Responding to Complex Problems Requires Constant Improvement

On Monday, the CDC reported the rolling average of daily COVID-19 deaths remained above 350, roughly a 9/11’s worth of deaths per week, so it seems as if my series of articles about leading during a crisis remains applicable.

So applicable that Tuesday’s Harvard Business Review Tip of the Week was “Leading Through Uncertainty Is About Mindset.” It offers “six tips to help you shift your perspective,” five of which Tuesday Tutor has discussed. They’re in bold, and Tuesday Tutor’s translation follows:

Embrace the discomfort of not knowing. Tuesday Tutor frequently reminds leaders that they don’t need to know everything and should embrace the ideas of others — a team is stronger than its parts.

Let go of perfectionism. Similar to the above, in a changing environment, especially one where we improve our understanding and ability to respond, we get better by doing. As a child might progress from crawling to standing to walking to running, so can a leader evolve their response to the unexpected.

Resist the urge to oversimplify and come to quick conclusions. This seems similar to our thoughts on finding the appropriate level of response. There was a time when just about the only tool available to medical leaders during the pandemic was a combination of lockdown and quarantine. Now that we know more, Attend Safe and our partners have many tools at our disposal to provide reasonable risk mitigation policies that allow face-to-face events to proceed, while embracing the necessary duty of care.

Don’t go it alone. There’s a reason why “partners” probably ranks in my top-five of most frequently used words. Few things work if the people involved don’t buy into the process. Half the problems with U.S. pandemic response are the result of disinformation and misinformation that spread widely in its early days, and continues to hamper response. Just this week, one of the social media giants announced that it shut down a network of thousands of fake accounts that were sowing lies to Americans on an array of topics including COVID-19 and vaccines.

Zoom out. As with so many things, leaders need to keep in mind that there’s always a bigger picture and not to get so wrapped up in a discrete problem-of-the-moment that they lose sight of the bigger picture. In 2009, a commercial aircraft overshot its destination airport by more than 100 miles because the pilots “lost track of time” while fussing with their laptop computers, according to a bulletin by the National Transportation Safety Board. That’s failing to look at the big picture or as HBR says, “zoom out.”

The one tip in HBR’s list that Tuesday Tutor hadn’t addressed in was to distinguish between “complicated” and “complex” issues and realize that they require different solutions. Because most people equate the two terms, I find the distinction that HBR makes to be really interesting.

They explain that complicated things may be difficult to grasp, for example the tax code, but that ultimately there is a right answer. While complex things may have so many moving parts and so many unknowns that there’s not necessarily a right answer.

That means we just keep adjusting and adapting to get closer to a right answer, even if there isn’t a perfect answer.

Coronavirus certainly remains a complex problem, thankfully we’re always working with our partners to find the best answers we can for their needs now.