“You don’t need to be 100% certain about market conditions to be confident that your organization is ready to win.”
We keep hearing stories about these unprecedented times. Everything Is changing, everyone is waiting. Companies and employees are plagued with fear and uncertainty. How is a leader to lead?
I read an ad recently for SAP that said, “There’s no playbook for what’s next. Good thing you don’t need one.”
What? Companies need a playbook! A strategy, a plan, a roadmap. But how to do that during today’s uncertainty?
Leaders have two options, both valid:
- Certainty – “I know where we’re going and how to get there. Follow my lead.”
This is what we’re used to, what’s most comfortable for leaders. If this is you, you’re probably in the minority – congratulations. But what if you don’t know exactly what’s coming?
- Curiosity – Leaders in this environment lead with the message, “I may not have all the answers, but here’s our culture, here’s our strategy, and here’s our plan today. Let’s keep asking smart questions and figuring it out together.”
Replace fear with curiosity; indecision with agility, ambiguity with transparency. Rely on a larger mission, a core strategy, and a collaborative culture aligned toward a goal.
Minimize Mystery, Increase Trust
Invite stakeholders to engage in a journey disruption, imagination, innovation and revolution. This journey is not always easy or comfortable, but it’s most often the path to winning. Do what you can to shine a light on the steps immediately ahead for your employees and customers — use words, metaphors, and stories to frame your expectations and confidence that you will discover the future together.
I love how ServiceNow’s Chief Digital Information Officer Kellie Romack uses an apt metaphor to translate the mystery of AI into a welcome strategic tool among teams and customers. She advocates for AI systems to be “glass boxes, not black boxes,” where the workings are visible and explainable rather than opaque. This approach is grounded in transparency, education, experimentation, collaboration, empathy, and ultimately – adoption.
“You have to create understanding of how to use AI in the context of what you’re doing every day. And not just automate the work, reimagine the work, and help people understand – demystify it, understand it, create that democratized environment so every user, technical or not, can use AI, put it to work, understand it, and help be productive for their business and for their customers.
“So I believe in education. Educating people and helping people understand the what and the how and the outcomes. So we want to talk about not just the mystery behind AI, we want you to understand it so you can also reimagine how you work with it every single day.”
So leadership communication grounded in education minimizes the mystery, maximizes engagement, quells fear, and invites active innovation during times of rapid change and uncertainty. “We’re on this journey together.”
To be clear, every leadership approach conveys confidence. You don’t need to be 100% certain about market conditions to be confident that your organization is ready to win.
SAP says you can “turn volatility into velocity.” (How’s that for spin?)
But really, leaders who try to brush off uncertainty by subscribing to outdated, rigid, or ever-changing frameworks will lose credibility; fear and ambiguity within their organizations will creep in, the noise will take hold.
During high velocity, organizations need clarity.
Regardless of your leadership approach, you need to deliver clear, consistent, constant communication during times of turbulence.
Define diverse stakeholder groups. Each likely needs different approaches. How does ambiguity affect their behaviors? How much does it affect their outcomes? Where are they on the fear/curiosity/acceptance curve? How critical is their collaboration and performance?
In summary:
Leaders can admit that the road ahead is uncertain, but they can lead with curiosity and confidence that aligns and inspires the teams needed to execute.
What to do now:
- Make your messages understandable, memorable, and repeatable. This means simple, precise, consistent, and organized.
- Beware the “curse of knowledge” — make sure your messages are clear to those outside your leadership bubble.
- Acknowledge, don’t ignore or dismiss, fears and concerns.
- Encourage and require active inquiry, experimentation, and idea sharing at every level.
- Remember that middle managers, champions, and respected influencers are critical for transmitting and amplifying your messages.
- Use every channel, media, occasion, and platform to communicate.
- Remember two-way communication is necessary for innovation. You don’t have all the answers.
- Create a communications calendar and stick to a regular cadence of multi-media outreach.
- Be creative – virtual town halls, topic-specific chats, in-house webinars, customer forums, innovation contests, performance awards.
- Leverage storytelling – it’s the stickiest.
- Leverage analogy/metaphor to makes complex ideas simple, such as the glass box.
For more information about building your company’s culture toward flexibility, adaptability, curiosity, creativity, innovation, flexibility, and discovery, read my next post about “Human Leadership in an Age of Disruption.”