Episode 79 - the word is muddle

Muddling through -  the secret leadership skill

In this episode I reframe "muddle" as a leadership strength rather than weakness.

I challenge the myth of perfectly coordinated organisations and reveal why most grand conspiracies fail the organisational behaviour test, while trying to make a compelling case for embracing muddle as the foundation of agility in our VUCA world.

I outline how "sense and respond" trumps "plan and control" in volatile environments and offer the two critical conditions that elevate muddling from chaos to advantage: maintaining a "bias for action" that prioritises progress over perfection and cultivating a "learning mindset" that transforms every action into data for improvement.

Using Jeff Bezos's elegant "two-way doors" concept that distinguishes between truly consequential decisions and those easily reversed, I argue that leaders consistently overestimate how many decisions are truly irreversible, creating unnecessary organisational paralysis.

As usual, I conclude with a question based on this week’s insight that leadership isn't about pretending certainty exists in an uncertain world but rather True leadership embraces muddle while maintaining clarity of intent: "Do you feel strong enough to muddle?"