Navigating disruption

In a transformative era where the boundaries between domains, between industries and between now and future is so blurry, every future scenario is both probable and possible.

'No matter how meticulously you plan and execute, you can never guarantee success'

Leading such a change brings with it several challenges and opportunities to grow, learn, make mistakes and correct in a continuous ‘Kaizen’ like manner. However, one most important thing is that no matter how meticulously you plan and execute, you can never guarantee success. Over obsession of collection of all data and calculation of all possible outcomes adds so much inertia that you would never be able to move forward. Specially in an environment where you are predicting not only what the future user may need, but why would they need it, how would they use it etc… Make no mistake, several changes we are undergoing as a society are unprecedented. However, there is solace in the notion that throughout history, managers and leaders have dealt with several such ‘black swan’ events successfully before.

Whatever you decide to do, you have to uncover the unknowns along the way and have correct mechanisms in place to make timely, calculated changes along the execution. You must Create an environment where not knowing is OK, where failure is OK, where change in direction is OK. You need to strike a balance between the known and unknown, between the constant and the changing, between the probable and improbable. But how can you maximise the chance of success, even probabilistically?

The hill climbing analogy from computer science.

To borrow a lesson from Machine learning is hill climbing. Consider you are at a random spot on a hilly terrain, with fog everywhere, with the goal of reaching the tallest hill. If at any given moment, all you do is take a step in the direction that takes you higher, you may end up climbing the smallest hill and reach a local peak which may not be the highest point (known as local optima in Computer science).

Additionally, you can add some randomness into your walk. You start out with more randomness and reduce it over time. This gives you a better chance of reaching the highest climb (Global optima). Finally, increase the ‘randomness’ and repeatedly drop yourself in different ‘random’ parts and over time learn which was the ‘correct hill’

The key word over here - Randomness.

In my opinion, this is a requirement for execution. In my very limited research over my short career so far, I have yet to come across any book or article to add randomness to the execution. Don’t get me wrong, I am not suggesting we run helter-skelter. My point is to collectively use the brain power of the team to add calculated randomness. The leader needs to orchestrate this randomness and manage it at the same time by not adding structure or procedures, but by conducting continuous, macro analysis of the results and improving.