What’s on your radar

What’s up ahead? Can you see it? 

We check the weather to see what the forecast will be like: what’s predicted and how we might need to be prepared for it, to respond and adapt to what’s coming. 

I love the rain radar. It’s always changing. As showers or storms drift frame by frame, they change in nature and shape. 

The way they look now, where they are now ... it can change. 

You think it’s heading one way and then forces make it move and shift in a slightly different direction or speed. 

What do you see ahead... in this task, project, process, team or product? 

Do you have a hunch of what might or could happen? 

How might what you’re in now, change? 

Be ready for what’s ahead. And be prepared to adapt and change. 

To be able to roll with it, go with it, or be able to handle whatever the forecast - now that’s a great mindset. 

Chilling with a likelihood for change. 

Signposts and waypoints

As we deal with increasing amounts and complexity of information, it’s worth remembering a golden rule: people may not be as interested in your stuff as you are. 

That means they won’t work too hard to process it, organize it or make sense of it. 

They’ve got other things on their mind, better things to do, little space to take more on. They’ve got even less capacity for poorly arranged information. 

During an online event recently, I was overwhelmed with the lack of structure in presentations. 

Overwhelmed because it became a dump of information, a series of points that were disconnected, unrelated and in no sequence, theme or logical order. 

Not everything can be important. We can’t take it all in, all at once. 

Just as we can’t complete a journey in one step, delivering information requires a step by step or chunk by chunk approach.

Waypoints and signposts can help. 

📌 Waypoints where you stop or pause along the way. 
➡️ Signposts that guide people along. 

Otherwise it’s just a dump. 

Swinging from uncertainty to certainty

We do it so many times a day.

Uncertainty about breakfast.

Certainty about breakfast.

Uncertainty about the bus.

Certainty about the bus.

Uncertainty about the meeting.

Certainty about the meeting.

Uncertainty about the decision.

Certainty about the decision.

We’re all just swinging from being sure about some stuff and unsure about other stuff. And the stuff changes. And the level of certainty and uncertainty can change too.

This is the U in VUCA. How are you going with it? How is your team going? Things are changing so you’ll be certain about some more stuff in a few minutes time. And some other stuff will become uncertain.

Notice the swing: go with the swing. Better than trying to keep everything still in certainty, expecting it to ‘switch’ to certainty and stay there. We’re going with it - oh look, more certainty approaching.

People won't commit if they don't know where they're going

We need big trust to go with someone and not know where they’re going.

'Trust me, it’s a great restaurant.'

‘Believe me, you’ll love this holiday location.’

We may think people will just follow us or they're at fault because they don’t 'engage or buy-in'. How do we lead so people will change with us as we launch something, try something new or zig when everyone else is zagging?

To reduce anxiety and uncertainty and build trust and understanding use sensemaking. We have some of it in our nature (how we make sense of things) but we can learn more so we become insight seekers and rapid sense makers in this world of complexity and uncertainty.

Do this:

1️⃣ Create a map of what’s possible, what the potential is

2️⃣ Talk through that map, share it with others

Like this:

In my recent Sensemaking skills workshop, a participant created a map about change in the educational sector she works in. She shared and talked through the map with the team. A topic that used to create resistance now had understanding, intrigue and curiosity.

✅Ace!

What do you have to convey:

- Your own thinking and ideas?

- A new product or service?

- A plan or vision for the future?

TL; DR 'Too long; didn’t read'

We’re drowning in it! Information overload from packs, keynotes, talks, sessions, webinars, meetings, presentations, conversations aarrrggh NOT TO MENTION OUR OWN THOUGHTS and Netflix binges, podcasts, audio books, Spotify playlists oh and pretty journals.

How do we take in more ...or just make better, quicker sense of things?

If you move from a mess to a list, to a pack, to a pic... all of these have pros and cons but the one that wins the race, the journey, the transformation is… the MAP.

We already enjoy a daily use of maps:

• Where is my food delivery?
• Why did the driver go down that street?
• Which is the quickest route to the cafe?

Maps have gone full circle (full globe?) from being crusty old, folded-the-wrong-way paper, to books of maps, to apps of maps. We know what maps look like and use them all the time. They guide and show us the unknown, unseen.

So it's too bad (and so silly) that more leaders don’t use maps instead of weighty wastes of slide decks that sucked weeks of time and tinkering from us. It could have all be done in 1/10th of the time, with 10x the impact ... with a map.

Do you map? Here’s one I prepared earlier :-)