by By Randy Chittum
I talk with a lot of leaders these days about the increasing complexity that characterizes our industry, organizations, and even teams. It has been years since anyone has disputed the notion that our environments are becoming more complex. One of the key characteristics of complexity is that the relationship between cause and effect starts to breakdown. In other words, prediction gets more and more difficult.
Paradoxically, this may be even more true for experts. Witness the tech quote, often linked to Bill Gates from 1981 – “640kB (of RAM) ought to be enough for anybody.” Or better yet, Charles H. Duell, the Commissioner of the U.S. Office of Patents in 1899 – “Everything that can be invented has been invented.”
We do not have a great track record of outstanding prediction!
We are poorly calibrated in this area because we tend to remember those instances when we were right and forget those when we were not. Research from behavioral economics suggests that our predictions are about in line with chance.
Most plans are predicated on some level of prediction. The belief that we have some idea of how things will turn out is the foundation of most plans. While that belief may be primarily unconscious, it is still present. Dwight Eisenhower said “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” I have always assumed he meant that the process of planning was more valuable than what it produced. In the context of complexity, he may also have meant that we should beware our attachment to our plans.
The opportunity may lie in how certain we are about our plans. Lord Kelvin was certain when he said that “Heavier than air flying machines are impossible.” At the time he was the President of the Royal Society of England. He made this statement just eight years before the Wright brothers proved him wrong. This level of certainty narrows our range of what is possible. The military has long been aware of what is referred to as “target fixation” in which a pilot may literally steer into the target because of how focused they were on that one thing. What is your form of target fixation that keeps you from seeing?
And just how do we function in organizations where planning, and plans, guide our thinking and actions? I don’t think the goal is less planning. I think the goal is less attachment to our plans. Practically, this means more frequent conversations that start not with how are we doing relative to our plan, but with whether are we pursuing the right plan at all. It means bringing new and broader perspective to our plans. It means asking different questions such as “What is trying to emerge here?,” “What keeps popping into our frame that we continue to ignore?”
Finally, it means having more humility about our plans and our certainty.
