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| Context’s characteristics | Leader’s job | Danger signals | Response to danger signals |
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| Simple | Repeating patterns
Clear cause-and-effect relationships
Known knowns
Fact-based management | Sense, categorize, respond, and delegate
Use best practices
Communicate in clear and direct ways | Complacency and comfort
Make simple problems complex
Entrained thinking | Create communication channels
Do not assume things are simple
Recognize both the value and limitations of best practice |
| Complicated | Expert diagnosis required
Cause-and-effect relationships not immediately apparent
Known unknowns
Fact-based management | Sense, analyse, and respond
Create panels of experts
Listen to conflicting objectives | Experts overconfident in their own solutions
Analysis paralysis
Viewpoints of nonexperts excluded | Encourage external and internal stakeholders to challenge expert opinions
Use experiments and games to force people to think outside the familiar |
| Complex | Flux and unpredictability
No right answers
Unknown unknowns
Many competing ideas
A need for creative and innovative approaches
Pattern-based leadership | Probe, sense, and respond
Create environments and experiments that allow patterns to emerge
Increase levels of interaction and communication
Use methods that can generate ideas | Temptation to fall back into habitual, command-and-control model
Desire for accelerated resolution of problems | Allow time for reflection
Use approaches that encourage interaction so patterns can emerge |
| Chaotic | High turbulence
No clear cause-and-effect relationships
Unknowables
High tension
Many decisions to make and no time to think
Pattern-based leadership | Act, sense, and respond
Look for what works instead of seeking right answers
Take immediate action to reestablish order
Provide clear and direct communication | Applying a command-and-control approach longer than needed
Missed opportunity for innovation
Chaos unabated | Set up mechanisms to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by a chaotic environment
Work to shift the context to chaotic to complex |
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