Simple Habits for Complex Times
Powerful Practices for Leaders
byJennifer Garvey Berger, Keith Johnston
Book Edition Details
Summary
Toss aside the conventional wisdom of predictable strategies and embrace a leadership style that's as dynamic as the challenges you face. "Simple Habits for Complex Times" serves as a beacon for leaders navigating through the murky waters of uncertainty. Here, the power lies in adopting fresh perspectives, asking transformative questions, and gaining a holistic view of your environment. This book isn't about regurgitating stale management tactics—it's a call to arms for leaders to cultivate agility and insight. Whether you're steering a corporate behemoth or a nimble startup, these practices will refine your acumen, equipping you to tackle even the stickiest of issues with newfound clarity and confidence. A must-read for those ready to evolve with the times and lead with wisdom.
Introduction
The world around us is changing at an unprecedented pace, filled with volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity that can leave even the most experienced leaders feeling overwhelmed. Traditional approaches to leadership, built for predictable environments, often fall short when faced with the messy realities of modern organizations. Yet within this complexity lies tremendous opportunity for those willing to embrace new ways of thinking and acting. The key isn't to fight against uncertainty, but to develop simple habits of mind that help us navigate and even thrive in these challenging conditions. By learning to ask different questions, take multiple perspectives, and see systems rather than isolated problems, leaders can transform both themselves and their organizations in remarkable ways.
Ask Different Questions and Take Multiple Perspectives
The foundation of effective leadership in complex times begins with fundamentally changing how we approach problems and people. Instead of rushing to solutions, we must learn to ask different questions that open up new possibilities rather than narrow them down. Yolanda Murphy, director of the statewide Family and Children's Services Division, found herself facing a crisis when six children died and four were hospitalized while under her agency's care. Her initial instinct was to ask familiar questions: "Who is responsible? Where in the system is the problem? What can I do to be more powerful?" These questions, while natural, kept her trapped in a mindset of threat and narrowing to decide, which actually shut down the learning and creativity she desperately needed. When her colleague Doug suggested they try asking different questions, Yolanda discovered a transformative approach. Instead of seeking blame, they began asking: "What if all these terrible things were an opportunity for us to do something radically different? What are the many different pieces this problem might touch?" This shift from a threat mindset to an opportunity mindset, from narrowing to opening, suddenly revealed new possibilities they hadn't seen before. To implement this approach, start by noticing the questions you naturally ask when facing a challenge. Group them and identify the underlying mindset. Then consciously shift to different questions that move you from judgment to curiosity, from narrowing to expanding possibilities. Remember that everyone is the hero of their own story, and understanding others' perspectives will give you access to information and solutions you could never reach alone.
Create Safe-to-Fail Experiments and Learn from Complexity
Understanding when to treat something as simple versus complex is crucial for effective leadership. The key is learning to engage with complexity through small, reversible experiments rather than seeking perfect solutions. Curtis, the IT director at FACS, helped Yolanda understand this distinction when analyzing their child protection failures. Some aspects of their work were indeed simple or complicated, with clear procedures and best practices that could be researched and implemented. However, the emergence of violence against vulnerable children was complex, arising from countless interacting variables that couldn't be predicted or controlled through simple cause-and-effect thinking. The breakthrough came when they stopped searching for the single cause or silver bullet solution. Instead, they began examining what the system was currently inclined to do and designed safe-to-fail experiments. These small-scale tests allowed them to probe the system, learn from what emerged, and gradually shift the system's inclinations in healthier directions. The experiments were designed to be doable, safe to fail, provide learning opportunities, and could be scaled up if successful or dampened down if problematic. When facing your own challenges, first determine whether you're dealing with something simple, complicated, or complex. For complex issues, resist the urge to find the one right answer. Instead, focus on understanding current system inclinations and design multiple small experiments that can safely test new approaches while providing rich learning opportunities. Start with experiments that are small, cheap, short-term, and reversible.
Grow People to Be Bigger Than Problems
The most sustainable way to handle increasing complexity is to develop people's capacity to think and act more skillfully in uncertain situations. This means moving beyond simply managing problems to actually growing people's ability to handle ambiguity and collaborate across differences. At Actualeyes, CEO Squint and his team struggled with their vision of becoming a software and services company. Despite having this clear vision for nearly a year, services had only grown from 10% to 13% of their revenue. Jarred, a newly promoted manager, realized he had been so focused on software development that he hadn't actually done anything to increase service offerings. The breakthrough came when they recognized that software versus services wasn't a problem to be solved, but a polarity to be managed. Using polarity mapping, they identified the positive and negative aspects of both sides. Rather than swinging from one side to the other, they learned to surf the polarity, staying in the positive aspects of both sides while avoiding the negative pitfalls. This led to designing new attractors that would draw people toward more balanced software-services integration. To grow people effectively, focus on creating conditions where they can develop new capacities rather than just solving immediate problems. Design stretch assignments that require people to work slightly beyond their current skill level. Create cross-functional teams that require collaboration across different perspectives. Most importantly, model your own learning and growth, letting people see you grappling with uncertainty and adapting your approach based on new information.
Summary
The journey from traditional leadership to thriving in complexity requires embracing a fundamental truth: we cannot predict and control our way to success in an uncertain world. The old approaches of seeking perfect solutions must give way to new habits of mind that embrace uncertainty as a source of possibility rather than threat. By learning to ask different questions, take multiple perspectives, create safe-to-fail experiments, and grow people's capacity to handle complexity, leaders can guide their organizations through any challenge while discovering opportunities they never imagined possible. The path forward begins with a single step: choosing curiosity over certainty, and starting your own safe-to-fail experiment in leading differently today.
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