Flexability | Is chaos ever good in business?

Can chaos ever be a good thing in business? Yes, if you learn to use it to grow.

That requires that you, the business leader, recognize that when things start to feel chaotic in your enterprise, it’s because it’s stretching at its seams. It’s a sign that bold changes are needed.

These moments of uncomfortable turbulence are known as inflection points. The good news is that these inflection points are the markers in a predictable pattern of organizational growth that requires change.¹

The space between

It is the moments between one inflection point and another that fascinate me because they are so critical to business growth. Hit one of these inflection points, and you, the leader, have a choice: make significant changes to how your business is run and build a sustainable growth spiral upwards or descend into a declining “spin cycle” that leads, at best, nowhere.

Research shows that there are common inflection points in business growth. They emerge as an organization grows in number of team members and/or sales volume until it starts to push at the constraints imposed by an organizational structure that suits the existing operation.

It seems like a no-brainer to make the big changes that will lead to a brighter tomorrow, but it requires courage. To coin a phrase and a book title by Marshall Goldsmith, What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There. That’s because you’ll likely need to let go of some of the operational processes and team members that brought you to what is, in essence, a point of success.

Inflection points often hold within them ironies: what was a major solution in one growth period can become a hurdle in the next. Inevitably, the changes you make will cause waves. These are periods of time during which an organization must evolve, right down to the individual level, in a revolutionary way to continue generating healthy and profitable growth. At each level, the founder and leadership team may elect to map out a new strategic plan and execute that plan to reach the next level. If you’re not growing, you’re dying. There must be a revolution for there to be an evolution.

Evolution

Each developmental phase that a business goes through begins with a period of evolution that is characterized by stability and steady growth and ends with a period of revolution – substantial organizational turmoil. If the leader or leaders take charge and evolve the business – which inevitably means personal evolution, too – then growth happens.

As these evolutionary periods end and the business begins to push at its boundaries, seemingly radical changes need to be made to the way the organization deals with “people and culture”, sales and finance, and the business structure. These changes will affect everyone in the business on an individual, department, and organizational level. They must be carefully and bravely plotted.

For this, leaders need to know how to root out complexities (simplify), let go of responsibilities (delegate), solve issues for the long term (predict), document and convey processes (systemize) and give clarity on roles and responsibilities (structure). Thank you Gino Wickman for The Five Leadership Abilities™, which are part of the Entrepreneurial Operating System.

Communication

To take everyone in the business along with you in each of these evolutions, communication is the significant tool for growth.

Communication is where great leadership comes from. You must find ways to lead and inspire, so that everyone joins in on the journey. Your colleagues and team members are not mind readers. I love this quote, attributed to leadership scholar Warren Bennis: “A leader doesn’t just get the message across – the leader is the message.”

Yet too often, business leaders don’t communicate well. Gallup’s 2023 State of the Global Workforce survey shows only 85% of employees worldwide are not engaged at work, 39% have no idea what the goals and objectives of the company they work for are, 47% are unfamiliar with the state of their company’s performance and 44% don’t understand how their role helps the organization meet its goals.

Good communication starts with self-awareness. Create a clear level of expectation at the start of a new phase. Ask what’s working and what’s not working. Agree on what success looks like. Agree on how often you will check in on progress, and whether that will be milestone-based or deadline-based.

Really big growth is like three-dimensional chess; many pieces always moving in multiple dimensions. Reaching that next inflection point is an opportunity for celebration and a signal that it’s time to start preparation for the next leap.

¹ See Evolution and Revolution as Organizations Grow L. Greiner, HBR Magazine (May-June 1998)