It’s
Not Just an Exercise
Ah,
reflection. How appropriate to be tasked with reading about and viewing a video
that outlines and conducts the very chaos Team A-6 faced with this week’s
initial group assignment. A team, initially composed of three, is effectively
formed through a virtual process and tasked with completion efforts that, as
outlined by Obolensky (2008), require identifying points of reference, without
revealing said points, organizing a research document that complies with
established boundaries; and, then, for an added dose of real world experience,
two teams are merged into one, causing each team to reassess and adjust those
initial points of reference. As the week and team duties progressed, suddenly a
poem from long ago came to mind, “If”, by Rudyard Kipling. Would I be able to
keep my head while others lose theirs and blame me?
Sull
and Eisenhardt (2012) chronicle simple rules: align activities with objectives,
adapt to local situations, encourage coordination, make better choices, locate
bottlenecks, data overrides opinion, those who apply rules craft rules, and rules
should be solid and evolve. These rules, when successfully applied, enable individual
and teams to “complete a highly complex task” with relative ease (Obolensky,
2010, p. 96). Our team had initially agreed to have one member as a project
manager. The second team had provided for rotational leadership. In an effort
to assign jobs to each member, our project manager divided the assignment. For
the most part, completing various sections of the research paper were standard
and straight forward. Our chaotic oscillation moments, our bottleneck, came
when we were charged with comparing and contrasting five organizations.
Although the initial comparison chart appeared to be simple in nature, the very
“number of possible solutions” reminded each of us just how complex this task
was (Obolensky, 2010, p. 95). Because each “has the ability to judge distance
and move accordingly” and because each member offered continuous feedback and
was “able to act without having to wait for permission”, our initial strategy
was able to change in response to the situation, provide clarity to ambiguous
and uncertain concerns, strengthen the underlying purpose of submitting a
quality project, and stay within the boundaries established by the project
instructions (Obolensky, 2010, p. 98). Although a touch of Porter’s “deliberate
strategy”, as outlined by Moore (2011), was presented as our plan by our
project manager, survival and completion of the project required the team to
embrace Mintzberg’s “emergent strategy”.
The
underlying implication of chaos is change, regardless of the amount,
occurs. A story without change becomes tedious and boring and soon lulls the
reader to sleep. Leaders cannot afford to be lulled to sleep. Yes, chaos means
at times a situation may become worse before it gets better; but, as my husband
would say, that which does not kill us makes us stronger. We see chaos in our
lives on a daily basis; yet, a miraculous balance always seems to occur. From a
devastating hurricane or tornado comes a rebirth in communities, one that
witnesses neighbors helping neighbors and the reinvention of construction
standards. Wild fires destroy thousands of acres each year; yet, new growth
and better forestry management skills follow. As I write this, this country remembers the chaos from fifteen years ago and is still adjusting strategies to insure such terror is never brought to our shores again. Embracing chaos is the first step
to weathering any storm, by mother-nature or that of the business world; and, those who embrace chaos and learn from it, evolve to lead another day, and
keep their head a little longer.
References
Moore, K. (2011,
March 28). Porter or Mintzberg: Whose View of Strategy Is the Most
Relevant Today? Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/karlmoore/2011/03/28/porter-or-mintzberg-whose-view-of-strategy-is-the-most-relevant-today/#5ebe90536e36
Obolensky, N.
(2014). Complex adaptive leadership: Embracing paradox and uncertainty (2nd
ed.). Surrey, England: Gower Publishing
Limited
Obolensky, N. (2008). Who Needs
Leaders? [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41QKeKQ2O3E
Sull, D., & Eisenhardt, K.M.
(2012). Simple Rules for a Complex World. Harvard
Business
Review, 90(9),
68-74.
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