Uncontrollables?

The US Army War College teaches their best and brightest future leaders the skills they need to navigate a world environment that they describe as VUCA—Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous. In fact, the university has actually acquired the nickname, VUCA-U. The VUCA state also effectively describes the challenges we all face in the competitive, political and ever-changing world of business. The volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity of challenges that arise every day have a tendency to drag people Below The Line when they are faced with obstacles that are seemingly out of their control. We call these the “uncontrollables” and they include the weather, competition, traffic, government regulations–anything that makes it difficult for us to progress and that we feel we have no control over. We can feel victimized by these issues and literally be stopped dead in our tracks.

Everyone faces these “uncontrollables” that stand in the way of achieving results and business objectives. In fact, they often become the built in “excuses” (as legitimate as they are) for why progress is not being made. Often, they become so much a part of the culture that we accept an explanation for a lack of progress as long as it is tied with an uncontrollable. You may recall that Rule No. 3 of the Blame Game is to “Always remember the quality of an excuse increases proportionately with the degree to which that ‘reason’ is outside of your control” (The Oz Principle).

For one of our clients, the FDA was the “uncontrollable” they faced. Competitive conditions made it even more important to launch their new product, an innovative medical device, into the marketplace as quickly as possible. They knew their competitors were right behind them, but they also knew that being first to market brought great strategic advantage. The challenge is that it took 12 months to process the FDA application for approval and they did not have that much time. In the past, before the culture change work we did with the company, they would have made every effort to optimize the process, but with the promise of little success. Now, with a total focus on operating Above The Line and asking, “What else can I do?”, they took some bold steps.

To repair and improve their relationship with the local regulatory office, the marketing VP was assigned to Regulatory Affairs. The IT group developed a software solution that would allow the organization to file their application electronically, something that had never been done before. They visited the local FDA office and offered the software development solution at no cost, offered the computers they would need to use the software and offered to be the beta test. Building on the improved relationships with the local office, they secured approval to run the test. Of course, the beta application was for the new product they were bringing to market. An application that would have taken twelve months took only four, and they were the first to market by a wide margin! When faced with the “uncontrollables,” the challenge is to stay Above The Line and ask, “What else can I do?”

Recently an executive leader client told us: “…during the last two months we have experienced road block after road block, product quality issues, government regulation issues, competitor issues, internal sales and marketing issues, reimbursement issues, all of which were difficult to predict. As a result of the accountability and culture-change work we have been doing, we have minimized the negative impact of all these issues and created a competitive advantage that, otherwise, would not have existed.” Another client executive leader in a different company told the same story but ended it with, “now we will be better at predicting and anticipating the obstacles in our environment as a result of taking greater accountability for staying committed to achieving the result by creatively dealing with the obstacles we have.”

Operating Above The Line means asking “What else can I do?” in the face of challenges and obstacles, particularly those that seem to be outside of our control. www.partnersinleadership.com.

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