Intention and shared mental model spacethe day beforeHamilton Helmer pointed out this amazing connection between intention and shared mental…Flux budget and predictability footprint

Steady winds, doldrums, and hurricanes2023It just so happened that this year, many of my friends and…Organizing and sensing connections2021Tucked away in a couple of paragraphs of the brilliant paper by…I’ve been thinking about this idea of the flux budget as a measure of capacity to navigate complexity of the environment. With a high flux budget, I can thrive in massively volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (yep, VUCA) spaces. With a low flux budget, a slightest sight of unpredictability triggers stress and suffering. If we imagine that the flux budget is indeed a thing, then we can look at organizations –and ourselves — and make guesses about how the respective flux budgets are managed.

Diving into unpredictability2023In this metaphor, unpredictability is water. If we stay in it for…Life of a solution2022Looking at the framework in the previous piece, I am noticing that…Reflecting on my own habits, I am recognizing that to manage my flux budget, I have to deliberately work for it. To peer into the abyss of unpredictable, it appears that I need to be anchored to a sizable predictable environment. I ruthlessly routinize my day. From inbox zero to arranging shirts, to my exercise schedule, and even the allotment of guilty pleasures (like watching a TV show or the evening tea with cookies), it’s all pretty well-organized and neatly settled. Observing me in my natural routine habitat without context might conjure up depictions of thoughtless robots. Yet this is what allows me to have the presence to think deeply, to reflect, and patiently examine ideas without becoming attached to them.

Being Strategic2022It all begins with intention. There’s something in our environment – the…This reaching for the comfort of routine has obvious consequences. How many beautiful, turning-point moments have I missed while sticking to my routine? How many times has the routine itself led me away from insights that would have otherwise been on my path? Or worse yet, imposed an unnecessary burden on others? Let’s call this phenomenon the predictability footprint: the whole of the consequences of us creating a predictable environment to which to anchor in the face of complexity.

Leading while sleepwalking2021Talking with one of my colleagues, we arrived at this interesting insight.…I am pretty excited to be learning more about the relationship between flux budget and predictability footprint. The whole notion of the footprint (which I borrowed from carbon footprint) speaks to the second-order effects of us seeking solid ground in the flux of today’s world — and how that in turn might create more flux. A while back, I wrote about leading while sleepwalking, which seems like a decent example of a vicious cycle where a leader’s predictability footprint increases the overall state of flux, placing more demand on an organization’s flux budget.

Ecosystems from product and user perspectivethe same dayIn a couple of conversations this week, the word “ecosystem” came up,…Enumerating constraintslinks here, 2021As we enumerate constraints, a picture of the playing field emerges. If…Pace layers of predictabilitylinks here, 2023For example, in organizations, there is usually a larger group — often…These framings also help me ask new interesting questions. What is my predictability footprint? How might it affect my flux budget? What are the steps I can take to reduce my predictability footprint?