“The objective of all dedicated employees should be to thoroughly analyse all situations, anticipate all problems prior to their occurrence, have answers for these problems, and move swiftly to solve these problems when called upon. However, when you are up to your ass in alligators it is difficult to remind yourself your initial objective was to drain the swamp.”

I first saw this as a kid on the wall of my dad’s study and it stayed with me ever since. Recently, I looked into its origin, and several people and political situations are mentioned. I also checked Wikipedia, that resource of absolute fact. They translated the expression as:

“When performing a long and complex task, and when you are utterly immersed in secondary and tertiary unexpected tangential subtasks, it’s easy to lose sight of the initial objective. This sort of distraction can be particularly problematic if the all-consuming subtask or sub-subtask is not, after all, particularly vital to the original, primary goal, but ends up sucking up time and resources (out of all proportion to its actual importance) only because it seems so urgent.”

 So, this is all about prioritising what is urgent versus what is important. In a number of organisation development projects VA is supporting, I’ve noticed a recurring theme: everything feels both important and urgent.

For many leaders, this is stressful. Deciding to do one thing over another is rarely straightforward. The complexity of today’s environment and the constantly changing context in which we seek to do business demands a different level of thinking and a mindset that is at least equal to the wicked problems that we encounter.

Trying to analyse everything before making a decision can slow you down. By the time you act, your priorities may already have changed. This scientific, Tayloristic approach is broken. We now operate in a VUCA world of complex relationships, where transformation matters more than transaction.

Navigating Complexity as a Leadership Team

What does this mean for a leadership team navigating these turbulent waters? It means holding many things lightly while testing and acting on what matters most.

Doing nothing is not an option; that leads to paralysis. Acting on everything ignores the connected nature of the business ecosystem. Everything in your system is connected, so agility and responsiveness are critical.

Individual leaders and also leadership teams must be able to handle the adaptive nature of today and tomorrow’s changes. This demands leaders to be well connected to their people, good at listening and questioning and able to lift themselves out of the weeds and see the wider system. They need to inspire people and also uncover and address conflict and things which create anxiety for their people.

Priorities: Less is More

Back to decision making; leadership teams must make decisions, but they cannot treat everything as a priority. Someone once said that if you have more than three priorities, you don’t have any.

Priorities: Less is More

Leadership teams must be like Canadian lumberjacks. Their job is to cut down trees and get them to the sawmill by floating them down river.

At times, the real work begins when logs jam as the river narrows. The team must step onto the log jam with chainsaws and ropes to deal with the blockage.

They focus on the key logs first. They cut them, turn them, or remove them to restore flow. The rest then follows.

They don’t deal with every log, only those that have the greatest impact. Further downriver, more jams will appear, so staying close to the system is essential.

So, think of yourself and your leadership team as lumberjacks, arm yourself with chainsaws, do the training to use them and get out there on the log jam and start the real work!

Written by Rob Kelly.