From Stuck to Unstoppable: Three Skills for Today’s Challenges
In the past few months, three different clients came to Third Horizon dealing with the same challenge: helping technically skilled teams make smart decisions in the face of complex, constantly evolving problems. Traditionally, these teams have relied on their expertise, but today’s work environment demands more than just technical know-how—it requires an additional skill set.
Even though the clients were from different industries—environmental engineering, public education, and finance—they all had the same issue: their teams’ expertise sometimes caused them to miss the best solutions. These teams needed to expand their approach. So, what does it take to do this? In working with clients, we’ve identified three key skills:
Seeing the Big Picture
Understanding how work fits into the broader context is essential. In today’s complex work environment, actions in one part have ripple effects across the whole, often in ways we cannot predict. Setting boundaries around a challenge is key to avoiding overwhelm, but it's just as important to step back to see the challenge in context: how it aligns with the organization's broader goals, its impact on stakeholders, and how it interacts with other factors in the environment.
For example, in addressing the opioid crisis, early efforts focused on reducing opioid prescriptions without considering how addiction and the availability of illegal drugs were interconnected. This narrow focus led to an increase in overdoses from street drugs like heroin and fentanyl.
This example shows that focusing too much on one part of a problem can lead to unexpected, negative outcomes. To avoid this, teams should think about how their actions impact the bigger picture, including potential ripple effects beyond their area of expertise. This doesn't have to be cumbersome—simple questions at key points in the process can help keep things on track.
Tip: Ask questions that bring in the bigger picture, such as:
How does this issue fit into the larger environment or ecosystem?
What are the long-term goals of this effort? Does the work on the short term contribute to those long-term goals?
In 5 years, what might be a result of the actions we are considering? Could the solution create new problems or challenges over time?
What anomalies are we noticing in this work? Are they noise or something we should be paying attention to?
Embracing Uncertainty
In today’s world, perfect information is impossible. Climate change, AI technologies, and the Covid-19 pandemic are all novel challenges that require fresh approaches, with no reliable playbook to follow. A common trap teams fall into is “analysis paralysis”—gathering endless data in hopes of reaching a clear decision. But in many situations today, decisive action is needed even amid extreme uncertainty.
Public Health faced significant criticism for its response to Covid-19, but with the urgency and limited knowledge at the time, they had to act quickly to slow the spread. We can’t know what might have happened if the CDC had waited to know more before issuing guidelines, but the risk of greater loss was very real. Those who can embrace uncertainty move forward using the best information they have even without definitive evidence.
Tip: The first step to tolerating uncertainty is to understand how you currently respond to it. Tolerance for uncertainty is an emerging leadership capacity. If you’d like to get a sense of your tolerance, here’s a quick assessment. https://www.carepatron.com/files/intolerance-of-uncertainty-scale.pdf
Integrating Diverse Perspectives
In the past, technical experts often worked on their own. But today, making smart decisions requires collaboration. The University of Illinois’ approach to campus reopening is a cautionary tale. During the peak of the COVID pandemic, researchers developed a detailed model to guide the campus reopening. It predicted how the virus would spread, factoring in quarantine rules, student interactions, and safety measures like testing and masks. But the model missed one key thing—students broke quarantine to attend parties, which led to a much bigger spike in cases than expected. If students had been involved in creating the model or even asked for their input on the policy, they might have pointed out that parties would likely continue, regardless of quarantine rules.
Whether it's gathering community input for your program or understanding your boss's priorities when pitching a solution, success comes down to skillfully understanding different perspectives and collaborating with a variety of people.
Tip: Involve those affected by the issue in the problem-solving process.
Who is most impacted by this issue, and are their perspectives included in the problem-solving process?
What social, cultural, or economic factors could affect the success of our proposed solution?
What are the possible long-term consequences of the proposed solutions?
How to get unstuck
In today’s unpredictable and complex world, even the smartest experts can get overwhelmed by all the moving parts. It’s easy to fall back on what we know best—our hard-earned technical skills. But ironically, the way to get unstuck isn’t to dig deeper into what we know, but to step back and see the bigger picture, accept that there are some things that are simply unknowable, and seek out different perspectives. This approach allows you to use your expertise in a much more powerful and impactful way.