7 Brain-Based & Teachable Tools For Leading Powerfully In Today’s Relentless Complexity & Cha Not being able to predict with any certainty important elements of our short-term future is the new normal. And it’s is playing havoc with business (as usual)! Are we already in a global recession? Will we be by Q2 or Q3? Will North Korea’s Kim Jong-un launch a missile this year? Will India and Pakistan kick-off into war? Will Trump be impeached, win a Nobel Peace Prize or another 4 year term? Will millions of migrants be allowed to stay with their families or be kicked out of their homes? Will the Conservative Party and the Labour Party survive 2019 intact? Will the Republicans or Democrats implode before next years elections? Will there be huge tariffs on major manufacturing parts and raw materials? Will Brexit be hard, soft or disappear? Will there by this summer? Is the writing in the wall for our profession or business model given AI, automation and blockchain? Will any Brit be able to travel to Spain or France this year for their vacation? deadly heatwaves, fires, and tornados More personally, will you get sick this year and face unaffordable medical costs? are one medical bill away from disaster and the enormous costs of ill-health is the greatest cause of bankruptcy in the USA.Will you lose your job and/or face the stagnation that has made real wages drop for most people over the last decade? For the millions in the “ “ — those with zero-hour contracts, sole trader or freelance set-ups, or Uber-style gig economy livelihoods— not knowing how one will pay one’s bill from month to month is just the way things are. Such quotidian matters are utterly uncertain as the human body is an organism, and not an algorithm: acute ill-health is utterly unpredictable, as I found out recently when I broke my thumb the night before giving a keynote speech and then running a 2-day leadership program! 62% of US citizens precariat As economist Frank H. Knight made clear in the 1920s: this kind of uncertainty is not risk. With risk — business and personal — the probability of future events occurring can be estimated with some degree of certainty. Risks are known unknowns that can be mitigated against and planned for. Potential adverse effects can be minimized by good strategies and tactics. Uncertainties are unknowable unknowns. No amount of intelligence or data can iron out the complexities and chaos of uncertainty and make things predictable. But certain advanced leadership and innovation practices can help us engage with unknowability and use it to innovate: What this means is — and this is important! — no genius economist, poker player, data analyst, Silicon Valley coder, Nobel-Prize winning scientist, Google AI algorithm or any other maths-driven expert can diminish the challenges of uncertainty to every human being. So every person in a leadership position has to make important decisions, more or less daily, against a background of hundreds of vastly complex uncertainties that could make the difference between great success or massive failure. What makes this perhaps the greatest challenge facing today’s business professionals is that our brains evolved to deal with making decisions during a long period of relative ecological and cultural stability. The environment did not change much between generations. We worked out which berries were toxic, learnt how to stand upright, and eventually became Homo sapiens sapiens without a great deal changing in our world. But we now have to cope with a very different geological era, named after a species for the first time — the Anthropocene — where major environmental changes occur year to year and even month to month. The existential uncertainties of our damaged planet and the exponential technologies of digital networks have to be dealt with using Neolithic neurons. Our neurons have evolved to crave certainty and they feel real pain with uncertainty. Neurologically, uncertainty is agony and such to those that activate with physical pain. In recents experiments, people are than by knowing for sure they will be zapped. Most of us would rather know for certain that we’re going to encounter pain than to not be able to predict it. , and those that choose the predictable electric shock develop less stomach ulcers (because they are less stressed). In fact, . Just to stimuli that aren’t even painful in themselves. emotional pain lights up similar brain circuits more stressed out by the threat of an electric shock (that may or may not be given) Rats prefer predictable pain than uncertain pain all stress might well be caused by the brains inability to predict effectively expecting uncertain but potentially “bad” news increases our sensitivity We are wired to avoid uncertainty like the plague. We usually experience the fast-paced world as a constant painful threat. Unless we are fully awake and aware and so , radical and relentless uncertainty triggers — cancel that leadership program, stop hiring for growth, freeze the innovation fund! — not creative responses… just at the point that we need to adapt with agility most to stay in tune with the fast-changing environment our business must survive/thrive within. If we can stay tuned to and not become too stressed out and reactive with it, we can use it to activate a part of our brain — [the locus coeruleus](http://When threastened by it, our brains become activated an area called the locus coerlisu which then shifts our problem-solving apppoaioch.) — that switches us into strategic problem-solving mode. VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) able to tolerate uncertainty well knee-jerk reactions “unexpected uncertainty” However, when faced with uncertainty, it often seems easier to retreat into things we can control, like spreadsheets and plans. We can be seduced to hide behind the great 20th Century illusion that numbers about the future are any less uncertain than ideas about it are. In fact, the management “science” we inherited from the Industrial Age emerged to minimize inefficiencies and maximize outputs in periods of stability and predictability. Our management processes simply cannot cope with radical unknowability. This is why so many businesses, and so many leaders, are paralyzed by “black swan” events like Brexit or Trump’s Trade Wars. However, look deeper and with uncertainty comes radical possibility. As systems dissemble, and many companies hunker down, halt investments and freeze innovation efforts, breakthroughs can occur much more frequently (as can breakdowns). So as we are all leaders that have to deal with relentless uncertainty, we can use this reality. We can always be poised to seize the opportunities on offer with agility, velocity and commitment, diversifying our offer to serve emerging needs and deal with potential disaster. To help, here are some profoundly powerful brain-based yet wisdom-wired techniques — all of them teachable, learnable, and masterful— for leading with creativity and confidence in an uncertain world: 1) Find Purpose Fast And Ground Your Decisions In it Purpose — why you lead and why your business exists — is your greatest anchor in the tsunami of these uncertain times. Purpose is something that can be by leaders as part of our deepest reflections on the meaning of life, leadership, and enterprise. This is not just a vague cause or exciting mission but a compelling way to serve society; something rooted in your very understanding of your individual and collective existence. Purpose is how you contribute to solving problems that really matter in our damaged and disrupted world, full of global risks to the existence of our species. defined, refined, and unfolded As : Purpose has been show to reduce sleep disturbance and cortisol levels (the corrosive stress hormone), generate a faster brain processing speed, more accurate memory and a 400% increase in being engagement at work. Purpose is a commitment as much as a calling and it helps us keep going, step after step, with clarity and resolve no matter how VUCA the VUCA world gets. As purpose stays consistent throughout our life, albeit it shifting and growing as we expand our potential, we can ground all our decisions in our purpose, especially those that need to be made without perfect data: i.e. all of them! detailed in this book 2) Stay Open Even When You Want to Shut Down the Most It is tempting in crazy and chaotic times to shut down and withdraw from decision making and noise. This the the flight or freeze stress response to perceived threats. But if we do as the Stoics suggested, and stay open to possibilities even when we want to hide, it allows us to metabolize every change in the environment into value. This is the core to the master of transformational leadership. Openness to experience, one of the Big 5 Personality Traits, and life fulfillment. As : “Openness, which measures cognitive flexibility and the willingness to entertain novel ideas, has emerged as a lifelong protective factor. The linchpin seems to be the creativity associated with the personality trait — creative thinking reduces stress and keeps the brain healthy.” has been linked to innovativeness written in Scientific American As I share in , on personal transformation: is workable. Everything can be used for growth as a leader and as a business. This is why the Taoists suggest we “think like a mountain”: open, stable, committed. effective self-mastery, which lies at the core of , can help people become far less intolerant of uncertainty and be able to stay open to the inherent adaptive possibilities in every uncertain environment. my book Switch On everything Studies show that my company’s work performing “consciousness upgrades” for transformational leaders 3) Give Yourself & Your Teams Space, Time & Permission to Reflect Many on creativity show that our brain needs down-time to have breakthrough ideas that can solve unprecedented challenges. If we do not give ourselves time and space to “Reflect and Connect” (the dots), we get locked into repeating old habits and expecting different results rather than engaging with the fast-changing reality on the ground. This can happen at the scale of a global enterprise (Kodak) or national government (Brexit Britain). recent research studies It’s not because we aren’t smart that we fail. Its because uncertainty demands wisdom as much as intelligence: the wisdom to let go of old habits and assumptions and embrace new ones as time flows. We need to challenge our cognitive biases and expand our minds in order to deal with uncertain and unknowable curve balls. This can only happen when we have rested our brain feel enough to speak up with new ideas and insights. We can learn how to cultivate psychological safety in ourselves and others; as well as how to hold space for people to sense, reflect and adapt. and psychologically safe 4) Master Forecasting By Practicing Constant Belief Updating Although most predictions by experts are not successful, into super-forecaster shows that we can all be trained and developed to be much better at predicting possible futures than those who do not practice. We can use advanced futuring tools like scenario planning and collective sense-making processes to parse weak signals. These help us grapple with uncertainty and wrestle breakthroughs from the jaws of chaos. research Strategists that are trained in how cognitive biases lead to failures and mistakes and then selected for higher than average foresight capabilities are . As the leading authority on , Philip Tetlock, says: “Belief updating is to good forecasting as brushing and flossing is to good dental hygiene. It can be boring, occasionally uncomfortable, but it pays off in the long term.” twice as likely to predict events in the future than untrained leaders superforecasting 5) Refine Your Intuition to Balance Out The (Imperfect) Data In a , leaders who blend intuition with data out-perform those that use just data alone. The research amongst City of London investment backs demonstrated that “the most successful traders (whose annual income averaged £500,000) were neither the ones who relied entirely on analytics nor the ones who just went with their guts. They focused on a full range of emotions, which they used to judge the value of their intuition.” major study Developing wisdom around the “somatic markers” within us, encouraging increased awareness of sensations in our viscera, helps us refine our intuition over time so that it becomes ever more useful. , don’t confused instinct (the fear driven threat response) with genuine intuition. That way leads to disaster. interoceptive But as I explain in more recent book 6) Stick To Routines To Store Precious Cognitive Energy for Adaptation . We need to keep as much energy available to power our brain so it can constantly update its views of the world as new information and intuition comes flows in. If we fritter away our energy on relatively value-less decisions we don’t have the cognitive resources we need to update our beliefs and challenge our own assumptions. We are too tired and overwhelmed to cope and so turn away from the headwinds rather than use them. Dealing with the challenges of uncertainty requires cerebral energy So do like Obama did as President when he wore the same tie and suit combo each day of the week: radically reduce the number of important choices you have to make each day — by following stable routines and rhythms — so storing up the energy needed to engage with our crazy world and deal with unknowability positively. Routines provide a kind of psychological safety that helps adults and kids alike remain creativity and inspired even when things are challenging. less 7) Have A Vision To Take Charge of Change that having a strong vision the single most important trait for successful entrepreneurship and innovation leadership. As a study co-author says: “Vision is the gift of being able to look forward into the future, of being able to develop a clear path forward in the quest to accomplish lofty goals and ambitions. It’s with vision that we’re inspired to push through our own insecurities, fears, and — and ultimately to succeed.” You can use very powerful tools to ensure that you can imagine, craft, and share your vision powerfully in stories (in all types of media). Research indicates uncertainties The that increased sensitivity to uncertainty provides an adaptive edge. “We practice our response to ever-present (though erratic) levels of risk by recognizing when we’re not in control and recruiting every available neuron to regain control.” This is what visionary action does. We generate a positive “reality distortion bubble” — what Nobel Prize winning behavioral economist — that dances with unknowability and unlocks uncertainty. research shows Daniel Kahneman calls “delusional optimism” So sense changes in the environment, reflect on what this means, intuit the next step in context of the best data… and then step forward powerfully. Whilst others freeze you can advance your most ambitious innovations and transformations, leveraging the space that others who are not progressing give us. While everyone else is fearful, it’s an ideal opportunity to invest in the next game-changing idea and breakthrough innovation. As Woody Allen is supposed to have said, 80% of success is showing up (without fear or freezing). Fortune favors the bold — and never more so than in uncertain times.
