Chaos Management for the Resilient Leader

Management Consultant Scott Love gives a simple model of how to manage chaos.

(PRWEB) October 20, 2004 -- Youve just been promoted to a new department and have to get up to speed quickly. How can you assess the history, current situation, challenges, and strategic direction of an organization in a short period of time and cope with it all? Or perhaps your best customer has just made a huge deviation from their normal pattern of orders and its going to take some maneuvering to get everyone else in the company to increase capacity or modify the specs of the original product design. Youve never experienced anything like this before and you only have a short period of time to take action. Welcome to chaos. So how do you manage it?

Change within your organization is non-stop and its ensuing byproduct is the unknown. The quicker we can get a handle on the situation, the sooner we can bounce back to a state of confidence and a command of the situation and start feeling like we have a clue again. Resilience is a core competency of strong managers and high performing sales people.

In the martial arts, your stance gives you power and a position of advantage over your opponent. When it comes to winning in a competitive market, managers who learn how to stand on solid ground operate from a position of power and a sense of control over those circumstances.

There are five steps that the resilient manager must follow to quickly recover to a position of strength:

1. Assess the situation.
2. Assess the options.
3. Get input from smart and knowledgeable people.
4. Determine a direction and make decisions.
5. Execute.

Recovery is actually quite simple as long as you know which questions to ask and how to think. Follow this line of questioning to help you quickly get a grip on the situation:

Who, What, When, Where, Why and How.
Here are a few examples of how these short and simple phrases can be integrated into tools of analysis. Dont let the simplicity of this line of questioning keep you from using it. Try it out and see if it works for you.

Who are the players associated with this new development?
Who do I need to have on my team who are not already on it?
What steps have been taken so far?
What steps need to be taken in the next two weeks?
When did this change occur?
When are the deadlines associated with action items that I need to take?
Where did the change feel the biggest impact?
Where do I need to spend my time?
Why did my client change their order?
Why did my staff respond this way?
How did this affect my relationship with my client?
How do I need to manage that relationship?

You get the picture. When we start using basic principles of analysis, we can start thinking critically and asking those questions that eventually lead to the information and ideas needed for recovery. If you need to, write the W5H questions on a single sheet of paper with a few spaces between the six words. Youll figure out which specific questions to ask as you start investigating your situation.

Here are a few words of caution: Spend thirty percent of your time in the analysis portion of your job and seventy percent in the actions. Thats thirty percent going over steps one through four, seventy percent on step five, which is to execute. It is your action that gives you momentum, power, velocity, and traction. When you step forward with your left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot, you are going forward and you still have time to think while you are moving ahead.

When you have nearly all the facts, then thats enough. You dont need to know everything. In a fast-paced world, sometimes you have to live in the land of 'good enough. And when it comes to resilience, action is the balm that soothes the wounds of chaos.

Copyright © 2004 Scott T. Love

Scott Love improves employee performance by showing managers how to put meaning back into work. To have him speak at your annual franchise, association, or corporate meeting, call him at 828-225-7700. To access his leadership resources and archive of leadership articles, visit www.scottlove.com.

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