WHAT CREATES UNNECESSARY CHAOS?
Chaos..........the self inflicted wound that organizations are great at creating but not very good at eliminating. It can become a part of the culture and, in many cases, it's viewed as a badge of honor that somehow indicates how "hip" and "edgy" they are.
Chaos can mean many different things depending on your point of reference so I wanted to address it in a short, simple post. We are making it abundantly clear to our members that there are two types of chaos:
Unnecessary Chaos - The chaos that prevents you and the organization from achieving success.
Intentional Chaos - Good chaos that drives productive disruption and innovation.
It's important to address these in order since eliminating #1 frees up time and resources for #2. This post is only related to #1. Unnecessary Chaos can be summed up in the below chart.
Simply stated, Complexity creates Confusion that leads to Chaos. Our objective as leaders should be to:
Reduce Complexity
Simplify messages so people can comprehend and understand the goal or objective. Ask for feedback to ensure the message was received as intended and follow up to make sure the actions align with the message.
By following this approach you should be able to change the diagram to:
The amount of unnecessary chaos in your organization should drop by significantly by using the approach in the second diagram. This includes one on one relationships, teams and organizations.
I can hear the objection now:
"This is too simple. We are more sophisticated and unique so this won't work!"
Maybe that's true, maybe it isn't. Before you object, however, I would ask you to evaluate how successful the complicated and sophisticated approach has been so far?
The next time you experience unnecessary chaos, walk your team through these two diagrams to trigger discussion. Just try it and see what happens.
Let us know the results!