How Adaptive Leaders Can Agilely Deal with Uncertainty

Whether you’re a small business owner or a board member of a large or even international company, running a business is very different from the days of our parents and grandparents. With every advancement, comparable to artificial intelligence and automation, business leaders face countless challenges that are latest and unprecedented.

Given this latest reality, leaders must learn easy methods to pivot quickly, so to talk, by adopting the skills and mindset to reply with agility. Yet many cling to “tried and true” strategic planning practices but fail to satisfy today’s challenges.

Their extensive schedules and meticulous details can’t sustain with the fluid nature of geopolitical turmoil, supply chain disruptions, and cybersecurity threats that may rain down abruptly. This disconnect makes it harder for employees—often those tasked with implementing the plan—to do their jobs.

There is a lot of evidence about the failure rate of strategic planning. In 2022, Harvard Business School published a study that showed that 60% of strategic plans didn’t produce the expected results. Indeed, 95% of employees surveyed in the same study couldn’t articulate the basic strategies adopted by their organization.

Businesses large and small need latest, flexible and responsive ways to deal with today’s challenges.

What is adaptive leadership?

Adaptive leadership means being flexible and conscious of our “new normal.” It helps leaders pivot quickly, reassessing their priorities. This allows them to bring in the best people and resources to get the best results to reply to on a regular basis issues and crises.

One of the basic principles of adaptive leadership is the ability to make decisions in the moment, which is the basis of my book, From war zones to boardrooms: optimizing where strategic planning fails.

I have spent most of my profession working with people after the worst day of their lives. This is no exaggeration, they have all survived global conflicts; but irrevocably modified. Many have lost relations, limbs, homes and communities. Often they have needed to make life and death decisions with little time to think about the consequences.

There is no time to conduct interviews and assess the situation each on the battlefield and after it ends, so they’d to decide on the best solution: a common loss and common desires, in addition to the emergence of leaders who will encourage others.

Empathy plays a key role

The days of the stoic leader are passé. True leadership means stepping into the shoes of those expected to follow you and do the work needed to grow your enterprise, especially in the face of challenges.

Empathetic leaders are sensitive to the needs and concerns of their employees, which allows them to create an environment where everyone feels valued and heard, which translates into greater engagement and productivity.

As a strategic consultant, I work with Fortune 100 corporations and other great organizations. I often see how empathy is a powerful motivator. Here is one example I share Optimize the moment.

I used to be in Iraq during the second Gulf War and lively conflict. Our mission was to encourage communication between newly elected officials in a very volatile environment.

Rather than directing or instructing, I listened to know the perspectives and motivations of all parties. By building trust, listening, and applying empathy (three seemingly easy concepts rarely used in business or politics), we arrived at a meaningful dialogue that led to outcomes that every one parties could support.

When we first arrived, the Iraqi parliament was a seething cauldron of sectarian conflict and historical grievances. My team and I took an adaptive approach focused on building relationships and understanding the unique dynamics at play.

By prioritizing the feelings, experiences, and suggestions of each participant, we quickly gained the trust of political leaders and communities. This allowed us to maneuver into negotiations with greater agility, resulting in the establishment of a national budget planning process and other critical governance structures.

This process, repeated many times while I used to be in conflict zones and after conflict, became the basis for my approach to working with Fortune 100 corporations. I call it Optimize the Moment™.

How Leaders Can Use These Practical Strategies

I’m not one to provide orders or instructions, so any suggestions I make are based solely on my experience working in conflict and post-conflict areas, which I continually draw on in my work with my clients.

1. You can encourage your team to be flexible and open to alter – but it starts with you being the same. You can do this by giving employees opportunities to experiment with latest ideas and listening to them. They have excellent suggestions, given their perspectives.
2. I have found that jargon-free communication is essential to gaining buy-in from team members, to creating sure everyone understands their role in the mission. Listen to team member concerns. This helps provide immediate constructive feedback and maintain a mutual feedback loop.
3. Giving team members autonomy to make decisions is invaluable. It hurries up the decision-making process and results in a sense of ownership and responsibility.
4. Part of empathetic leadership is engagement. Sometimes that may include listening to private struggles. When they are heard and allowed to work through those struggles, they shall be more productive for the mission.
5. I never suggest my clients stay rigid. I suggest they be prepared to reassess and be willing to alter direction. Make changes as needed.

I hope they were helpful. I stay up for your feedback.