Managing change in a disorderly world.

In the regimented world of the National Football League, quarterback Brett Favre is viewed with curiosity, suspicion and unrestrained admiration. Favre breaks all the rules of fundamental quarterback play. He doesn’t always plant and set, he moves into pressure rather than away from it, and he routinely throws risky long passes early in the game. What sets him apart isn't just his ability to scramble and see the field but to make the big play while he’s doing it. Favre can cause utter confusion and disorder in defensive teams, not because they don’t know what he’s going to do, but because he doesn’t. Favre seems to thrive on chaos. A lot of big plays come off Brett getting out of containment and throwing the ball over the defensive backs’ heads. If a receiver finds a hole, Favre scrambles and always seems to find him. Favre doesn’t like to run. Instead, he looks to create, to reconfigure the defense and force it to improvise as well. “That’s what I do best. Move around.” he says. “I like it when I’m out of the pocket.”

A common reaction of those who are used to being in control is to attempt to manage change into submission. It’s more effective to turn destabilization to your advantage. Having a high tolerance for disorder has become an essential survival skill in the world of high-velocity change.

Arsenio Hall says, “I don’t like to be comfortable in my work. I like to be nervous and find a way to use it.” Carroll O’Connor, the legendary “Archie Bunker” of TV fame said, “Professional acting has a kind of tension. The amateur is thrown by it but the professional needs it.” Like a wind-up clock, a person can't tick without some tension. However, Leila Josefowicz, the American violinist who has grown from a child prodigy into a concert hall star says, “I’m always well prepared. If you’re not, it can be torture. I like to find peace of mind before I go on stage: I try to assure that nothing can go wrong.”


Andy Grove of Intel observed that learning to adjust in today’s environment is like driving in a fog behind another car. It’s easy going as long as you have the other car’s tail lights to guide you. But when the leading car turns off the road, you’re suddenly stuck without the confidence that comes from finding your own way. The moral? - Followers have little future.

Peter Drucker once said in a Wired interview, “I don’t speculate about the future. It’s not given to mortals to see the future. All one can do is analyze the present, especially those parts that don’t fit what everyone knows and takes for granted. Then, one can apply to this analysis the lessons of history and come out with a few possible scenarios. Then one comes out with a few probabilities.... Here are today’s realities and what they imply for the next 20-years, and here are the probabilities based on the lessons of history. Everything else is quackery.”

Like solving a jigsaw puzzle, you can determine what’s required for a piece to fit, but until that piece has been found, you have very little idea of what the next pieces you're going to need will be. Because the path to puzzle solving isn’t linear, there are no routine procedures or predefined steps to rely on to solve puzzle-like situations. Puzzle solving is an exercise in perceptual synthesis rather than analytical conceptualization. The search for possibilities is what’s important and in this context, expert knowledge is no longer privileged. The emphasis is on becoming more perceptive of trends and possibilities. Since everyone has the potential to contribute knowledge and expertise about some piece of the puzzle, everyone’s an expert.

I’ve always viewed my professional role as helping executives consider alternative scenarios so they don’t define the boundaries of a problem or a strategy in such a restricted way that they limit their flexibility and opportunity.