Bonus: Finding Confidence Amid Uncertainty

Making Decisions in a Rapidly Changing Environment

This week, we bring you a bonus post: Finding Confidence Amid Uncertainty. Enjoy!

Change

Whether we realize it or not, we live in a constant state of change. We are changing, and the world is changing around us. Sometimes, we seek change — we want to learn something new or try something new. Or we seek out information — an article, an online course, or a local expert — and we are changed. We gain new knowledge, get new ideas, and make new connections.

Sometimes, change happens to us — our computer software is updated, our local grocery store closes, or our schedule changes, and we are forced to adjust.

Change happens in business, too. Technology, regulation, and customer demands are changing, and they require organizations to be proactive, nimble, and responsive. Businesses need to get ahead of what’s coming to avoid being left behind.

Amid all this change and uncertainty, we, as individuals and leaders, are required to make numerous decisions every day. Some are small, with little potential risk. Others are much larger and could have long-term impacts.

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Finding Confidence

In this rapidly changing landscape, how can you have confidence in your decisions?

• Do the work required to know your customers, your market, and the landscape. In design thinking, we often refer to this as exploration and empathy gathering. Go out into the world and talk to people, observe them, listen to them, and learn from them. Gain empathy (‘the ability to understand and share the feelings of another’) for your customers, your market conditions, and your larger ecosystem. Then, use this information as the foundation for your decisions and to create your north star. This will keep you headed in the correct direction, even as you make adjustments and recalibrations along the way.
• Seek an outside perspective. In situations of uncertainty, seek the perspectives of others. Share and learn. Be open to new opportunities. Let go of your ego in favor of new learnings and new connections. You don’t have to follow what others are doing, but listening and considering other perspectives will allow you to make intentional decisions that are right for you.
• Know your variables. Decisions are based on information, experience, intuition, and market conditions. Whether it’s the price of your materials, the whims of your customer, the support of your board, or what’s trending in a key region, these are all variables that change. Be aware of the variables that inform your decision-making and revisit your decisions when your variables change.
• Take a portfolio approach. Look at the initiatives, activities, resources, and investments of your group or organization as a comprehensive group of activities, a portfolio in which you’re able to manage riskier bets with safer ones. Use this approach to look across your organization and see how each of your efforts is progressing, and make adjustments. Maybe something new is hitting it out of the park and needs more funding or a larger team, or maybe they’re learning something that would benefit another effort within the organization. Perhaps another initiative is not meeting its goals; ask why it is off-track. What do we need to get it on track? What might its performance tell us about our customers, the market, or any of our decisions or assumptions? Have any of our key variables changed, and what can we learn? What might this mean for the future of our business? By taking a portfolio approach, you can balance managing your current business and evolving your current business while you explore what might disrupt it.
• Let go of being right. Lastly, finding confidence in your decisions and this new way of working requires letting go of the need to be right and replacing it with the need to make the best decision you can, given the current situation. Point your efforts in the right direction and pair that with a commitment to revisiting and revising your decisions based on ever-evolving variables.

Following these guidelines will give you the knowledge and insights you need to be confident in your decisions, regardless of the changing environment. They will provide you with the foundation, mindset, and operating model to act now and evolve as the world evolves.

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