02/19/2018
Controlling Chaos is a Bad Idea
Clients call my firm when there is a problem. As an executive coaching and organizational alignment firm, we are not needed when everything is swimming along. But the strange thing about organizational life? The ground beneath our feet is often giving away under the soil—and we don’t recognize it. Human nature tries to organize chaos or discord and “solve it” somehow. We hire consultants to “fix” the organization when, more often than not, letting the chaos run amuck to a point, is a very viable strategy.
The fact is—human beings are constantly changing and morphing, second to second. Naturally, the work alliances and relationships that we form are also in a constant state of flux. After over 30 years working with organizations in their journeys toward mission fulfillment—the one thing that I know for sure is that they are never static. Sometimes we are tuned out from the subtle changes, we choose not to see them, or we are so busy with our organizational task at hand (our immediate job or project), that we become distanced from the true pulse of the very group of colleagues that we work with on a day-to-day basis.
We start from a point of positive inquiry (also known as Appreciative Inquiry from David Cooperrider). We often find that things aren’t as broken as the client may have felt when they first called us in. My Grandmother from Louisiana always admonished me, “Things are never as bad as they seem.” She was right.
I have learned that we miss the opportunity for optimal individual, team, and organizational performance when we try to corral chaos. Human intelligence tries to make patterns and direction from seemingly disparate and colliding information. This very admirable trait is one of the hallmarks of human existence: we create brilliance/we innovate from what seems like chaos. We see things differently—we create something new.
The key to personal and organizational growth is to look for the patterns in the seeming chaos—look for the road maps to innovation. One of my high school calculus teachers told me that the sign of superior intelligence is to be able to sit with confusion. In other words—sit with the chaos and let it “speak” to you.
Five Tips for Using Chaos for Growth:
1. Sit quietly, free of distractions. One a piece of paper—write one sentence that describes the chaotic or troubling situation that you are trying to solve (e.g. 1: we need the salesforce to bring in 20% net new top line sales growth in the next 12 months; e.g. 2: I need to become less hijacked by my frustration in my team interactions)
2. Just below that sentence on the same piece of paper—depict the chaos that you perceive in the problem by drawing a series of asteroids swirling in the air—and name each asteroid (e.g., “Sheryl’s short temper”, “weekly team goals”, “lack of team direction”, “Sam’s ego”, “lack of sales support”, etc.). Go to a bigger piece of paper if needed to exhaust all of the chaos elements that you perceive are part of the problem.
3. Now take a red pen and write down three to five elements that you determine to be a common theme running through all of the chaos asteroids (e.g., team attitudes, personality attributes, lack of structural and financial support, etc.).
4. Next, take a green pen and write down three positive aspects under each of the three to five elements that you compiled in step 3.
5. Finally, review your work in step 4 and determine how you can harness the positive aspects of the chaos elements to reframe the problem and come up with a new innovative path. You are reframing how you see chaos and using it help your brain think differently. This is when innovation happens.
A Sample Chaos Element Narrative
1. I need the team to perform at higher levels and deliver 20% net higher sales next month.
2. Chaos depiction (these would each be illustrated as a separate “asteroid”): Mary’s short temper; “lack of sales back room assistance”; “marketing deficiency”; “lack of sales skill”; “short staffed”; “low pipeline”.
3. Red pen work (common elements):
A) Personality based conflict on team
B) Lack of corporate resources
C) Sales skill deficiency
4. Green pen work (positive aspects of items in #3—working with 3A by example)
3 (A): -Personality conflict indicates passion about the work—a charged environment; strong drive to get things done against the deadlines; opportunity for some on the team to lead and mentor others in the group.
5. Review of my analysis in step four and the resulting narrative: The team is highly motivated to perform, however there are those on the team who don’t seem to be able to deliver against their individual key performance indicators. This, in turn, frustrates the high performers who feel that they are carrying the team. We can set up mentoring alliances between the high performers and those in need of assistance, so that the team takes ownership for its performance as a whole. We can also gather the team together for a facilitated session to determine the increased resources or resourcefulness that we need from the organization to meet the heightened goal. Then we can determine how we can strategically garner the resources or find a work-around that will produce similar results.
This was a fairly simple example of how to reframe chaos to view “the problem” in a light more suitable to positive resolution. This methodology works for infinitely complex problems by expanding the “asteroid field drawing” and following the same synthesis for each “asteroid” (chaos element). Themes will emerge.
This process is based loosely on concepts of neural plasticity (re-wiring the brain to think differently), reframing, and positive inquiry to set the mind on the path toward new possibilities. Chaos provides the opportunity to harness new and divergent energy when viewed as a positive force seeking to reveal new paths toward innovation and creativity.
