Reducing the Stress of Management Decision-Making in Complex Contexts

If managers feel more stressed, there is a good reason. The role is more complex than ever. Most companies continue to repeat patterns of risk aversion, assuming that what worked in the past will also work today. It will not. Environmental complexity has everything to do with it. More data, less time, intense pressure, and high stress combine into a numbing cocktail that derails critical thinking, contextual awareness, or impact. Being able to read the dynamics running in the context demands self-management and self-regulation in order to respond to the context appropriately.

Little is done to support managers in making the switch from conventional causal thinking to eco-systemic thinking, in order to perceive the dynamic interactions that rule networks. What looks like a simple decision has a ripple effect, part causal; part not that ripples through the entire network internally and externally. For instance, a company fires its Agile coaches believing that they are causing trouble and making employees harder to control. Acting on the fear of losing control over people, the decision to drop the coaching role ignites a series of interactions. The reaction reverts to the default patterns of authority-based relationships, sacrificing flexibility and responsiveness for feeling in control of human and company potential. The value generated by a more flexible, adaptive approach is jettisoned, leaving the company raw and exposed to more disruption. Talented employees who, through coaching or other means, experienced autonomy and freedom to contribute, either leave or disengage, unable to fight the undertow back to the past. Centralized authority is maintained at the cost of elevated risk exposure. Reputational trust in the company suffers damage when the talk sounds progressive while pedalling backwards to avoid novelty. Word and action are not in alignment. The vocabulary might sound Agile but the style is business as usual. What looks like a ‘logical’ decision morphs into costly consequences for the well-being of the people and the sustainability of the business.

Complex decision-making environments and role complexity challenge decision-makers to raise their skills. Researcher Theo Dawson has developed an assessment tool that allows the measurement of skills matching the role…