To create a clear vision for an unclear future is what effective leaders do in a world marked with volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.
Ambiguity and change are close companions.
Being ambiguous about a change you want people to make significantly decreases the odds that people will be able to make the change. In study after study, researchers find that if people are unclear about where they are going, they'll just default to their old patterns and habits.
So this leaves leaders with a quandary in their complex world....who needs a vision that is directional without imposing too much (or too little) constraint on people. And a leader needs to muddle through toward a strategy that is clear enough for new actions but open enough to allow the unexpected to emerge. This guided process of evolution enables your vision and strategy to come to life.
In complex times, you'll need to do the following:
Shape the vision and draw the boundaries.
Understand the system by mapping polarities and attractors
Strengthen (or weaken) the attractors
Create safe-to-fail experiments to learn about the system and live into your evolving vision
A new book, "SIMPLE HABITS FOR COMPLEX TIMES: Powerful Practices for Leaders" by Jennifer Garvey Berger and Keith Johnston, can help you to better understand how the world is changing, how our ways of understanding it are changing, and how leaders must change to be more effective.
How might the pieces come together to enable you to thrive as a leader?
To thrive in this wilderness and come to love it, you'll need new muscles and new ways of making sense of the world around you, new practices that will augment your current approach. The authors use habits that will shape your thinking and action over time. In each case, the complex conditions of the world create the practice, which support these habits of mind that you'll develop as you read the book.
Source: Jennifer Garvey Berger: Simple Habits for Complex Times: Powerful Practices for Leaders