From “Fast Company”…
How to Lead in the Moment without Losing Your Mind
The ability to change and adapt—and to make your work about continuous improvement rather than hitting big targets—means completely embracing the tools and attitudes of change management. For this to work senior management needs to be actively involved in the work of change rather than setting it up and then standing back to observe results.
It also means tapping into the experience and skills of senior managers and boards to find new sources of innovation. Unless your most powerful minds are set on the tasks of change, leading by example, you are wasting your most valuable resource; not to mention setting a bad example for the rest of the company.
We live in a chaotic world—one we cannot fully predict. So give in to the chaos, learn to adapt, seek constant improvement, and live and lead in the current moment rather than in some imagined future, and to work with change at the most senior level. Lead in the now.
As the article above notes, we no longer live in a game-board level view of the world, wherein we set moves and observe results. Rather, we must get deeply into the game as leaders and continually adjust. This requires a different mindset.
From “The Junior Executive“…
The key is to fundamentally understand the integrated rates of change associated with each of these functions and begin to develop initiatives, plans of action, and strategies to manage them as an integrated whole.
The successful executive will acknowledge that raw arithmetical horsepower will not allow them to handle the level of complexity that is required at the executive level. Higher-level mathematical thinking that takes into consideration rates of change of the various functions and, most importantly, provides the flexibility demanded by probability in a very uncertain world, is necessary. This is true primarily from a foundational standpoint, but holds particular value from a practitioner’s point of view as well. The ability to model integrated functions on the run will provide a level of understanding that will substantially differentiate the executive candidate.