Use Time Strategically and Deliberately to Gain Clarity

In this scenario, I knew that the only way I could begin to make sense of the monumental murkiness was to build and create some deliberate time proactively to deeply assess what I could about the situation at hand. There was too much complexity in terms of people, functions, technology, partnerships, goals, end-state, etc. and there was no way I could provide clarity on the way ahead without internal effort on the part of myself and my team.

One strategy I employed out of many to facilitate gaining clarity, was to use time proactively by employing the easy-to-use time block method.

Special Note: Reminder here that when dealing with complexity, easy-to-use tools are the key. I urge you not to underestimate or disregard simple techniques and methods like the time block method and others, just because they seem “simple” or “easy”. Quoting the esteemed Ralph Waldo Emerson: “… to be simple is to be great”! Don’t add more complexity for yourself! Remember you’re trying to reduce complexity, keep it simple!

Key Tip 2: Time Blocks (dependent on how much time you have!)

A popular productivity technique, time blocks break work into time segments often down to the minutes and hours which allows you to focus max effort for smaller periods of time.

In my case, I knew I had approximately 3 months before I needed to present a plan on the way ahead that was clear and understandable for myself, my team, and my executives. So I used time blocks to deliberately, efficiently focus max effort in a short amount of time.

To support what I needed to do for the next 3 months, I created 2 major time blocks: one for myself as the leader, and one for my team, up to 30 days at a time. These time blocks would help me guide myself and focus the team on our effort to gain clarity and develop our plan.

〉 Leader Time Block (2 weeks to 30 days)

It’s a highly recommended and valuable best practice especially for leaders taking on a new project/position/team or even when operating after major change, to take time on your own to understand where you are and where you’re going. Doing your own internal work not only allows you a better grasp of what your role is, and how you can best serve and lead but it also builds proactivity – the act of intentionally looking for ways to change one’s environment rather than waiting to be forced to act (Bateman & Crant, 1993).

In this scenario, I gave myself internally approximately 2 weeks to 30 days to assess my environment, get a greater sense of the major objectives I needed to accomplish, learn my team, meet key executives and partners, etc., and then I created 30-day time blocks with my team for further work. Important as an outcome for my leader time was being able to identify the critical, priority items I absolutely had to analyze, assess, and understand to gain clarity. That understanding would help me prioritize those tasks first for my team during our team time block phase.

〉 Team Time Blocks (30 days+) and a Plan

In this phase, we did the analysis work together. The pre-work/analysis I completed in leader time helped inform how I could structure the team time blocks. In my scenario, I coordinated 30-day blocks to accomplish a set of tasks that would allow us to get to the 3-month milestone. Below is an example of our team time block schedule.

• 30 days to initially assess/understand the environment – this time was used to research, analyze, and understand the environment guided by the pre-work I did in Leader time.
  
• 30 days to develop an initial plan for what comes next – this time was used for creating an initial plan of action that would meet what our executives needed.
  
• 30 days to present a plan and initiate action – this time was used to package our plan, clean it up, critique it from various angles then present it to our executives.

Note that within these 30-day time blocks, we had internal milestones we wanted to accomplish as an outcome of each time block, and in some cases, if we didn’t accomplish the milestone, we had to extend the time block to 40 days vs 30 days. Just remember it impacts your other time blocks if you’re constrained by an end date. In our case, we were constrained by a 3-month due date so we could only work within that time frame and not beyond it.

Final Notes

Two key things to remember for this topic:

〉 Remember opposites. We’ll talk about opposites quite a bit because it’s important to understand that within the opposites, exists the clues for how to resolve your issues. In the case of chaos and complexity, the opposite of chaos is order and the opposite of complexity is simplicity. Therefore, to combat both, leaders need to do their best to provide both structure and simplicity in any way they can. In my case, I used the time I knew I had to provide a structure for how we could move towards gaining clarity and I used a simple method like time blocks to simplify what we needed to do.

〉 Stay realistic and flexible when dealing with time. Realistically, even though you think you have time to do all that you need, your leadership will ask you to move faster – such is life. So even though you have a plan to use time blocks for example, you will need to be flexible and prepared to move faster if you have no other choice. You want to stay true to your original plan as much as possible of course and advocate to keep your schedule as is, but if that can’t occur, flexibility is key. I always recommend in either case, you add some flexibility and buffer in the time schedule. Know the critical areas that absolutely must be assessed and cannot be waived. Prioritize analysis of those. If you’re asked to move faster, do your pre-work/leader analysis first to see how you can shorten the time frames to give you what you need, focusing on the critical, priority items first then adjust, adapt and act!

Leaders, wishing you the best of luck out there. Feel free to share your observations, lessons learned, tips below in the comments or via social media either @carmen_igls or @thecreatvrs on Instagram or Threads. Looking forward to connecting with you all! ~Carmen

 

References:

Bateman, T., Crant, J.M (1993): “The Proactive Component of Organizational Behavior: A measure and correlates