Values in a Chaotic World

Strict marching orders in a chaotic environment are an almost certain prescription for disaster. The strength of an organization lies in the ability of its people to use their collective and individual intelligence to further the organization's objectives. Each member sees a somewhat different part of the world surrounding the organization. And each member must decide how to best respond. When the world was relatively stable, the executive at the top of an organization could reliably predict what people throughout the organization would confront in the world outside. Strict marching orders made sense. But only if that "world outside" could be predicted by the executive.

The "world outside" is hardly stable and predictable. It's accurately described as chaotic. There will be fundamental and deep changes that cannot be reliably predicted. The recent (early 2015) changes in oil prices are but one current example. We were going along on a steadily increasing price curve for oil. It made economic sense to plan for ever more expensive extraction. There were confident predictions of $150 or $200 for a barrel of oil. We're now seeing $50 for a barrel of oil, and there are predictions of that falling to $20 (albeit without the former confidence). The impact throughout the world will be massive. How should organizations respond?

Those organizations in which shared values are accepted as the primary driver will be best able to respond effectively. The test should not be whether people do what they are told. Rather, the test should be whether what they do supports the organization's shared values. Developing such shared values within an organization is not something that can be made to happen by an executive order. Developing values is an intensely human activity. People throughout the organization must be engaged and feel that they have a voice that is being heard. The right social intervention can help, but must be tailored to the organization, its history and its environment.

Technology can play a positive role, though too often it's used as a way to enforce marching orders, ... even when those are no longer appropriate for a changed "world outside". The big challenge for any executive with responsibility for technology is to insure that the technology is used to support development of shared values, and not to enforce marching orders that will inevitably be wrong (within an ever shorter time frame). Our world is getting ever more chaotic. We need to do our best to position our organization for success in that ever more chaotic world.