Sometimes you’re thrown into a situation that makes a mess of your well-laid plans.

And sometimes you’re thrown into a situation that’s ten times more complicated than that.

Perhaps budgets are being slashed at the company where you work…and fast.

Or the stock market…well…we don’t need to go into that. We’ve all seen the wild ride the stock market offers at times.

Or a key member of your company or team decides to move to another company.

Even worse, they’ve been lured away by your key competitor. And you don’t have anyone to backfill their knowledge and customer connections.

Or an always-healthy loved one is suddenly rushed to the hospital.

In chaotic times what do you do to simplify the chaos?

And not just simplify, but as is often required in such unwieldy and unpredictable times, to simplify in the extreme?

Try one or more of these four steps:

1. Focus on one priority. 

Yes, just ONE priority.

When you’re trying to right a world that has turned upside down, you don’t need the drag and confusion of trying to juggle multiple goals.

Like a laser beam, narrow your focus to a single point, your sole priority for now.

2. Let go. Say no.

The only way you’re going to let go is to say no.

And if that’s not easy for you, well, frankly, that’s tough.

You need the skill of clearing out the underbrush and letting go of extraneous things for now.

You find in extreme simplification times that what was once important – and may be again later – is far from a priority now.

Practice the word, “No,” until you can say it with the calm confidence to back it up.

3. Pay attention.

You need easy-to-gather information that will tell you if you’re getting back on track.

Figure out a few key indicators you can count on. These measures are like the dials and knobs on the control panel.

Then pay attention.

Use them.

Simply, consistently.

4. Follow up.

Take the time to see how things are working…or to face the facts that they aren’t yet.

If the action you’re taking isn’t taking you where you need to go, adjust, again.

And again, if you must.

Your world will right itself, but it needs your help.

Simplify, in the extreme.

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Are you leading your company or team through a risky or challenging time?

There are ways to handle the risk well, such as by:

- Preventing or eliminating it, perhaps by taking a different path toward your goal than you originally envisioned.

- Reducing, retiming, or in other ways resizing risk.

- Changing your perspective and comfort with uncertainty by focusing on the value of the change instead of its cost

Yet, try as you might, you have to acknowledge, and work with the fact that taking a risk means there is a chance that things could go wrong.

And that means, of course, that you could fail.

It’s hard to hear, but true.

Prepare for the best, but be able to recover well and move on when things don’t go as you hoped.

It is an essential skill.

Sometimes recovering well means giving up (this is hard to hear, too, but you may be chasing the wrong goal for current circumstances).

It may mean trying to recoup your losses as well as you can before deciding what to do next.

Or it may involve trying the same approach, but in a better way, using what you’ve learned from the current experience.

Recovering well can also mean that you try to meet the same goal, but in a different way.

When trying to recover or regroup from something that didn’t work as you’d hoped, try these actions:

1.  Increase your focus on your customers.

A company or team that has been thrown off-course can start to feed on itself.

And people who are burned out, or stressed, can start to see customers as “the enemy”* instead of the reason their jobs exist.

The situation can quickly degenerate in a downward spiral.

Focus on your customers and what they need from you.

2. Be clear and consistent in your instructions, feedback and guidance to your team.

Grow your trust in this uncertain time, if you can.

It will reduce your stress and that of your team if you trust people to do their jobs (unless you have proof through poor performance that trust is misplaced…and then you have a different problem to solve).

If your stress response is to micromanage, you make things for worse for your team AND yourself.

Ask for coaching to get over the need to manage by microscope, perhaps by developing a delegation process, and practicing to build comfort with the skills.

3. Reinforce what’s most important.

Keep your eyes on the prize as you regroup, and prepare to take a new path forward.

Make sure everyone on your team has current information about current circumstances and, when you’re ready to share them, the plan for moving forward. (The real issue here is that you’d hate to make a high-risk situation worse with poor communication).

4. Simplify.

Get rid of extraneous tasks and other drags on your energy and attention right now.

You don’t need distractions when you’re trying to regain your focus and forward motion.

5. Strengthen.

Mistake-proof the way work gets done, to the degree that is possible and helpful now.

Taking that action could be a distraction under present circumstances, or it could save you from further damage in regrouping, recouping and moving on mode.

6. There may come a point when you need to stop stressing, pressing, and just accept what’s underway.

It’s important to know when stopping to accept current circumstances…really accept them…is your best and strongest move.

You may be sad. You may be mad.

But you have to accept the present situation to be able to understand it, let go of it, make the best of it and move beyond.

Strangely enough, at times of great risk and stress, you may gain control when you just let go.

—

*David Letterman, Late Night With David Letterman, once interviewed a flight attendant as part of the show’s “Stump the Band” game.

“You probably talk to the passengers quite a bit, don’t you?” he asked her.

“OH, NO! We don’t talk to them if we can help it! They’re the enemy!” she quickly said.

Suddenly she realized that, even though she meant what she said, it would not help her well-known employer for customers to know that IS, indeed, what she and some other flight attendants felt.

“This feels risky! This feels risky!”

A colleague and I were joking nervously on the first day of an intense, weeklong training class.

We were about to begin a rigorous simulation as we learned to coach teams through high-risk, conflict-ripe situations.

In the release of tension through humor, we were being honest about our feelings and our sense of the learning risk we faced.

We met that risk. It was not easy.

But it was a definitely a risk worth taking.

Most of the business risks I’ve taken during my career have fallen into the “risk worth taking” category. They’ve been risks of all kinds, including:

– Starting a career in a difficult national and local economy
– Changing careers
– Changing companies
– Starting a business
– Moving halfway across the country
– Stopping work for a couple of years to get a master’s degree
– Changing careers
– Changing jobs several times in the same company
– Starting another business
– Adding new products and services as the market changes, some opportunities emerging, while others go away

For some, it’s because they see risk as an experience to be endured, not a process to be managed.

Or they don’t understand risk and its benefits, when successfully faced.

Risks in business can occur in many ways.

They can be the result of uncertainties with new projects, products or services.

Risks can arise when a company grows very quickly, or when it expands into unfamiliar markets and works to meet the needs of new customers.

Individual employees, too, face the risks of change. Sometimes that change is welcome or invited. But many times, that is not the case.

You get the picture: business risk can arise in many expected and unexpected ways.

No matter how you well you manage risk now, you can always learn to handle it better.

Start by understanding your risk personality.

Are you most likely to:

– Seek risk, seeing it as a challenge and an adventure in some way?
– Love the adrenalin rush of risk so much that you create it in situations where it doesn’t have to be?
– Try to understand and manage risk?
– Steer clear of risk in all forms?
– Believe that risk does not exist in your business or industry?

Remember, however you feel about risk, your competitors are trying to manage it better than you do.

And the company that handles risk most effectively has a clear advantage over more fearful and/or less adaptable competitors.

That’s because change is always underway, whatever your business or industry.

Consider these many moving parts that most companies face:

– Customers change in terms of what they want and need
– Markets move and adapt as new competitors emerge and others leave
– Technology continues to advance, and to become smaller, faster, and sometimes, less expensive
– Employees move to different jobs and companies
– Suppliers create new products and services, and enter new markets with the products and services they already sell

The net of it is that if you hate risk, and hate to change, you may become obsolete as you try to stay right where you are, attempting to preserve the status quo.

To understand how well you handle risk now, start by considering how you handled risks in the past:

1. Think of two to three major risks you faced in the past few years.

2. Did you anticipate these risks? If not, could you have anticipated them with more or different information?

3. How well did you handle each risk?

4. How could you have handled them better?

5. Are there risks you avoided? Were you able to keep them at bay, or did they show up again in a different, more vigorous or otherwise more challenging way?

Begin, also, to look ahead:

6. How would you like to improve your risk assessment and management abilities in 2013 and beyond?

7. What information might help you anticipate, understand, and manage risks better? How can you gather this information most easily?

Improvement begins with understanding and acceptance.

Knowing where you stand, currently, goes a long way toward helping you improve your risk management and other abilities.

We’ll return to the subject of risk in the next blog post. I’ll share ideas for how you can begin to handle risk better.

In the meantime, if you’d like more ideas on how to make the next year a better year, here’s a previous blog post I wrote, Seven tips to make your business change-ready for an improved year.

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What’s the key to turning high potential into high performance and results when the heat and pressure are highest?

First, think about the stark contrast in possible outcomes in high pressure situations you’ve experienced in your work and life.

On the one hand, you can have:

- Success

- Innovation

- Responsiveness

- Resilience

- Influencing and inspiring others in a way that brings out the best in a full team

Now contrast that with these possibilities:

- Failure

- Freezing

- Rigidity

- Fully fed, flourishing and felt fear

- Expecting the worst and bringing it out in yourself and others

Which experience do you want?

(I won’t wait for your answer. I’m pretty sure I know what it is)

What, then, is the key to top performance, assuming you’ve done the learning, preparation and practice required to make great performance and results a realistic possibility?

There are many other examples we could use. Let’s consider a memorable one from the 2012 Olympics in London.

One very clear example of the “Get out of your own way to let your best performance through” dynamic occurred in the men’s 10-meter platform diving competition.

First, U.S. diver David Boudia barely made it out of the qualifying rounds.

His early performance earned him the 18th and final spot in the medal round.

Next, the slate was wiped clean of prior scores. Competitors started fresh in the final stretch of the medal round.

Finally, when the pressure was highest, Boudia produced a series of nearly-perfect dives, besting the seemingly unflappable, unbeatable Chinese divers.

The Chinese competitors seemed unable to understand, accept and adapt to having their assumed supremacy (and their expected gold and silver medals) challenged in the final round.

So when they and other competitors could not adjust to Boudia’s barrage of near-perfection, they lost the gold medal to him…the man who had almost missed the medal round.

This getting out of your own way business sounds simple enough.

But for most people and teams, it’s not.

Why? These are the primary reasons:

1. Fear

This can be a fear of failure, or a fear of success. Or it can be a fear of both.

Either way, fear can be immobilizing.

2. Bad habits or a poor process

Whether because of bad habits or a bad design or implementation, inefficient and unfocused ways of getting things done stacks the odds of success against you.

3. Disabling and limit-setting beliefs

You or your team may WANT success.

You may diligently WORK TOWARD success.

But if you don’t BELIEVE you can produce and maintain success, or don’t feel that you “deserve” it, you’re far less likely to achieve it.

It’s like trying to run a race with a 100 lb. weight strapped to your back. It’s a burden your competitors may not have to carry.

4. Expectations that turn out to be wrong

You can plan and prepare for a circumstance that does not come to pass.

And when the situation is different from what you expect, you may not be able to adapt fast enough.

If fear, bad habits, misbeliefs and incorrect expectations are some of the causes, what are some of the cures for the problem?

- Benchmark and learn from the best.

- Observe others in competition. See how they handle the pressure when the pressure’s highest.

- Get a mentor. Learn from someone who has been where you’re going.

- Plan for and practice in all sorts of circumstances…best and worst…to build resiliency.

When the pressure is on, your ability to read a situation quickly and accurately, then to choose the right moves, take action, and succeed in unexpected situations may be one of your most important success skills of all.

Get out of your own way.

Let your best, and the best of your team, come clearly and completely through.

Don’t trap or bury your talent.

Tap it.

Turn your full potential into success you can fully enjoy.

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You have one, too.

Most of us do.

It’s the nagging problem that you just can’t (or for some reason, don’t) solve.

Why do problem-solving impasses occur?

Usually it’s for one of three basic reasons:

1. You don’t know what the problem really is.

2. It doesn’t hurt enough (yet).

3. You don’t believe circumstances can or will actually get better.

Let’s look at each in more detail, along with a few things you can do to start to move beyond the ”No Progress” Zone:

1. You don’t know what the problem really is.

Maybe you knew something was wrong. Then, in your eagerness to sweep the problem away, you guessed what was going on, and got to work “fixing” that.

All too often, though, that first, fast guess is wrong.

And then, all the time and money spent focusing on the wrong problem?

It’s wasted.

Gone.

Or perhaps the problem you’re addressing is just a cover for a much more challenging issue that lurks behind or beneath it. And that is one you’d REALLY rather not address.

Hanging on to the current problem, then? It’s a form of protection, seemingly.

What can you do if working on the wrong problem is the reason you’re busy, but making no real progress?

Make time, and muster up the courage to identify what your real problem is, and what is causing it.

Then make that cause go away…and the problem will go away, too.

2. It doesn’t hurt enough (yet).

Perhaps you have a high threshold of pain, or the company or team you work on does.

High tolerance for pain can be a good thing, up to a point.

Some companies and teams seem to take it as a matter of pride how much pain and stress they can endure…even is some of it is preventable.

(This can almost be a form of company or team hazing, but that’s a different discussion for another day).

High tolerance for pain can prevent you from seeing, acknowledging and solving problems when they’re easiest and least expensive to address.

What can you do if too little pain is what’s keeping you from making a problem go away?

Pay closer attention.

Notice the signs of change, whether positive or negative.

Find ways to track significant actions and desired outcomes. Look for trends. That information will help you to know if conditions are getting better, or worse, so you can respond accordingly.

3. You don’t believe circumstances can or will get better.

If this is the case, you or your organization may believe that others’ luck is just, well, superior to yours.

And at times in the past, maybe that has been true to some extent.

A big part of “luck,” however, is doing the work necessary to be well-prepared when great opportunities came along.

Luck is also a by-product of an active effort to make things better…not just hoping that they will improve someday.

In addition, you have to believe that change is possible for it to occur, and to “stick.”

Consider this:

- You can’t make change you can’t imagine.

- You don’t keep change that you can’t or won’t accept.

Practice, stretch and grow your capacity for handling success.

Be ready to enjoy the benefits you say you want.

Start by learning about others who faced, and met similar challenges, even if they couldn’t initially believe success could really be “theirs.”

Envision. Expect. Create. Accept. Enjoy.

Take the risk.

Enjoy the increased ease and success that removing an as-yet-unsolved problem brings.

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Imagine you’re starting the work to meet a big, compelling goal.

You’re eager to move beyond the way things are to the much better circumstance you wish you had…RIGHT NOW.

You strategize, plan and get ready to dive right in.

But have you already skipped the very first step?

That’s the step of understanding your starting point, as it really is.

All too often I see companies and teams who want to get to work, assuming away challenges they don’t want to think about fully.

They jump into action, ready to move forward from a point far beyond where they really are.

Ultimately, they have to go back and lay the foundation they didn’t really have yet.

The cautionary advice from their experience is that if you don’t:

- Diagnose your situation correctly

- Make sure you and your team are pointed in the same direction

- Know how you’ll work together as a group to reach your mutual goal

Then, it’s almost a guarantee that you’ll:

- Waste precious resources (money, time, attention, energy and goodwill, to name just a few)

- Find that those precious resources, once gone, may be impossible to get again

Try these four key steps to understand your real starting point:

1. Be clear about what you really want.

Sometimes people (and companies and teams) know full well what they don’t want.

They already have that.

But they’re not so sure what they DO want, instead.

Get the picture of your destination as clear as you can.

Describe it in detail, in a way that everyone will recognize it as you work toward it, and will know it when you get there.

Otherwise?

Well, you’d be surprised how different the destination may be that each person, despite the best intentions, may be driving to reach.

Do you doubt that that’s possible?

Just think, then, how many variations there are on the concept of “The Perfect Vacation,” even in one family or group of friends.

One person could envision a lazy, sunny beach vacation with plenty of umbrella drinks, while another may be thinking that the perfect way to spend time off is to scale Mt. Everest.

Big disagreements can occur on the basis of important assumptions that have not been aired and then verified or clarified.

Get clear on your shared destination.

2. If it’s a problem you’re solving, be clear about what it is.

Describe the situation.

Then gather the facts.

This may affirm your impression about what’s going on, adjust it…or may even show you there’s no problem to solve, at all.

3. Be clear about where you really are, before the work begins.

As mentioned, sometimes a leader assumes that the people on his or her team have more – or less – knowledge, skill, or confidence than it turns out that they really do.

Other circumstances may be far different from what you expect, as well, as work begins.

Know what your starting point really is to understand the gap you have to close between aspirations and reality.

Fully understand the resources you have or can get, and the contraints within which you must try to achieve success.

Know, for example, what other high-priority projects are underway, and may be competing for the same resources that you hope to steer your team’s way.

4. Make and communicate your action plan to close the gap.

Create an action plan that makes best use of the resources you have, and can get for this team or project.

Plan the most logical and realistic series of actions that are likely to take you from where you are to the situation you desire, instead.

Plan, also, how you will monitor and measure progress and follow up regularly to ensure that you’re moving ahead.

Whatever your starting point is, whatever gap you have to fill, know that fully understanding and accepting what it is an essential first step to success.