Social Mirror: In Your Face

When faced with a new challenge, forget about acting fast. Instead start a three-step process to formulate the best solution

In these turbulent times, everyone wants you to act quickly.

Don’t. It’s a trap.

The strategic moves needed today depend on your ability to make smart decisions—not fast ones. Particularly in times of stress or emergency, the pressure to take quick action is enormous. That pressure plays into many people’s strengths and possibly yours as well. Doing something, and quickly, has been a mantra in the American working world, but look where it has led us. The insatiable desire for short-term returns has decimated Wall Street and the U.S. economy as a whole.

So many current challenges have no known solution because they stem from complex, new issues. These are what we would call adaptive challenges—issues whose solution is outside your repertoire. The most important thing to do when confronted with these challenges is to resist leaping into action. You cannot solve these complex challenges with mere technical solutions.

The challenges we now face will require us to grow into a new set of competencies. Pushing out the decision time line, taking a wider and longer view, and stepping back to clarify the nature of the problem itself—before you make enormous investments or roll out large-scale programs—can be the difference between strategic growth and wasted resources.

Three Steps To Cooler Interventions

We admire the head of a global professional services firm we have worked with who resisted the pressure from partners—and even some clients—to make big bets in international expansion. He chose to wait until some competitors had made their investments so he could learn from their mistakes and distinguish between the flavor of the month and serious opportunities for growth.

Resisting the impulse to act is the first step in responding to a challenge that has no easy technical fix. Slowing down the freight train is difficult, so here are the three steps to follow:

(1) Observe: Collect data and stand back to watch events and patterns around you.

(2) Interpret: Examine what you are seeing and hearing, then develop multiple hypotheses about what is really going on.

(3) Intervene: Act to address the challenge, test multiple hypotheses, and then monitor progress on each.

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