Add Security to Insecure Circumstances

Some of the decline in trust in leaders is due to the immense challenges of managing in a complex and intensely competitive environment. Between September 2009 and January 2010, IBM surveyed 1,541 CEOs and senior managers in sixty countries and thirty-three industries about change and complexity.16 The results showed that relative to their current state, 69 percent of those surveyed expected significantly more volatility, 65 percent expected significantly more uncertainty, and 60 percent expected significantly more complexity in their environments. Less than half felt prepared to deal with the increased complexity.

Leading in a world of complexity and change demands taking responsibility for strategic adaptation of the firm to ensure current and future success. This requires a paradoxical combination of execution skills fused with abstract, creative, and strategic thinking. Effective leaders shape the organization to match the speed and complexity of the environment that it must navigate. They act as sense makers to accelerate understanding and orchestrators to enable speed of adaptation within the organization. When performed well, this kind of leadership gives people confidence that they can prevail even in turbulent environments.