The storm isn’t coming. It’s already here. And many leaders are realizing they’re sailing without instruments. The current business climate is a storm of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Strategic plans are outdated overnight. Decision-making feels like a risk. And yet—standing still isn’t an option. Leaders are under pressure to keep moving, whilst everything keeps shape shifting.
- You are not alone, research shows that:
Two-thirds of executives struggle to make decisions fast enough during volatile times. - 70% of business transformations fail, often due to misalignment and unclear direction, and that was in the ‘old world’.
- Half of leaders admit to delaying decisions when markets become unstable.
Here’s the dilemma: when chaos hits, everyone is working hard, but without coordinated direction. The energy is real, the effort is sincere, but there are only limited results to show for it. Conventional business management practices are largely geared towards maintaining steady state operations, or planned projects, changes or growth. Planning cycles are driven by calendar years, historical performance data and negotiated delivery times. But today, you do not have the level of control over your world for these tools to still facilitate progress. And to make it through this storm, leaders need more than motivation, they need navigation, as after this one, there will be another, and another.
That’s where the chaos compass comes in. A framework to help leaders regain grip, restore clarity, and move forward in alignment. Business, like sailing, has situations in which doing nothing when a situation arises is unthinkable, disastrous even. Taking the decision-making mechanics and people dynamics tools and practices from these worlds and translating them for use in a business context is the key to success in a volatile world.
The Chaos Compass does precisely that, and here are its 8 elements.
- Get Your Bearings
Start with situational awareness. Map out what you know and don’t know inside and outside your organization. Involve a wide variety of people to create trust, buy in, and get those perspectives from those angles you do not see yourself. Where are the bottlenecks, disconnects, gaps and opportunities? - Identify Your Nearest Safe Haven
If the storm worsens, where do you go? Determine if you can stabilize while operating, or if you need to carve out space to regroup. How long could you afford a holding pattern based on liquidity and current contracts if needed? Can you pause non-critical activity can create the bandwidth to work current priorities and think? - Reclarify the Destination
Is your original goal still valid? Has success been redefined? Do you need some near term interim short-term targets, so your team has direction and urgency without false certainty. Redundancy in communication is going to help you iron out ambiguity, misalignment and identify where your definition or boundaries need sharpening. Clarity directs energy. - Diagnose the Big Levers
Focus on the two to four areas to invest time and resources in to get you back on track towards success. Focus is key to success in turmoil, so deprioritize distractions and non-critical tasks to free up capacity and ‘noise’ in the system. Make sure the interdependencies between these efforts are identified and resourced. - Decision Making Mechanics
Good and fast decision making is facilitated by deploying decision making frameworks, they are simple, fit for purpose and hence not complex to implement. You need the clarity on the ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘how’ and ‘why now’ the structure will provide, to ensure that the actual effort and energy can go into making the best possible decision based on data and risks. - Empower People
Time to empower your people to ‘get on with it’, with clarity on destination, priorities to work, and the mechanics and boundaries in place, redirection of effort becomes autonomous. Strive to delegate down to the lowest practical level for expediency. Remember that task assignments may need to deviate from the org chart. - Reliable Tools & Data
Ensure your people, partners and leadership are equipped with access to the right resources to do their work, more is not better. Performance Data, decision logs, communication plans—ensure your tools are relevant, real-time and responsive. - Execute & Adapt
Now don’t bow out before the finish line, execute plans untill the intended outcomes have been achieved, yet reassess your environment regularly. If the winds change, your course should too. Agility doesn’t mean random, it means responsive. The need to course correct is not a sign of failure, but a sign of your business resilience in its pursuit of progress.
To be successful in the current climate there is no sense in waiting for clarity, or the storm to pass. You cannot afford to do so, when the next one is already forming. You don’t need calmer weather to lead. You need rhythm, direction, and the willingness to move while things are still swirling. With the right navigation system, businesses can make smarter and faster decisions under pressure, align teams behind shared goals, and start building resilience—not just surviving chaos, but strengthening through it.
