In a world where you can no longer plan or predict your way to success, what is the best way to achieve your goals?
Ask 1,001 headstrong managers that question and you might get 999 different answers. (There’s always a couple “what he said” types in the room.)
It’s a daunting question, but one everyone has to resolve in an era when saying “change seems to be the only constant” has become a cliché because it’s so true, say the authors of “Just Start: Take Action, Embrace Uncertainty, Create the Future.”
“When the future is unknowable, how we traditionally reason is extremely limited in predicting what will happen. You need
a different approach,” state Leonard A. Schlesinger, Charles F. Kiefer and Paul B. Brown in a blog post for Harvard Business Review (hbr.org).
“What is a very smart approach in a knowable or predictable future is not smart at all when things can’t be predicted. And that fact is at the heart of the frustrations most of us feel. Things simply aren’t as predictable as they once were.”
The authors offer their “proven method” for navigating in an uncertain world — an approach used by Babson College, the world’s top school for producing entrepreneurs (and where Schlesinger happens to be president).
Babson calls the approach “entrepreneurial thought and action,” but the authors go with the more easily remembered “Act, Learn, Build, Repeat.” It’s a proven formula for leading in uncertain times.
In the face of an unknown future, entrepreneurs act. They deal with uncertainty not by trying to analyze it, or planning for every contingency, or predicting what the outcomes will be. Instead, they act, learn from what they find, and act again. More specifically, the process looks like this:
1. Start with desire. You find/think of something you want. You don’t need a lot of passion; you only need sufficient desire to get started. (“I really want to start a restaurant, but I haven’t a clue if I will ever be able to open one.”)
2. Take a smart step as quickly as you can toward your goal. What’s a smart step? It’s one where you act quickly with the means at hand. What you know, who you know, and anything else that’s available. (“I know a great chef, and if I beg all my family and friends to back me, I might have enough money to open a place.”) You make sure that step is never going to cost more than it would be acceptable to you to lose should things not work out. And you bring others along to acquire more resources, spread the risk and confirm the quality of your idea.
3. Reflect and build on what you have learned from taking that step. You need to do that because every time you act, reality changes. Sometimes the step you take gets you nearer to what you want (“I should be able to afford something just outside of downtown”); sometimes what you want changes (“It looks like there are an awful lot of Italian restaurants nearby. We are going to have to rethink our menu.”). If you pay attention, you always learn something. So after you act, ask: Did those actions get you closer to your goal? (“Yes. It looks like I will be able to open a restaurant.”) Do you need additional resources to draw even closer? (“Yes. I’ll need to find another chef. The one I know can only do Italian.”) Do you still want to obtain your objective? (“Yes.”)
4. Repeat.
Act. Learn. Build. Repeat. This is how successful serial entrepreneurs conquer uncertainty. What works for them will work for all of us.
Learn more at juststartthebook.com.
