Be Agile
In 1911, a bunch of crazy men started to walk towards an inspiring mission, reaching the South Pole. In such an uncertain situation, the only thing they could do was just going forward another day. Journey by journey a new goal were set. Living the moment without knowing which obstacles the will find behind the horizon. On October 24th, Scott and 4 other men left the group to make the final journey. When they walked enough to see the pole, the January 17th, and the visibility allows it, they saw the black flags Amundsen and his team placed about 5 weeks earlier. In current business world, when moving in the hardest part of the complexity scale, we must act in the same way. Plan on the short term, analyze where we are, and plan another journey with the gained insights. This means that setting goals for a whole year and all its quarters is not a good idea when dealing with VUCA environments since those plans take into account only the information available at beginning of the journey. It is better just planning a quarter, or even a shorter period if extreme complexity. Then, with the information gained after the executionof each iteration, we can planthe next period with greater accuracy.
Plan in the short term, and use the information gained to define the next iteration.
Learn And Know Your Environment
In 1881, Nikola Tesla was walking when He had a Eureka moment. He used his walking steak to draw on the ground a diagram of the idea that has just appeared in his mind that will change the world, the alternate current. In a chaotic world, we need all the power of our brains, not just the CEO brain, but the power of all the brains in the organization (collective intelligence). Intuition is the most powerful way of thinking. Is the intelligence that makes possible the Eureka moments. Is the tool that N. Tesla used in 1881 to made possible today that the company with the same name change the world again. But for training and improving our intuition, we need to learn constantly and observe the environment without any concrete goal, just for adding data to our intuition to improve it.
To success in a complex environment we have to feed our intuition with training and learning,
and complement it with the previous steps, focus and an agile way of doing
to fuel our brains with experience andan inspiring vision to keep going.
Put All Brains At Maximum Speed
Recently, we have seen how Sweden increases productivity while cutting to a 6 hourswork day. Current work and life is very demanding for our brains. We need fresh minds to tackle work and personal affairs. The term“decision fatigue”, highly studied in the last decades, shows us the reason because working 6 hours is better. Our brain is fatigued when too much options, when we make decisions and when we solve difficult problems. And that is exactly what we do in highly changing environments. In such situations, our brains consume energy at a higher rate and we end with empty reserves to tackle the whole day. In this situation, time for resting (even duringworking hours as Google Famous napping rooms show), flexible and shorter working hours to increase the time in charging energy mode (leisure time), having inspiring goals that fuel our motivation in the workplace, etc. are key to maintain all the brains fresh to use intuition, creativity and our problem-solving capabilities at peak performance.
We have to change the configuration of work to maximize mental, emotional and physical energy.
Por Joaquín Peña. PhD.
Ways to make your
Leadership a blast
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