Are you overwhelmed by how fast the world moves these days? Does it seem like everything is getting more complicated? Do you sometimes feel like you might be out of your league when it comes to leading an organization in today’s chaotic markets?
Welcome to business leadership in the 21st century.
Technology was supposed to make our lives simpler. Certainly, it has simplified many tasks, activities and processes. But it has also made our lives more complicated. Add instant communications, information overload and a huge increase in global competition into the mix, and it’s no wonder that many of today’s business leaders are struggling to keep up and get ahead.
How can you tell if you’re suffering from a “complexity complex”? Look for the following symptoms:
Feeling overwhelmed with too much data.
These days, we’re all swamped by the massive amounts of data hitting us on a daily basis. The trick is not to try to process it all. Instead, get very good at sorting out which information is most relevant to your business and developing systems and processes for turning meaningless data into useful information.
Unable to pull the trigger on key decisions.
As business leaders, we’ve been trained to gather all of the information before making key decisions. But that’s no longer possible. Instead, gather information from a variety of sources, including those from outside your industry, so that you end up with multiple perspectives rather than a narrow frame of reference.
Same ways of thinking and behaving.
As human beings, we don’t like to stray very far from our comfort zones. So we stay in situations that aren’t working out simply because they feel comfortable. In business, we cling to what we know to be true about our customers and markets, even when those “facts” are changing in front of our eyes. We continue to believe that what made us successful in the past will make us successful in the future, even when the evidence suggests otherwise. And we keep on doing the same things over and over (maybe just a little louder), even when we’re not getting the results we want.
