I'll call you from the car

Photo by Maarten van den Heuvel.

The house is dark. The sun won't be up for a while still. One sec. One sec. The coffee grinder is being loud. OK, can you say that again?

Alright, just one quick work call but we'll be back up soon. Kids are on screen time. Basement is off limits. If you need to pee, go upstairs. No one touch the stove. Big kid is in charge.

Um, well, we're in training for most of the day but we can talk on the commute. Does that work? Should we call you then?

Our days are usually spent talking to bosses. That's not abnormal. But lately, we're talking to folks in every unclaimed 15-minute pocket we can find. The requests come via cryptic text messages. Or emails with ominous subject lines like "check in" or "quick chat."

The low-key requests are the ones to worry about. People who are in a crisis and reach out to say the shit is hitting the fan, that's one thing. But the bosses who are in that spot with only the vaguest sense that things are amiss? Now we're in trouble.

Everything, everywhere all at once

One boss in a mess? We call that Monday. But all our bosses turning up with big messes at the same time? That's a trend. And right now, the vibe is pretty damn messy. Everything, everywhere seems to be coming to a head.

Our tech bosses aren't done with layoffs and they're trying to figure out whether the next round will happen before or after the holidays. Our small business bosses are still (still) waiting to bounce back and trying to figure out how long to wait it out. And then there's all the interpersonal stuff. Which covers, you know, rather a lot of it.

We joke, in dark humour, that it feels like everyone's Eisenhower Matrix exploded. Everything is urgent. Everything is important. And it's gotten to the point where it's extremely loud and incredibly hard to think.

What to do when it gets loud

The counter-intuitive thing about the moment when everything gets loud is that the answer often gets less obvious. We all have this intuitive sense that you can hide for a while but that, when time runs out, the decision will be clear. Sometimes that does happen. But surprisingly often, the important decisions you'll make as a boss — or a human — need to be made in the midst of very loud and poorly-timed chaos. The chaos is how those decisions get your attention.

When a decision is overwhelming, it helps to break it into pieces, and we'll talk about how to do that in a minute. But if you're already jumping ahead because you find yourself in the midst of this shit right now. Or if someone forwarded this to you because they can see that you are in it. If you're rushing to the punchline because you think we might have an answer for you: slow down. The chaos got your attention, that's fine, but letting the chaos drive your decision-making is gonna make things worse, not better. The thing that's gonna help right now is making good decisions. Clearly. Once. Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.

OK, take a breath and then let's get to this.

Executive clarity in three easy steps

Step 1 - Do we actually need a decision here? As things get noisy, the pressure to act becomes a drip drip drip that'll never stop. Before letting that current carry you away, it's worth a minute to ask if the status quo is redeemable. Sometimes the best response to a new competitor, or an unfair google review, is to keep your focus on your work and not make it bigger than it is. Everyone has moments when they get worked up about this or that. And if it's a single, forgettable thing, it can be a gift to those around you to be clear and calm and to choose, out loud, not to act.

When the noise is coming from multiple places at once, though. When things are falling apart, and you're in the falcon cannot hear the falconer territory. In those moments, you have a job to do. You're a boss, and we need a decision, and failing to act is just denial.

Step 2 - Setting aside how hard it will be to implement, is the decision clear? The main reason leaders get stuck when making high-stakes decisions is that they can't separate the decision from the implementation. They can't separate "Should we cancel this project" from "how will I tell the team that's worked so hard on it?"

Bosses get rewarded for seeing around corners, identifying risks, playing the game a few moves out. And, to a point, that's a good thing. Many hard calls start at, "this is the right decision, but I'm worried about these consequences." That's fine. But if you're not careful, you can let it slip into, "I can't act until I have resolved those worries." That second thing doesn't tend to go well. The worries multiply the longer you look at them, you can never fully de-risk the situation. And in the meantime you haven't acted on the decision you know you need to make.

Almost always, when the decision itself is clear, the kindest thing is also the most strategic thing: act. Even when the implementation work scares you. Getting clear, quickly, gives everyone a path out of the noise. And it allows you to focus your energy on getting the implementation right.

Step 3 - Once the decision is clear, what are the most important parts of the implementation? The nice thing about having made a decision is that immediately the shape of the problem changes. Instead of grappling with a lot of "what if" fears, your job now is to deal with a set of "how should we?" operational choices.

Usually the majority of those choices will focus on the people. Who needs to know about the decision, in what order? Who will need to be treated with grace and understanding as they process it, and how should we give them that? Who will need extra resources? Who will need to talk it through without an audience? Who will be asked to step up in large ways, and what help will they need to do so?

With any major change, everyone, everyone wants an answer to the same question: "what does this mean for me?" Your time is so much better spent on answering those questions clearly than on game theory about how to get them not to ask.

We can't promise that your decision will be well-received. But the ability of a clear decision to cut through the noise is impressive, and humans will often surprise you. When it makes sense, even if they don't like it, they can often get behind it and appreciate you making the call. Not always, but often.

And if you're still stuck, we'll try to find some time on tomorrow's commute.

- Melissa and Johnathan